Using the Ghost Nets Site for Monitoring Small Salt Marshes in the Gulf of Maine

Many factors culminate in environmental degradation. The effects of over fishing, lost gear and the loss of spawning grounds due to wetlands degradation reflects our unrealistic relationship to our environment. Fisheries loss are symptomatic. Studies have shown there are 2,240 abandoned fishing nets per 64 nautical square miles in the Gulf of Maine (GOM) which continue to fish at a 15% rate for at least seven years. Both people and fish depend on wetlands. But we are losing our wetlands at an alarming rate. Seventy-five per cent of (GOM) salt marsh alone has either already been lost or is threatened. The premise of Ghost Nets is that the environment is a matter of personal responsibility, but like everything in life, we are often trapped in familiar habits and routines. These habits and routines are like the invisible drift nets, lost in the ocean, that stripmine life. In this phase of Ghost Nets, the scientific attention is on how we are impacting small salt marshes and what the implications are for sea life.

Ghost Nets, an art project, has created a replicable model for sustainable restoration, including fresh and salt water marshland systems. It is on the reclaimed land of a former coastal dump site. To complete the project, we collaborated on theoretical models with Michele Dionne, PhD, Chief Researcher at Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR), bioengineers from The Bioengineering Group (TBG) and the local community to study wetlands linkage issues. This model of wetlands restoration and working habitat is in the Gulf of Maine, beleaguered by degradation and encroachment.

Art, humanity's most potent tool for opinion making, has been excluded from strategic recommendations about wetlands loss. Ghost Nets's ultimate goal is expanded, open dialogue with urban centers desensitized to their dependence on rural resources, particularly in the Gulf of Maine. Strategies include publishing, writing, filming, a public exhibition, and scientific needs assessments.

Project Summary

Problem:

The GOM historically has been one of the richest North American sources for natural resources, and like topsoil in the Midwest, as these resources vanish, the entire country with it's burgeoning population is at risk. Most people know this intuitively, without the statistics, but feel trapped between house (and in the case of fishermen, boat) payments and feelings of despair over the enormity of the problem. But even the wealthiest members of our society will be at risk when the last bit of topsoil has been made into green lawn and we no longer have clean water or animal resources. The GOM is a microcosm for how these problems are being played out nationally and globally. As Maine goes, so goes the nation is an old adage, and by extrapolation the earth follows. If we lose the fisheries and the Migratory Fly Zone here, there is little hope for the rest of the Atlantic coast line. The inadequate wetlands policy needs support from science and public opinion.

We know wetlands of all kinds are keystone habitats, meaning the rest of our environment depends on their vitality. One way our denial is encouraged is by the lack of definitive information verifying how progressive degradation effects these keystone elements in our environment, Another way has been the sheer quantity of disorganized information. The latter problem has begun to be addressed by GOMINFOEX, an electronic information exchange system with which Ghost Nets is participating. A third is the lack of a common language for all the stakeholders to focus on and dialogue over solutions with one element of the system at a time. Protocols for mitigation are also not tailored to different circumstances or sufficiently monitored; 46% of wetlands restorations fail and 30% are not even built.

According to Michele Dionne, tidal wetlands are an important habitat element along coastal Maine; making up more than half of all GOM salt marsh acreage, more than any state north of New Jersey. Twenty-five to fifty per cent of commercially and recreationally important fish species use salt marsh habitat at some point in their lives. Twenty-five per cent of these marshes have already been lost to dredging and filling. Another twenty five per cent are threatened by changes in hydrology caused by road crossings. More are threatened by continued shoreline development and the cumulative impact of permitted wetlands filling. There is growing interest in restoring tidal wetlands in Western Maine, but marshes east of the Kennebec River are smaller, more numerous and virtually unstudied. Wetlands banking and conventional restorations are not always a solution. Protocols for restoration are not tailored to bioregions. We don't know how progressive degradation affects inter-related systems or how variations in coastal ecology create different contributions to the overall picture by currents and movements of organisms. Soils are different. Our indices are based primarily on vegetation, an insufficient barometer. Answering these questions is a primary concern of Ghost Nets as the project enters its final year.

Solution:

Collaboration across disciplines pools the conceptual resources of each. Ghost Nets married state of the art science and art about ecology into accessible delivery systems. Ghost Nets goal is to bring attention to the implications of wetlands loss. The solution is based on accomplishing three things in collaborative processes:

1. Verifying progressive salt marsh degradation in the GOM.
2. Developing mapping to indicate the cumulative effects
3. Creating a delivery system to bring the problem to the attention of opinion makers.

Scientifically, we need to site the creative focus in a macrocosmic view by answering the following questions that have been developed from collaborative discussion:

1. What are the primary differences between Maine's eastern and western coastal marshes?
2. How does the nature and extent of human impact differ for Maine's eastern and western coastal marshes?
3. What is the distribution, abundance and size of potential salt marsh creation and restoration sites in eastern Maine? Exactly how applicable is the design of the Roberts Harbor site to these other sites?
4. What is the fish habitat value of the Roberts Harbor marsh?
5. What is the potential for increased fisheries production through marsh restoration and creation in downeast Maine?

Answering these questions will verify how replicable and applicable the Roberts Harbor wetlands model is and it will establish a reference point for linkage systems theory that could be the foundation of enhanced environmental policy decisions.

This can be accomplished by studying existing data, visiting and accumulating data from a series of designated sites, going back to 1989. Data from these sites can then be analyzed with a combination of geographic and biological survey work, including image analysis of aerial photos combined with ground truthing to assess the differences in size, shape, location and human impact to marshes along representative segments of Maine's coastline.

How is Art part of the solution?

Since the launch of this site, several other environmental art sites dedicated to a restoration ethic have opened up, including www.coa.edu/ecoart/ at the College of the Atlantic where I am co-directing a program on Environment-Art. These sites are particularly satisfying because it separates the question of physical restoration from the act of literal visitation: that is, many of these physical sites, if properly restored, really are too fragile for actual visitors. Virtual visitors, as eventually ecotourism may evolve to realize, can be more caring and conscientious to our common habitat.

Present Status

The restored site recreates linkage in a fragmented Class A Migratory Bird Fly Zone in the middle of the Gulf of Maine. The modeling has attracted interest and support from state and federal agencies. Funding is now being sought to complete these studies.