Two years ago MB and I took the kids tent camping at Coobscook Bay State Park. MB took the clam rake and worked the flats and we had soft shell clams to go with our corn.

Last years alge bloom kept us from claming. This year's is likely to close a lot of the clam flats.

I grew up on the coast of California, and spent my high school years doing a biological survey of Whaler's Cove, Point Lobos, with a group of people. Our work lead to the establishment of the first marine preserve in the United States. My bit was spending a lot of field time with my head more or less under a rock, under water, counting everything in a 1m square, and lab time counting everything in a drop of water, mapping the photo and phyto plankton in the water column.

Alexandrium blooms corrolate to low salinity, which is why they start during spring melt. The Maine DMR web sites aren't particularly informative, beyond the closure notices, but the low saline plume from the Kennenbec is the primary cause for Alexandrium concentrations in Casco Bay and off Cape E. Casco Bay is the Gulf's Alexandrium resevoir, which wind flows smear to the north, contrary to the general current flow.

So its not a global warming thing. In fact, the water temperature and salinity in the Gulf is controlled by the location of the Gulf Stream, which is in turn controlled by the Icelandic Low, and the Azores High, creating the years-long cycle of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). When the difference of normalized sea-level pressure between Lisbon, Portugal, and Reykjavik, Iceland, the NAO index, is low, Labrador Slope Water enters the Gulf via the Northeast Channel. When the NAO index is high, Warm Slope Water enters the Northeast Channel.

Warm is good if you're a copepod, or eat copepods by the bushel, like Northern Right Whales. Cold is good if you're a Northern shrimp, or eat shrimp.

Fisheries management is about data and understanding long-term trends in physical oceanography -- heat exchange between water masses, between atmospheric masses. Maine cannot do it alone, we share the Gulf with Nova Scotia, and as a ecological system, with New Hampshire and Massachusettes.

One thing Maine has "done right" has been the Gulf of Maine Ocean Observation System (GoMOOS), as an institution to manage data and make it available in real-time to commercial fisheries and make the Gulf a teaching resource for K12 and universities in Maine, Atlantic Canada, and New England.