Exploring the Use of Shellfish Aquaculture as a Sustainable Resource and an Enviornmental Pollution Remediation Method

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Under Section 303 of the United State’s Clean Water Act, each state is required to produce a Total Maximum Daily Load report for each of its bodies of water that impacted by pollutants. This report identifies the pollutants; the current level of the pollutants; and the level which the pollutants must be reduced. In addition, strategies must be identified to accomplish the goal of pollutant reduction. Since the 1990s, research has shown the ability of oysters and other shellfish to filter the water column and therefore remove the effects of over nitrification in coastal waters. By using sustainable shellfish aquaculture, coastal states can create a process which can can be used in conjunction with the Clean Water Act’s Total Maximum Daily Load process. This paper discusses feasibility of using sustainable shellfish aquaculture as a strategy for the removal of the effects of over-nitrification in the Total Management Daily Load process. Shellfish aquaculture can also provide benefits in increased public awareness of efforts to clean the local waters as well as creating an economic benefit for coastal communities in the form of new and environmentally sustainable shellfisheries.

Stream: Environmental Sustainability

Paper: , Exploring the Use of Shellfish Aquaculture as a Sustainable Resource and an Enviornmental Pollution Remediation Method

Richard F. Golen is a Professor of Management in the Earle P. Charlton College of Business at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. He is volunteer attorney in the Coalition for Buzzards Bay Advocacy Department where he has helped worked on areas ranging from the recent appeal to the Federal Courts for the Massachusetts Oil Spill Law to researching TMDL implementation strategies. One of the strategies he is examining is the use of shellfish as a nitrogen removal tool. He is also a member of the Coalition’s Baywatcher water monitoring program.

Professor Golen received his Bachelor of Science degree in Management from Southeastern Massachusetts University in 1974, his Masters of Business Administration degree from Suffolk University in 1976 and his Juris Doctor degree from Suffolk Law School in 1983. He has been on the University of Massachusetts faculty since 1983.