Massachusetts
A Vulnerable Coastal Environment
The actual distance from north to south along the Massachusetts coast line is just 110 miles as the bird flies.
But if you ever tried to walk along the water from Cape Cod to the North Shore, you would cover nearly 1,500 miles of twisting, turning shoreline.
Salmon, shad and sturgeon swim through the state’s rivers to reach the salty ocean, where deeper waters serve as the breeding and feeding grounds for vast schools of haddock and cod.
Migrating humpback whales, sea turtles and native harbor seals also feed in these rich coastal waters, where oyster reefs, seagrass beds, salt marshes and estuaries offer habitat to myriad native marine species.
But if you ever tried to walk along the water from Cape Cod to the North Shore, you would cover nearly 1,500 miles of twisting, turning shoreline.
Salmon, shad and sturgeon swim through the state’s rivers to reach the salty ocean, where deeper waters serve as the breeding and feeding grounds for vast schools of haddock and cod.
Migrating humpback whales, sea turtles and native harbor seals also feed in these rich coastal waters, where oyster reefs, seagrass beds, salt marshes and estuaries offer habitat to myriad native marine species.
Photo Credit: NOAA
Right Whale
The right whale gets its name from early whalers who considered this species the "right" whale to hunt. Right whales tend to swim slowly and close to the surface, and their abundant blubber kept them afloat after being killed, making them easy prey for hunters. Right whales travel in the summer to the waters off the coast of New England, particularly in Massachusetts Bay and Cape Cod Bay, to nurse and feed, after calving in coastal waters off the southeastern United States. These filter feeders eat great amounts of crustaceans and plankton and can grow to 50 feet long, weigh up to 120,000 pounds, and live up to 100 years. Although the Right whale was named Massachusetts’s state marine mammal in 1980, there are fewer than 450 of this endangered species left today. |
Happy Harbor Seal. Credit: Pond5
Harbor Seals Harbor seals are relatively small, 5 feet long, with brown or grey fur and are common in Massachusetts. They are often found in coastal areas, hauled out on land, either by themselves or in a group, to rest. It is thought that females from Massachusetts migrate to quiet islands in New Hampshire and southern Maine to pup, usually give birth in late spring and early summer. Pups are able to swim within minutes after birth and can travel with the female while she hunts. The Federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, passed in 1972, made it illegal to hunt, feed, disturb, or otherwise harass seals or any marine mammal! Happily, the local population of arbor seals has increased dramatically over the last decade. |
Buzzards Bay
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Buzzards Bay is approximately 28 miles long, 8 miles wide, and covers nearly 310 miles of coastline.
Colonists, who first settled the area in 1621, named this lovely bay after a large native bird, most likely an osprey, which still breed along its shores today. It is a popular destination for fishing, boating, and tourism and home to several endangered species. Buzzards Bay is also major transit route for small oil tankers and barge traffic transporting heating and industrial oil and gasoline to Boston and northern New England. Nearly 1.6 billion gallons of oil are estimated to pass through the narrow canal connecting Buzzards Bay and Cape Cod Bay each year. |
Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts. Credit: Norman Einstein
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A Tern for the Worse:
The Hidden Costs of a Marine Oil Spill
Buzzards Bay was designated "an estuary of national significance" which is "threatened by pollution, land development, or overuse" in 1989. One of the largest threats to the environment comes from marine oil spills. The bay has been impacted by at least 16 major marine oil spills between 1963 and 2013, according to the Buzzard Bay National Estuary Program.
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ROSEATE TERNS
Buzzards Bay is home to the largest nesting colony of Roseate Terns in North America. Their name comes from the delicate pinkish coloring sometimes visible on their chests. Their bill is a seasonal color shifter which turns black in May, becomes progressively redder from the base toward the tip during June and July, and then darkens again in August. These endangered terns arrive in Massachusetts in Late April-early May to establish nests. Once common, the population dropped to just 2,500 pairs in 1978. Today, supported by biologists working with MassWildlife, the population has now increased to some 4,000 mating pairs. 
Carolyn Mostello studying roseate terns on Ram Island. Photo: CGP.
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Roseate Tern. Credit: CGP
“These aren’t populations that are self-sustaining," explains Carolyn Mostello, a seabird biologist with Mass Wildlife. Part of the problem, she says, is there are only three breeding colonies left in North America, and all are located on small low-lying islands along the North Eastern coastline. This makes these breeding grounds vulnerable to long list of potential threats, including careless human visitors, dogs, rising sea levels as a result of climate change, destructive storms, and oil spilled into the water, either intentionally by commercial vessels looking to dispose of used oil and oily waste, or as a result of industrial accidents, both of which happen far more frequently than you might imagine. |
The last major accident happened on a warm spring evening, on April 27, 2003, when the Bouchard oil barge #120 hit a hidden rock, spilling nearly 98,000 gallons of No. 6 bunker fuel into Buzzard's bay.
The accident occurred just as the roseate tern's breeding season was getting underway, swamping the shores of their nesting grounds on Ram Island. The environmental damaged unfolded across nearly 100 miles of coastline for weeks afterwards as migrating birds including gulls, loons and sea ducks were exposed to the heavy sticky oil as they fed in offshore waters.
The bouchard oil barge #120 leaking oil after hitting a submerged rock in Buzzard's Bay on April 27, 2003. Photo: US Coast Guard.
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A oiled roseate tern found dead on Ram Island in Buzzards Bay after the Bouchard #120 oil spill. Photo: Carolyn Mostello
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Biologists estimated that thousands of birds died as a result of the spill, including endangered terns, loons, eiders, dunlins, scoters, and gulls. More than 500 common loons also perished from exposure to oil, and the death of adult common and roseate terns, and the subsequent disruption of their nests, led to the loss of thousands of chicks.
Learn how Carolyn Mostello, a Wildbird biologist working with Mass Wildlife, designed a plan to defend the endangered birds breeding ground on Ram Island from the deadly oil spill.
The spilled oil also impacted a variety of salt marshes, rocky shorelines, recreational beaches, and shellfish beds along nearly 100 miles of coastline in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Oiled rocks along Buzzards Bay after the Bouchard 120 oil spill. Photo courtesy of The Buzzards Bay Coalition.
The Bouchard #120 spill was so devastating that it led to the passage of the Massachusetts State Oil Spill Act of 2004, which required double-hulled tugs to reduce the risk of spillage and that licensed pilots be at the helm of tugs escorting barges transporting oil in the bay.
Bouchard Transportation, the company that owned barge, paid $6 million dollars in damages in 2010.
However the damages to the ecosystem continued to accrue, and in 2017, the company reached an additional settlement, setting the financial cost of the environmental damage at $19 million dollars.
Bouchard Transportation, the company that owned barge, paid $6 million dollars in damages in 2010.
However the damages to the ecosystem continued to accrue, and in 2017, the company reached an additional settlement, setting the financial cost of the environmental damage at $19 million dollars.
Piping Plover. Credit: Pond 5
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Threatened Sea Turtles
Green Turtles, Loggerheads, leatherback and Kemp's Ridley, the smallest and most endangered turtle in the world, also visit the Buzzards Bay to eat a variety of aquatic plants and animals, including sponges, crabs, mollusks, fish, jellyfish, and algae. All four of these turtle species are threatened or endangered.
Green turtles, named after the color of its body fat, usually appear in Buzzards Bay in late summer, and adults can reach as much 400 pounds. |
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PIPING PLOVER
Buzzards Bay is also breeding site for the Piping Plover. With sand-colored plumage, they dash in starts and stops across dunes, and communicate in bell-like whistles. You might see them hold a foot in front of their bodies and vibrate it as a wave passes over the sand, bringing small invertebrates to the surface where they can easily grab them. Most plovers lay their eggs in May and chicks hatch in June. Piping Plovers are on the endangered species list and are believed to have a global breeding population of less than 8,400 individuals. |
Green Sea Turtle. Credit Pond5
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Lessons from an old Oil Spill
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Early in the morning on Sept 16, 1969, the oil barge Florida, which was bound for Boston, ran aground on a rocky shoal near West Falmouth, Massachusetts, and spilled nearly 200,000 gallons of Number 2 fuel oil into Buzzards Bay.
By many standards, it was a fairly small spill, but strong winds blew the oil into the Wild Harbor River, spreading it across four miles of coastline, and killing many of the large marine animals in the area. Barge owners and oil industry experts assured local residents that most of the oil would evaporate and the damage would soon stop. However, a small group of researchers at the nearby Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution decided to study and document the impact of the oil on the local ecosystem, beginning a research project that would span the next five decades. |
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Journal of Marine Research, Volume 38, 2, 1980
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One of the team's research papers, published in the Journal of Marine Research in 1980, reported that the oil had continued to spread into the coastal water for at least five years after the accident. They also found evidence that plant life and animal life in the local ecosystem continued to suffer from what they concluded was “pervasive, ever-spreading, chronic oil pollution which disrupts and alters increasingly great reaches of natural habitats.”
Their finds were a milestone for our understanding of the impacts of oil on coastal ecosystems. For the first time, a group of highly qualified scientists were documenting the long-term impact of an oil spill and their findings would help to shape the national standards for oil spill clean up efforts. |
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When a new team of researchers from Woods Hole revisited the impacted areas four decades later, they also made some remarkable discoveries.
The team, led by Chris Reddy, published their findings in the April 2007 edition of Marine Pollution Bulletin. To everyone’s amazement, they found that the oil continued to harm local wildlife decades after the spill appeared to have vanished. One key finding involved fiddler crabs, which they found did not burrow as deeply in areas still impacted by oil as they did in oil-free areas. Instead, the crabs stopped digging when they reached the oil, turned sideways, and returned to the surface. The crabs also appeared to act intoxicated, or drunk, after ingesting oil, making it easier for predators to catch them, and passing along the toxins in oil up the local food chain. While the US Oil Pollution Act of 1990 requires polluters to clean up and return any ecosystem to its pre-spill status, Reddy later noted in an essay titled Still Toxic After All These Years, “the health of an ecosystem is often gauged by its visual appearance.” |
Fiddler Crab. Credit: Stephane Bidouze
“Wild Harbor now has a picture-postcard appearance,” Reddy concluded. “Who would have ever known that only a few inches below the surface, a nearly four-decade-old oil spill would be wreaking havoc on these crabs?”
These findings would change how oil spills are monitored and cleaned up around the country. |