The Invaders of the New England Coastline is an innovative campaign dedicated to empowering volunteer “citizen scientists” to more effectively slow the spread of harmful invasive species and reduce their economic damages. Through partnerships with the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management and USGS, and with assistance from Salem Sound Coastwatch, the data collected by volunteers will be added to a national database that will be used to track the spread, as well as the eradication and control of, invasive species.
We depend on feed back from you to make this a success. Please let us know how we can improve this program.
Some news stories of note:
Mussels evolve quickly to defend against invasive crabs It looks like New England Mussels are evolving a harder shell to combat the increased attacks of invasive crabs. What's interesting is that this has occurred in about 15 years - rather than thousands of years that evolution usually takes
Invasive sea squirts persist on Georges Bank Monitoring by Woods Hole has found that the invasive Tunicates (see above) have thrived. "The area of seabed covered by the colonies has doubled at 75 percent of the sites we observed in both 2005 and 2006"
