REBUKES BEACH NOURISHMENT CLAIMS

To the editor:

In response to last week's interview with Josh Posner (Voices from the Bluff: SBPF Speaks, Page 10), I have a few things to say.

The beach in front of Siasconset village for a number of years now has been stable, if not growing, so I believe that the threat of 'Sconset village washing away in the near future is unfounded.

As to the statement ["there are currently about 3,000 acres of cobble bottom which is viewed as key to the striped bass habitat and an estimated 105 acres or 5 percent will be covered by new sand"], I quote from US Army Corps of Engineers notice file #NAE-2005-350:

"This project will have an adverse effect on approximately 492 acres of Essential Fish Habitat for various life stages of atlantic cod, haddock, winter flounder, atlantic halibut, monk fish, long finned squid, short finned squid, atlantic butter fish, atlantic mackeral, summer flounder, scup, black sea bass, surf clam, blue shark, and bluefin tuna.

"The dredging portion of this project will impact approximately 195 acres of Essential Fish Habitat for the species listed above. Habitat at this site can be described as subtidal sandy shoal. Loss of this habitat may adversely affect the species listed above.

"The dredged material disposal segment of this project will impact approximately 297 acres of Essential Fish Habitat for the species listed above. The dredged material disposal is proposed for 'Sconset Beach, Nantucket, Massachusetts, as beach nourishment. Habitat at this site consists of 9.6 acres of intertidal and 287.3 acres of subtidal habitat. Of the subtidal area, approximately 105 acres is cobble/sand bottom and 29.5 acres is hard bottom, with the rest being sandy bottom. Loss of this habitat may adversely affect the species listed above."

Back to the striped bass. I believe approximately 90 percent of the striped bass caught at Sankaty are caught in the area that they will cover over. The cobbles in close have a lot of growth on them and that is where most of the life thrives, thus attracting the striped bass. Out deeper the cobbles have mostly sponges growing on them.

Using concrete railroad ties as mitigation for the covered cobbles is very unsure and I quote from Division of Marine Fisheries' Director Paul J. Diodati's letter to Nantucket Conservation Commission of April 9, 2007: "Other than availability, use of concrete railroad ties provides no real value in terms of replacement of the habitat being lost."

The project engineers stated that their project would take close to six months, not a few months. They also compared the turbidity to a minor storm event. That would be like having a storm everyday for five or six months. Also, considering the tide down there, I believe your statement, Mr. Posner, "that the impact will be temporary and limited to a path a few hundred feet wide over a three-mile beach," just doen't stand up.

Striped bass are generally found very close to the bottom so when fishing for them the gear is on the bottom or just above the bottom, so even if there are fish around during all this turbidity which I doubt, fishing for them would be near impossible with all the pipelines running to the shore.

Beach nourishment is temporary, and as long as Mother Nature doesn't throw too many Nor'easters at us, the project would not have to be done again for maybe five years. At that time we would have to deal with the marine habitat destruction all over again. If they do not have the funding to redo the project again, then at the cost of destroying the marine habitat, it would only be a short delay for what erosion would take place naturally.

Sincerely,

- Robert Rank, commercial fisherman