Salt Marsh Restoration and the Shellfishing Industry: Co-evaluation of Success Components

Abstract

This study uses an ecosystem services framework to document the current relationship between salt marsh restoration and the shellfishing industry in five towns on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, USA. Salt marshes in their natural form provide many ecologic, economic, and aesthetic benefits to coastal communities. Human alterations to salt marshes (including ditching, diking, and filling), however, restrict water flow, substantially reducing the ecosystem services available to these communities. Salt marsh restoration projects have been implemented along coastal landscapes in an attempt to reclaim their original ecosystem services. The ecologic and social components of restoration, like its connection to the shellfish industry, are well understood, but the inherent linkages between the components are not. Through the co-evaluation of these components, social and ecologic linkages are identified and assessed. This study determined the robust social link between salt marsh restoration and the shellfishing industry. Despite the lack of a clear link between restoration and enhanced ecosystem services that augment shellfish harvest, restoration projects are valued for far more than their direct provisioning ecosystem services, with many shellfishermen emphasizing the cultural value of the salt marsh above all else. The sense of community and culture that rallies around both salt marsh restoration and shellfishing demonstrates that valuation of ecosystem services is robust and imperative to the future of both salt marshes and the shellfishing industry on the outer Cape.