Episode 9: Amy Croteau - Protecting Cape Cod's Waters with the Constable of Barnstable.

In this episode of OYSTER-ology, host Kevin Cox peeks behind the badge at the fascinating experiences of Amy Croteau, the Senior Natural Resources Officer and Shellfish Constable for the town of Barnstable, Massachusetts. Amy shares captivating stories from her 18 years in the role, from patrolling local waters and managing wildlife encounters to handling unpredictable challenges and local culture. She talks about the unexpected sight of a whale in a front yard, safeguarding Cape Cod's shellfish through rigorous regulation, and balancing the community's needs with environmental protection. Amy's narrative provides a unique insider's look at the daily life and duties of a shellfish constable, highlighting her commitment to the marine environment and her hometown community.

00:00 Introduction and Unexpected Whale Encounter

00:34 Welcome to Oysterology

01:09 Meet Amy Croteau: Shellfish Constable

03:41 The Role and Responsibilities of a Shellfish Constable

05:15 Challenges and Changes in Shellfish Enforcement

10:43 Environmental Changes and Wildlife Management

14:29 Becoming a Shellfish Constable

22:47 Daily Duties and Enforcement Tactics

27:41 Cultural Challenges in Shellfishing

28:14 Enforcement and Education

29:26 Frequent Offenders and Permit Suspensions

30:57 Aquaculture and Wild Harvest

34:16 Shellfish Propagation and Regulations

40:16 Balancing Community Needs

46:14 Wildlife Encounters and Challenges

49:49 Future Plans and Reflections

51:16 Conclusion and Farewell

Links:
Town of Barnstable, MA website:  (https://www.townofbarnstable.us/)

Shellfish Regs of Barnstable:  (https://www.townofbarnstable.us/Departments/shellfishing/Shellfish-Management.asp)

Shark-Tracker app:   Tracks sharks and other sea creatures. (https://www.ocearch.org/tracker/) Also available as an app.

Edible Magazine story on Amy, et al.:  Cape Cod's Female Shellfish Constables
By Andrea Pyenson / Photography By Cori Egan | April 19, 2018
(https://ediblecapecod.ediblecommunities.com/things-do/cape-cods-female-shellfish-constables)

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Transcript

Transcript
Episode 10: Amy Croteau - Protecting Cape Cod's Waters with the Constable of Barnstable.

​[00:00:00] 

 (bubbles)

Kevin: I can only imagine what it must be like to have one of those beautiful Cape Cod houses with the cedar shake siding and the lawn going down to the water and you wake up one morning and there's a 32 ton whale in your yard. 

Amy: Yeah. 

Kevin: Dead. 

Amy: Yep. And then, and then you call us and we say like, you know, we'll let the authorities know, but we're not going to remove it… It doesn't go well… 

 (bubbles)

Kevin: Welcome to OYSTER-ology, a podcast about oysters, aquaculture, and everything from spat to shuck. I'm your host, Kevin Cox. 

Oyster and shellfish aquaculture has long been a highly regulated area with lots of rules to follow, and everyone who operates an oyster growing undertaking confronts them. Anyone with a boat, or a net, or a fishing pole also knows there are rules by which they must abide, [00:01:00] or else!

But have you ever stopped to think about who the people enforcing the rules of the local waters and wildlife really are, or what they do? My guest today is Amy Croteau, Senior Natural Resources Officer and Shellfish Constable of the town of Barnstable, Massachusetts, on beautiful Cape Cod. This is one of the most popular seaside areas of the East Coast, a peninsula of land stretching like an arm flexing a muscle out into the Atlantic Ocean.

The Cape is dotted with quaint old fishing towns, graying clapboard houses, fishing boats, shellfish farms, lobster shacks, and everything else you might envision when dreaming of a pristine seaside fishing and natural beach area. But so close to Boston and the rest of the Northeast Corridor, the Cape draws a big crowd. And that's where the enforcement people like Amy come in to keep things in order. 

In our conversation, she describes the realities of being a shellfish constable, the overall enforcement of the area's beaches, waters, and wildlife, as well as the [00:02:00] watermen whose lives are wrapped around all of it. It's a tough, unpredictable job, and Amy gives us a great look inside that world. So, pull out your citation book and sharpen your pencils as I talk about shellfish enforcement, violations, propagation and education, why women make the best constables, ospreys hijacking boats for the season, seals, sharks, and washed up wildlife, keeping people honest, interpersonal conflict and most of all --  patience, with my guest, Amy Croteau.

(bubbles)

Kevin: Amy, thank you so much for joining me on OYSTER-ology today. I'm so happy to be here in the beautiful town of Barnstable, Massachusetts on Cape Cod.

Amy: Yes, mirrored after Barnstable in England, actually. 

Kevin: Is it really? 

Amy: Yeah. Thank you for having me today, Kevin. 

Kevin: It's beautiful here exploring Cape Cod. There's so many different watermen, oyster farms, shellfish farms. [00:03:00] I've talked to a lot of different kind of peripherally related disciplines around aquaculture, but nobody ever talks about the enforcement side of it. And I suddenly realized I don't know anything about that. And I think that it would be very interesting because. There's this whole group of people, this community all around the country doing all of this interesting shellfish and aquaculture related stuff. And I'm sure there are tons of rules around all of it. And I've never heard anybody really focus on them. So when I, when I heard about you and it's like, Oh, I have got to meet you. So, um, I'm just thrilled that we can sit down here today. 

Amy: Very happy to accommodate. 

Kevin: So you are the Shellfish Constable of Barnstable. Is that right? 

Amy: Yes. Yes. So I'm the Shellfish Constable of the Town of Barnstable, which covers the villages within the Town of Barnstable.

Kevin: What are some of those little villages? 

Amy: Uh, so we start right at the sort of town of Mashpee line, and from there we have the [00:04:00] village of Kituit, Marston's Mills, Osterville, Centerville, um, Hyannis, which is technically the size of a small city, uh, Barnstable proper and West Barnstable. And then you, you know, kind of end towards the Yarmouth line, which is the next town over.

Kevin: I always thought of Cape Cod as kind of one place, but it's really, it's almost like a state into itself. 

Amy: It's, it's not uncommon for people to look at it that way because we also are a county. 

Kevin: Oh, I see. 

Amy: So people will call our town often looking for information that's specific to Barnstable County, but that isn't necessarily covered by our municipality.

Kevin: Now, do you go by Constable Croteau? 

Amy: Uh, so, I know every single wild harvester, you know, by name and face. I've been around for long enough that everybody just knows me. I'm just Amy. They know what I am. Yeah. Um, it's the same way with aquaculturists. Recreational shellfishers call you all kinds of things, but so long as it comes along with the idea that they understand that you're the enforcement [00:05:00] end of the stick, then I'm fine with it.

Um, the, the most respect I get is when I go into classrooms, I'm more often than not called Ranger Amy, which I 100 percent accept. Yeah. 

Kevin: So, um, what does a shellfish constable do? Like what is your job? 

Amy: So what's really interesting about being a shellfish constable, especially in the state of Massachusetts is that Massachusetts has, um, you know, the state division of marine fisheries who manages their shell fishery.

And then we also have home rule. So every individual municipality is allowed to manage their shellfishery in a way that is best for their community. Um, you can't be more lenient than the rules that the state has in place. It's kind of the baseline, but you can be more strict. And so from town to town, shellfish regulations can be completely different and responsibilities of a shellfish constable can be completely different.

So in my position, my capacity, um, I work closely with the recreational shellfishery, the commercial [00:06:00] fishery, and our aquaculturists to help create and maintain regulations that are best for our community and for, um, supporting sustainable harvest recreationally and commercially and for supporting our aquaculture industry, which is, you know, very much local to this town.

Um, I also am a natural resource officer, which doesn't always happen from town to town. There are some towns in which you're just the shellfish constable and you just focus on shellfish exclusively. Oftentimes those shellfish constables are also responsible for their propagation programs, which is, um, municipal shellfish farming as required by the state. Um, so we have in Barnstable our own shellfish propagation team that we will from time to time when they need like extra muscle, call us the beef, um, to help out with certain projects. We'll, we'll tap in and help out with our oyster and, and Quahog aquaculture.

But more often than not it's, um, it’s on an enforcement [00:07:00] basis, you know, making sure that recreational harvesters are in open areas, that they have a permit, that they're harvesting within weekly limits, that they're harvesting in an open area and that they're not taking things that are out of season. On wild harvester ends, so our commercial fishery in Barnstable, it's a closed fishery. So we have a 47 person fishery. Um, and we are checking them, you know, when they're out in the field, um, making sure that they're within their limits, they're within the regulations that are put in place to sort of have commercial fishing not interfere with areas that are pretty much only accessible to recreational people, um, and also ensuring that their tagging is appropriate when they're landing prior to taking that to a wholesale market if they're not also a wholesale dealer or primary buyer.

And then on the aquaculture end of things, we do gear compliance, we do boundaries compliance of their licensed sites. during vibrio season, we do vibrio compliance checks and, um, not to toot our own horn, [00:08:00] but in Barnstable every year we get accolades from Division Marine Fisheries for conducting the most amount of vibrio checks statewide.

Kevin: No kidding. And when you do Vibrio checks, do you check the water columns yourself or is it, is it dependent upon the people who are actually out there on the water to report? You know, levels and that sort of thing. 

Amy: So we're out on every single tide patrolling. Um, on occasion, we'll be in a boat and we'll physically check people while they're in the action of harvesting. But more often than not, we're meeting them at the landing. You know, we know about the times that people are able to harvest within the windows that are available either on the north side or south sides of our town, based on what time low tide is, and we're checking to make sure that they have adequate shading for their product, that their product is tagged appropriately. If they're not a wholesale deal mower that has a bulk tagging ability, then we're making sure that every single bag is tagged and that they have either an appropriate slurry or appropriate amount of ice to [00:09:00] cover their time to temperature controls before they get to a wholesale market.

Kevin: And so the time to temperature controls, especially in the summer, depending on the weather and the temperature, there are very narrow windows when they can go out and actually harvest because of the exposure to the warm air. Is that the kind of thing you're talking about? 

Amy: Yeah. So there's temperature controls around specifically the vibrio season, which in date runs from May 19th through October 19th. And there are also temperature controls for like, getting your product to temperature once it's at a wholesale market, which falls under Department of Public Health. 

Kevin: So you've got a lot of regulations that you really have to enforce and keep track of, 

Amy: Yeah. And they're ever changing. I mean, you know, we live in a world where the climate is. is changing. And we're dealing with sea level rise. We're dealing with nuisance and invasive species. Um, algae blooms are proliferating. And so all of those can kind of, you know, change the regulations from time to time. So it's something that you have to keep on top of, which [00:10:00] is pretty important. Part of the reason that I sit on the board of the Mass Shellfish Officers Association is to be kind of on the pulse of that. 

Kevin: So you're keeping track of whatever they're observing, whatever regulations they may feel the need to ship. But then you must also see conditions changing on a daily or almost daily basis tide basis, right? 

Amy: Sure. So in a place as dynamic as Barnstable Harbor, the sand that was in place one tide is not necessarily there the following tide. but I also am lucky to work in the town that I grew up in. And so over my 43 years of life, I've seen firsthand the changes to our embayments just from having grown up in and state here.

Kevin: How would you describe some of those changes that you've seen? 

Amy: Oh gosh, it's not going to be pretty. Um, unfortunately we're seeing a lot of water quality degradation. We have basically built up every available avenue of coastline that we can. Um, we have more moorings in this town than any [00:11:00] other, community in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Um, and we just see changes in the prevalence of different species, uh, you know, when I was a kid, you would never see blue crabs on the Cape Cod Bay side of town and now they're, they're there and they're established. Yeah. 

Kevin: And what do you think brings that about? Just the, the currents or the warming water?

Amy: Yeah, right. 

Kevin: So they find a, a, a good environment where they're used to not be when it was too cold or something. 

Amy: Yep, absolutely. 

Kevin: And I guess the crabs or other invasive species like that are just creating havoc both for shellfish and also probably for finfish and other aquatic life in the whole environment.

Amy: Yep, definitely. You know, like there was a period of time maybe 15 years ago or so where people were saying that, you know, we couldn't be called Cape Cod anymore because all the cod had moved north. Um, and we now see triggerfish here. 

Kevin: No kidding. 

Amy: Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so, you know, you do see kind of a shift, um, with the, the sort of change [00:12:00] in seal populations. We used to see seal mostly just in the winter months and now they're, they're year round present on both sides of this town. 

Kevin: And you have a lot of sharks here as well, right? 

Amy: We do, yeah. 

Kevin: I saw something about, it was a great sign. It said, “There are sharks in these waters. Sharks like to feed on the seals. Don't swim around the seals.” I thought 

Amy: Don't act like a seal. 

Kevin: Don't act like a seal. 

Amy: Don't dress like a seal. 

Kevin: Words to live by. 

Amy: Yes. Yep. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. We have one of the largest populations of North Atlantic Great Whites present here. Um, and a very rigorous tagging program run through the White Shark Conservancy and Greg Skomal from DMF.

Kevin: So do you ever have to deal with Shark presences on public beaches or when people are in the water, does that fall into any responsibilities that you have in terms of warning, 

Amy: Yep, so when we're in season, um, there's protocols around when a seal is spotted and similar to yanking people out of the water for a certain amount of time when you hear lightning - sorry, when you hear thunder off in the [00:13:00] distance, um, you will remove people from the water if the seals are close to shore. Um, we have people that will report sightings of great whites, um, and that between natural resources and Harbormaster staff will go out and try to confirm whether it's an actual sighting. Um, and we also maintain the shark buoys, uh, that will ping on the sharks that are tagged in Cape Cod Bay outside of Sandy Neck. 

Kevin: I didn't even realize they had such a thing, but it makes such good sense. 

Amy: There's an app where you can actually follow whenever a tagged shark is pinged, it'll show you where and when, and if it's an identified shark, what, you know, what its name is.

Kevin: Okay, I'm going to find that app and I'm going to include it in the show notes because that's really cool. 

Amy: It is, yeah, it's very cool. 

Kevin: I don't want to dwell too much on sharks, but have you ever had any shark attacks or incidents here, um, since you've been constable? 

Amy: No, no, so I've been with the town for, this is my 18th year and we have not had any shark attacks in this town. [00:14:00] Um, we did have a eight foot-ish shark, um, wash up on the 4th of July on Sandy Neck beach deceased two years ago that we collected and stored in a cooler so it could get an ecropsy, but that's, that's about as exciting as, as it's gotten so far. 

Kevin: Yeah. I think that the chances of getting hit by the lightning behind that thunder you mentioned a minute ago are probably greater than getting attacked by a shark -- unless you're pretending to be a seal. So how do you become a constable? 

Amy: So it's all started for me, oddly, when I was seven and I saw Jaws for the first time. And I became obsessed with everything Great White Shark, Ocean, Jacques Cousteau, um, and decided that I wanted to pursue a degree in marine biology and unlike a lot of children that kind of change, what they want to do as they get older. I did not. 

So I pursued a bachelor's in marine bio. I graduated from UMass Dartmouth in 2003 and [00:15:00] then did a couple of odd jobs between, you know, where you're trying to figure out yourself and find out what your place is with a degree like that. Cause it's kind of a niche degree, unless you want to take it to a master's, which I did not.

And so, um, in 2006, I started working for the town of Barnstable as a seasonal shellfish technician's assistant. So I was the one doing the aquaculture in this town for our municipal program for three years. And then in 2009, I became a natural resource officer, under the tutelage of then shellfish constable, Doug Cowett.

Um, in 2015, he, developed pancreatic cancer and over the next two years while he was fighting a very valiant fight against that he sort of trained me to become the shellfish constable, which at the time was just an appointment. It wasn't even you know, a position really. And then in 2019 the town created a Senior Natural [00:16:00] Resource Officer position that requires that person to also be the shellfish constable 

Kevin: And so today, is it an elected position or is it still an appointment?

Amy: So it's a, it's a three year appointment, so you get appointed as shellfish constable just like I get appointed as a special police officer for purposes of enforcing environmental laws. Um, but the position itself. Um, is a, is a union position. At least in this town. Like I said, it varies greatly from town to town. 

Kevin: And you're the first female, constable in the history of this town, is that right? 

Amy: Yes. In the history of this town. Yes. I don't know about, in the history of like the state. Um, Might have been on Cape, but not 100 percent sure. And now females are, are taking over shellfish constables.

Kevin: Are they really? 

Amy: They are. Yeah. 

Kevin: Oh, that's fascinating. 

Amy: A number of years ago, um, Edible Cape Cod did a whole article on female constables because there were like five of us on Cape Cod at the time. 

Kevin: Is there a reason for that? Do you think, do you find that maybe you're [00:17:00] more drawn to this kind of enforcement thing, or is it just that the world is growing up and there's just greater equity and inclusion and that sort of thing?

Amy: I would say it's definitely that the world is changing, um, and no offense to the other sex, but females are very good multitaskers. 

Kevin: And we definitely are not. I can attest to that. 

Amy: In positions like this, you really need to be able to roll with punches and to go through changes very constantly, and be able to manage all of those things. And I think in certain positions, females just, you know, they excel at that. 

Kevin: Yeah, right. So now who do you report to? What is the structure? 

Amy: The structure, yes. So if you start at the very top of the hierarchy, you have the Town Council. And then they're sort of similar to selectboards or selectmen in other, you know, cities and towns. And then there's the Town Manager who reports to the Town Council. And then there's the head of our department, the Director of Marine Environmental Affairs, who [00:18:00] reports to the Town Manager. And then in, and underneath him are the division managers, the Natural Resources Division Director, who I report to directly. So it's, it's definitely a hierarchy. It's government. 

Kevin: It's government. That's right. And do you interface with the Coast Guard? I mean, I see on your uniform, it says Barnstable Police, and then -- it's actually really cool; I love your little badges. They're very 

Amy: My patchwork. 

Kevin: Yeah, exactly. But do you interface with the local police and the Coast Guard?

Amy: Yeah. So, um, if people find bones on a beach and they can't identify them and the police can't identify them, then we work with the police on that. Um, we also in this department work with animal control, um, wildlife issues. Violations in conservation areas. So there's, interfacing with the police department there. Uh, Coast Guard, for me specifically, I would say the Harbormaster Division works more often with the Coast Guard in terms of like boats in distress or, you know, if there's boat accidents or anything like [00:19:00] that. Our interfacing with them more often is I'm in a 13 foot skiff babysitting a right whale and need you to get here so you can help keep people away from it.

Kevin: Those kayakers trying to get up close and personal. 

Amy: Yep, so we're, we're basically the babysitters for endangered and threatened animals. Um, while we wait for the Coast Guard to get there. 

Kevin: I love the fact that this is something that you've been interested in your whole life. I always wanted to be that kid on Flipper, I think his name was Sandy, who could jump in the little skiff and take off and chase dolphins. And it's like, wow, what a great world. You actually are that kid. 

Amy: Yes. Yeah. There's no shortage of people that get a little jealous over the amount of toys I get to play with at work.

Kevin: Yeah. What's your favorite toy? 

Amy: Um, so we have a 19 foot Guardian, that we take out for most of our patrols, that we use for our eelgrass monitoring, and that boat's definitely my favorite. you know, I have paddle boards and kayaks at home because boats are very costly. So having a nice boat that you get to hop on at work to do [00:20:00] patrols and to, you know, Just look at the general changes to the environment, um, you know, spotting osprey nests on right now, people's stocks and boats that they put in too early is just, it's great fun.

Kevin: Are there regulations that you've also enforced with regard to like osprey and other birds of prey around here, Oh yeah. 

Amy: Yeah. I mean, anything wildlife, you know, falls under our, our purview. So we have, um, over the past 40 years really seen a resurgence of osprey locally. And so we, in this town, because we have so many embayments, there's around 110 miles of shoreline in this town.

If you add all the little tiny pieces up, um, we have seen Especially in the past decade, just osprey nests on chimneys, osprey nests on utility poles, osprey nests on docks and on boats, um, and we keep an eye on those nests, and once there's an egg in there, their federal protections kick in and Yep. So you try to reach [00:21:00] out to people ahead of time to let them know that this is happening, but because we're a seasonal community, it's often you don't get a homeowner and you don't know who their property manager is. And so if they don't stay on top of it themselves and miss that opportunity, then, you know, like, yeah, you're stuck with an Osprey family on your boat and your boat sits there. 

Kevin: And you can't take it out the whole season. It's like, Oh, gee, what is that on top of the bimini? Oh, that's an Osprey. Yes. Guess what, we're not doing all season long.

Amy: Yeah. 

Kevin: So everybody needs their own little Osprey cam sort of thing if they have a boat that they keep, 

Amy: Or just, don't jump the gun. You know, wait until like the beginning of May to put in your boat. 

Kevin: 

Amy: You know, I know it turns into a mad rush because then people want to get it done before Memorial Day. But if you put it in too early and just it and forget it, then you may have nothing fun to play on. 

Kevin: Well, it's so funny you mentioned putting in because there are so many different videos and TikTok and YouTube that are just people who I think set up a camera on a tripod at a [00:22:00] municipal boat ramp and just record the people trying miserably to put their boats in the water and get them out of the water. Oh yeah. Do you have to deal with that sort of thing from time to time as well? 

Amy: So luckily we have a dedicated staff that sort of run those boat ramps and they're the ones that have to deal with that chaos. But because a lot of those boat ramps that are used by, you know, novice boaters, people who have like rented a boat for the day, people who are trying to get their boat in for the season, and people who are trying to go out to work a tide, conflict happens.Yeah. 

Kevin: Yeah, I can see the, the pleasure boater, who's never done this before is in front of a water person who needs to get out there and work. 

Amy: Yep. And you're at a state boat ramp, so you can't give, preference to one person over another. So yeah, we do deal with that. 

Kevin: Describe to me, what a, a typical day for you would be doing what you do.  I'm trying to picture -- are you boarding boats? I mean, 

Amy: I love that question because, so we, we do. Um, we largely refer [00:23:00] to part of, part of our job is, is strictly enforcement, you know, we are the people who are making sure that regulations are being upheld and followed so as to best protect public health when people are marketing, live animals for sale. But we also do the other portion of our job that we affectionately refer to as outdoor chores. Um, so, you know, it's, it's maintenance of herring runs, it's cleaning up of local landings, it's, um, dealing with wildlife calls, it's monitoring our plover populations, which are popping out eggs right now.

Um, and so you have a list. kind of things that you know you need to do, you know, like our schedules revolve around the tides, you know, about two hours on either end of dead low, we're patrolling, then you have a list of other things to do. And you very quickly crumpled that list out and throw it out the window because you just never know what else is going to pull you, you know, in a different direction.

But basically, [00:24:00] we come in, um, either a half hour to an hour before sunrise if it's an early morning tide and we're scheduled to, you know, an hour after, hour and a half after sunset if it's late tide and outside of around the tide where you may be on a boat, you may be on foot. We, draw straws to see who covers each area during the day. Um, and then there's just the rest of the stuff that you hope you can get to, but you know, if, if a dog gets hit by a car and animal control is busy, you know, you have to be the ambulance. Um, so there's, yeah. 

Kevin: So there is no such thing as a typical day. 

Amy: There is no typical day, no. 

Kevin: I've read about in, for example, the Chesapeake Bay, some of the old time watermen that are dredging for oysters or other shellfish, and they complain about how enforcement will board them and literally, you know, take apart the boat looking in the bilge to see if they have extra things that are beyond limits and stuff. Do you find a need [00:25:00] to board other boats very often? 

Amy: No, I will say, that largely happens with marine patrol units for state environmental police, um, on a local level, we're only boarding you if we think there's some massive, like, safety violation occurring, in terms of, you know, your minimum requirements for gear, your human waste bucket, you don't have an MSD, those sorts of things, but very, very rarely, um, it's more, I mean, we're boots on the ground every single day people expect to see us and people know that when they see us that will affect a compliance check in whatever capacity makes sense for the situation at hand. Um, and unless I have a reason to believe that somebody is doing something wrong, I don't have any reason to. board their vessel and look in their bilge. 

Kevin: Have you ever had any situations where you come across a particularly aggressive person or somebody who's really resisting what you're trying to do? [00:26:00] And how do you, how do you deal with that? 

Amy: Yeah, so you, you definitely run into situations where people don't want to follow the rules, don't understand the rules, don't think the rules should apply to them. Um, and calm, cool, collected is the way, you know, you have to really roll with people. Um, having the background information for why, you know, the rationale behind enforcement I think is an extremely large piece.

There are some people that are just completely belligerent and you're not going to get on the inside of them no matter what, and for that we have citations. Um, you know, when education doesn't work, when you can't get somebody to understand and become invested in why regulation is in place, then you go to citation, but I mean, 98 percent of the time, you're able to get on the other side of that person and make them understand. Like, um, I want you to backfill your holes after you dig your softshell clams so you don't leave behind a pool of just kind of not tacky enough to catch a set or to be regarded [00:27:00] for future generations of softshell clams, pit. That also somebody could fall in, so it's a safety hazard, you know. So those types of things. 

Kevin: And I imagine most people are pretty cooperative, but it, it must take a lot of patience. 

Amy: It does. Yeah. I mean, we have in this town a little over 3, 000 people in our recreational fishery. Um, and they tend to be the most feral of the shellfish cats that we manage.

Kevin: Why do you think that is? 

Amy: Well, the state owns the shellfishery, you know, even though the town manages it. And as such, you have to make a permit available to any member of the Commonwealth should they want to pursue one. So we have people that will come from inland that want to go shellfishing, they get a permit and they have absolutely no idea what they're doing.

And we also have, a lot of different cultures. In the state of Massachusetts. So we run up against like language, um, boundaries on occasion, cultural boundaries, um, you know, lack of understanding what transfer of permit means when it's a family permit.

Um, those types of things. So it does take a lot of education on [00:28:00] why you shouldn't be using, you know, a shovel or a pitchfork to do your digging.so yeah, it is, it is a constant education, but the more often you're out there and the more often people assume. that there's a likelihood that they'll get checked, the more likely they are to behave.

Kevin: Is there anything beyond a citation? Like, do you carry handcuffs as well as a citation book? Do you ever have to arrest? 

Amy: So technically shellfish violations by state law are arrestable offenses. I don't think that the town of Barnstable has arrested anybody for shellfish offenses it's probably the mid-seventies. The focus largely over the years has changed, you know, back in the day, or at least from what I hear from people that are now cresting retirement and have been around longer than me is like, if you looked at people the wrong way back in the day, you'd get a citation.

And it just, you know, when we went to reserve, um, intermittent police academy, to kind of learn how to conduct ourselves as, officers, as constables, as deputy constables, in relation to like, what's reasonable. You definitely lean [00:29:00] more education. there's no reason to heighten things to that degree unless there's some massive violation of public health at stake and you have a person who's just not willing to cooperate. But then in that case, we would interface with the police department. I don't carry around handcuffs. And we don't carry. 

Kevin: You're not carrying any weapons, right? 

Amy: No. 

Kevin: You're really there more as a friend and a helper than you are as a like a hardcore enforcement sort of thing.

Amy: Exactly. 

Kevin: Do you have like people here who you know, it's like, “Oh, there's that guy again out there and we know he's up to no good because he's always up to no good.”

Amy: We call those the frequent offenders. 

Kevin: The frequent offenders. Yes. 

Amy: Yeah. And it can be humans. It can be, you know, the same squirrel that gets into the, the attic in town hall, um, but it can also be human. Um, we do see that recreationally a lot, um, and for that reason, we over the past few years created a regulation that when citations and verbal warnings don't work, we can suspend your permit for a period of time. And so [00:30:00] far, we've done that three times this year. And those frequent offenders have, officially kind of been put on blast and are, have been much more respectful to the fishery on their return.

Kevin: Do you find that people often are violating regulations that are different than a town next door and they don't know that they're in your territory versus some other territory? Or is it more well defined so people kind of know where they are?

Amy: It's pretty well defined. Um, the town lines are well defined, um, even though we're unique. In Barnstable and have villages, there's, there's no change in regulation from one village to another in terms of shellfish regulations. So we don't, I don't really see, other than people sort of assuming that a permit for one town should cover them for other towns and then explaining to them that that's not how that works. Um, but I don't often, I don't think I've ever encountered anybody shellfishing in my town with a different permit for another town thinking they were in that town. 

Kevin: Are there tensions between [00:31:00] people involved in more kind of modern techniques of aquaculture like floating gear and that sort of thing versus people, picking shells off the bottom or dredging or anything like that?

Amy: no, because when an aquaculture license is issued for somebody to do either, you know, off bottom or, or floating aquaculture, They have to meet requirements as determined by the state to show that that area is barren, so it wouldn't be competitive with wild harvest. So you're not going to have an aquaculture area that's licensed without it already having been a barren area. And while they may, you know, catch sets of things from time to time, once that area is licensed as aquaculture it's removed from the recreational and from the wild fisheries. So there's no, no overlap. There are occasions where we see collaboration, um, actually between growers who will seek out a specific wild harvester because they need like a bed of random quahogs that showed up cleaned [00:32:00] up before they can plant whatever it is that they want to plant there. So they'll actually contract wild harvesters from time to time to have them do work On their sites to help their farm. 

Kevin: Is there a lot of dredging and what I could consider kind of more traditional forms of, of shellfishing here? 

Amy: So we have, um, largely hand harvest. We allow hydraulic pumping of soft shell clams, but only on the South side of town, not on the North side because municipal Harbor isn't.

is an ACEC, an Area of Critical Environmental Concern, so it's not going to fly out there. And we allow use of dry drag for Quahogging. 

Kevin: What is dry drag? 

Amy: So it's effectively like using the boat to tow your drag rather than having hydraulics involved. Once you have hydraulics involved, then you need conservation commission approval, you may need state approval, and it becomes a much more contentious issue among Sort of the people who see it from their backyards. and so the dry dragging where it really is just taking the back breaking of [00:33:00] bull raking and jerk raking off of your body and putting it on your vessel. We allow that, but only in months where it's not going to cause conflict with, Boating season and recreational users of the waterfront, so it's it's winter based 

Kevin: And then there's a lot of farms around here at least it appears that way where there's more modern techniques Floating gear and that sort of thing. Do you ever get issues with? Neighbors complaining about the not in my backyard syndrome. 

Amy: We do. Yes. Yeah Um, it needs to be like every decade or so, but I will say, you know During and post pandemic, there are a lot of people who have come from out of state and purchased shoreline properties and don't have any type of personal connection to our local blue economy, and it does cause conflict.

Kevin: In Washington state, there are periods of time where beaches are open to recreational clamming, oystering, and basically picking off the bottom or off the beach. [00:34:00] And, in the case of oysters, there's a requirement that you have to shuck the oysters on site where you got them, you have to return the shells to those waters. You can't take the oysters in their shell away. Do you have anything like that, that you have to enforce? 

Amy: We have the exact opposite of that. 

Kevin: No kidding. 

Amy: We have a prohibition on shucking before you leave. Then you could be just eating them, you know, while you're shellfishing and getting more than you're allowed to. We don't have a wild population, really, that would be recreationally accessible, for oysters in this town. So we call it a Put And Take fishery. What we propagate is what people get recreationally every year.

We don't even have a wild harvest. season for oysters at all. So there's no commercial harvest. It's all either grown specifically for the recreational fishery or it is grown by aquaculturists for, you know, their own profit for their own farm. And so, yeah, we, um, encourage people to drop their shells in our recycle bins. We have shell [00:35:00] recycle bins at numerous locations and we have a couple of piles at our local transfer station of those shells. And one pile, we will age for at least a year. A year. And then once that's aged, we'll start a second pile that will age for at least a year. And the shells from that already aged pile, we will use in our culture bags for our remote set that we get from the hatchery every year.

Kevin: Do you do much with shellfish restoration in some of the larger scale projects like the billion-oyster Project in New York and that sort of thing? 

Amy: We do not. We know for a fact that we have sort of endemic strains of Dermo, um, MSX. Um, JOD will pop up every once in a while, in the bays that would benefit most from like reefs or whatever type of restoration.

So because we need those animals to go in and then go out when they're legal size because we don't want to inadvertently create a process where allowing oysters to remain for too long and then they [00:36:00] become a biosecurity hazard that could inadvertently take down the rest of the private aquaculture we co exist with, not, not even interested in going there. So everything that we do, um, you know, quahogs, we can, we can proliferate, you know, we grow between three and four million of them a year. 

Kevin: Are quahogs the biggest of the shellfish industry here? 

Amy: Um, I want to say oysters have taken over. Um, I know like between Duxbury, Wellfleet and Barnstable, um, we tend to be the number one through three producers of both in the state every year. 

Kevin: So one of the things that you mentioned before we started, which I find Somehow remarkable is that you're the shellfish constable who's allergic to shellfish. 

Amy: Yeah. There's three of us on Cape actually. 

Kevin: No kidding. 

Amy: That are shellfish constables that are allergic to shellfish. Yeah. So it's just kind of one of those things where you don't eat them. Um, I know that if my hands are exposed to meats for too long, they'll get [00:37:00] puffy. So. But yeah, it's not. It's not anything that I carry up in EpiPen. 

Kevin: I was going to ask, is that like required equipment? 

Amy: Best management practices, knowing your job and knowing what you can and can't do, and trying not to get yourself contaminated. When you confiscate a catch from a recreational person, especially if they've been like, you know, enjoying a few on the beach that day, oh, you're just going to take those home. Like, nope, I'm like the last person you have to worry about doing that. 

Kevin: Tell me a little bit more about the propagation activities that you guys are involved in and, educational activities fall within that?

Amy: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So we have a propagation program. The state mandates that in any coastal community where a shell fishery is present that a town attempt to do municipal propagation. Um, my town is very lucky. We have a very healthy population. The budget for shellfish, um, a number of years ago, the previous town manager had releasing the benefit to propagation and dedicates a hundred thousand dollars every year for shell stock. It doesn't cover gear. It doesn't cover labor. It doesn't cover any of those [00:38:00] things, but we can spend a hundred thousand dollars on live animals to grow and to plant, to bolster natural populations and help support a recreational and commercial fishery, um, also support their eco services for the environment. And so we grow, single oysters and remote set oysters. Um, we kind of, you know, hedge our bets and go through a couple of different, local growers and also purchased from a hatchery that's on Cape Cod. And then our Quahogs we buy from the hatchery and we also send our own spawning stock out to, um, Ascungas, Maine to be spawned and then sent back to us as seed that we plant. So we're planting our own brood stock as well as cultured stock. 

Kevin: So in addition to enforcing laws and making sure that everybody's doing the right thing, you're basically farmers as well. 

Amy: Sure, but the enforcement staff that we have here is more largely enforcement focused. We have our own, because of our healthy budget and ambitious numbers, our own shellfish [00:39:00] propagation team, so our shellfish biologist and our shellfish technician, and then we also have up to three seasonal laborers that help us.

Kevin: And you have a, a lot of educational outreach also, is that right? 

Amy: We do. So we'll do, um, shellfish talks if like an organization would like us to come visit and sort of explain what the town does, why we do it, why we feel that it's important. and that kind of creates the outreach to a community that would otherwise not necessarily be engaged with shellfishing. We also offer a clamming class for kids. Every year. 

Kevin: Really? 

Amy: Yeah, to get the little kiddos out there learning how to dig quahogs and… 

Kevin: Not to use pitchforks and that sort of thing.

Amy: Yeah, best management practices, just learning to harvest from the land, having a different spin on having fun at the beach. Um, and we do learn to shellfish classes that are open just to, you know, the general public, to people who are are visiting and maybe want to give it a try, um, or to people who are like, you know, I really want to know what this is all about before I commit to purchasing a permit.

Kevin: The peripheral benefit is [00:40:00] you're teaching people to appreciate and actually love the environment and they therefore will take better care of it as they grow up. 

Amy: That is the hope, yeah. And that they get to bring your food home directly from that environment.

Kevin: It always tastes better that way, I think. 

Amy: I would assume it does. 

Kevin: What would you say is the biggest challenge in your job for you? 

Amy: Ooh, that is a big question. Um, I think balancing the wants of special needs. specific user groups with the broader community is probably one of the biggest challenges that you run up against because, you know, you have reviews for dock and pier applications where shellfish habitat is involved in trying to promote saving that environment while still understanding that people have a right to, apply for these types of structures on their property. Um. In just trying to balance the recreational commercial relationships, because depending on who you ask, one or the other is just the worst. [00:41:00] Um, and yeah, I mean, just getting people to take a step back from the, um, you know, this is me and this is what I want, but, you know, Just because you have a turkey in your backyard doesn't mean that the turkey can't be there because it's your yard, right? It's the turkeys yard too. So kind of bridging those gaps across all of the different sort of Pieces of this position. Mm hmm. I would say it's probably the most challenging thing.

Kevin: Do you have a lot of paperwork to you have to do as well Or is it mostly boots on the ground ;ike you said?

Amy: The longer I stay here the more paperwork is involved.

Kevin: Really? 

Amy: Yeah. But I think that's kind of, you know, the way it goes in a lot of positions. But I'm very lucky, you know, I'm, I, I, I feel for management because they, they are the people who were the me back in the day. And they, they don't get to spend a lot of time outside anymore. They are largely like, you know, in the office, crunching the numbers, doing the papers, getting the permits that allow us [00:42:00] to do the things that we do. Um, I still get a lot of time. 

Kevin: Although I imagine on those cold rainy days or in the middle of the winter when you're out on the boat or walking a beach, it's not as enjoyable as it is on a day like today. 

Amy: You know, they, they clothe us very well. 

Kevin: Yeah. Right. 

Amy: I mean, you can pretty much subsist in whatever and the outdoor chores wait for no one and the tide waits for no man. So you just got to do it. 

Kevin: So I know that like in some areas in the winter, they have super, super high or super, super low tides. Do those require different activities that you have to do when the tide is really, really far out? It's like, okay, this is our chance to do something. 

Amy: Um, yeah, well, in the wintertime, not so much because we're not moving around stock or planting anything, you want, like what you want is for those tides to happen when they never do in like August, September, October, when you're planting everything.

Um, because we do a lot of subtitle planting, [00:43:00] especially of our baby shellfish, because if you have a freeze, they don't dig down very far. And if they're exposed for a long period of time, they'll just perish. So in the best interest of time, of keeping them alive. A lot of our planting we do subtidally. Um, so having those nice minus tides when you can grab them is great.

I would say like the opportunity for people recreationally on those massive tides over the winter is to target the ones that fall closer to, you know, half hour before sunrise and sunset. Cause those are legal shellfishing hours unless you're a tribal member. Um, yeah, you can't shellfish in the middle of the night. It's not good for public health. 

Kevin: Yeah. Makes kind of sense to me. 

Amy: It's not good for anybody's health. Yeah. It's kind of dangerous. Yeah. Um, so finding those minus tides, they give you access to areas that you otherwise wouldn't have access to. I mean, we have a really great set of, uh, razor clams in Barnesville Harbor that in the recent handful of years have really picked up a lot of recreational interest and the places that people can walk to on every tide and harvest them.

They've been harvested and [00:44:00] we're waiting for new sets there, so they'll target, they'll target minus tides to, you know, walk out to flats that you just can't get to on any other type of tide, but we always caution people when they do that to pay attention to the other end of the tide because we don't want to have to launch a boat to come rescue you because you can't get back to where you started.

Kevin: And that tide can come rolling in pretty quickly. 

Amy: It certainly can. On. Especially on the Cape Cod Bay side of our town, you have between a 9 and 12 foot tidal difference. It tends to only be about a 3 foot tidal difference on the south side of town, so. 

Kevin: Yeah, 9 and 12 foot if you're out there and you don't time it right.

Amy: It's 

a big difference. Yeah. A lot of trouble. 

Kevin: What do you wish people were more aware of that would make your job easier or just would better the overall shellfish business? 

Amy: I wish people were more aware of their own actions and how their singular actions can have a cumulative effect on the local environment. So I feel like people [00:45:00] oftentimes look at problems like water quality or habitat degradation, don't equate it to like, you're, you know, you've got a membership at a golf course that has the greenest grass in town. So you know, those kinds of things like making more conscious decisions in what you do day to day, uh, can, can actually make a difference. I think people do. I don't recognize that very much anymore. 

Kevin: Is it easy for people to find out what kinds of rules and regs they have to comply with if they're aware enough to think about that? 

Amy: Everything's online. Um, I mean, we, if you come in to purchase your shellfish permit, you get a copy of our regulations in hand that day. Um, when you apply for a shellfish permit through our town, you have to, um, acknowledge that you're responsible for learning our regulations and get a link directly to them on our town website. We have um, frequently asked questions printouts, um, we post. Other towns on Cape make fun of me for the amount of posting we do, but we do a lot of posting, um, to try to give people every single possible [00:46:00] avenue to educate themselves before they step foot on that shoreline. 

Kevin: What for you is the best part of your job? 

Amy: Yeah, I mean, I don't know That's such a hard question to answer because there's just so many so many different facets to this position. It's not even like shellfish specific, but I'd say the wildlife encounters cause we're essentially first responders for injured wildlife. And that just never ceases to terrify me, amaze me, give me opportunities to come in contact with animals that, like, nobody ever, nobody else ever gets to, so. I'd say that's the most, like, redeeming piece of it and probably my favorite and most scary part of my day. 

And yeah, if you were to ask, like, what's my least favorite thing, um, logging incident reports, um, they're very time consuming. Writing citations, like, if people would just follow the rules or at least be amenable, it just takes up so much time and [00:47:00] effort. and you know, they're all non criminal citations, depending on what magistrate you get, if they're not, um, environmentally educated. They don't necessarily understand why I'm so upset that somebody came in with a half a basket of quahog seeds. It ends up all that time and, and people get a slap on their wrist and don't have to pay the fine. So that piece of it can be very, can be very frustrating. Just having like, you know, you know, the, the rationale behind finally committing to, to issuing that citation not be understood. Um, and just feeling like all that time is just wasted.

Kevin: Do you have much of large marine mammals that will die and wash up on the beach and you have to then remove them? 

Amy: Yeah, so more often than not, they wind up in places that are not town owned properties. In this town it tends to be more seals, dolphins, sea turtles, um, and at that point, um, they You know, once they've been [00:48:00] sampled from by, you know, stranding network, whoever is responding on the federal level, it becomes a responsibility of the property owner to dispose of it should they want to if that federal organization is not taking the physical body.

 We did have a relatively large, humpback whale washed up on Sandy Neck maybe six or seven years ago. That they did, you know, Um, they did remove, um, after they had to, you know, I think they had to cut it up into pieces. It was big. Um, we do remove those types of animals from public places, but only after they've been sampled from. And we do assist, um, where possible with strandings and entanglements. Should those federal entities need our assistance? 

Kevin: That's got to be very dangerous at times. It's a live animal. 

Amy: Yeah, which is why there are people who are federally permitted to do that. Not only are they protected species, but they are very large. Animals. Yeah, And they're wild, you know, so you never know, how they're going to react any more than you know how, [00:49:00] a squirrel is going to react when you try to get it out of someone's kitchen, 

Kevin: I can only imagine what it must be like to have one of those beautiful Cape Cod houses with the cedar shake siding and the lawn going down to the water and you wake up one morning and there's a 32 ton whale. In your yard. 

Amy: Yeah. 

Kevin: Dead. 

Amy: Yep. And then, and then you call us and we say like, you know, we'll let the authorities know, but we're not going to remove it… Doesn't go well…. 

Kevin: No. Oh, and by the way, you also can't like start making soap out of whale blubber.

Amy: No. Yeah. You can't touch it. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Kevin: And it's, uh, it's going to be 85 today. 

Amy: But yeah, you know, buyer beware if you buy a shorefront property. Like, animals can wash up on it. 

Kevin: That's true. 

Amy: It happens. 

Kevin: I mean, it's the good side of the problem, I suppose, when it gets right down to it.  So, you've been doing this now did you say 18 years?

Amy: Yep. 

Kevin: Where do you hope to go from here, or do you want to just continue doing what you're doing? 

Amy: I think I'm just going to [00:50:00] continue doing what I'm doing. Um, you talk to anybody who knows me. I'm not management material. I have no problem acknowledging that. I think I'm best suited to be where I'm at and doing what I'm doing. And, you know, I think, um, doing a solid for the environment in the town that I grew up in as an adult is very meaningful to me. I'm lucky enough to have bought a house here in 2007 when they were still affordable. 

Kevin: Right. 

Amy: Um, and, um, Sorry to all the parents out there, but I'm lucky enough to not have spawned, so I don't have those to pay for, um, so I can, I can continue to exist, on Cape Cod doing this position until I retire, um, which I think is probably what I'll end up doing. You know what I mean? There's always like a bigger, better deal out there, but I just, I really love what I do here and I, I really am invested in it, you know? Heart and soul. 

Kevin: Well, you're doing an [00:51:00] important job in one of the most beautiful places, certainly in the East Coast, if not all of the United States, and it's your home. So yeah, it kind of doesn't get much better than that. 

Amy: Exactly. Right. Where would you want to go from there? 

Kevin: Right. I agree. 

Amy: It's like you've already walked off into the sunset.

Kevin: Yeah, that's right. 

Amy: Yeah. 

Kevin: Well, Ranger Amy, I can't thank you enough for all the time you've given me. I'm a little jealous. I got to say, you have like a really cool job and I kind of wish I did something like that, but I appreciate what you and the others do. It's so important. 

Amy: Thank you so much. Thank you for taking interest in it because you know, it's we're kind of a behind the scenes people and not a lot of people understand, you know. The amount of things we do. So thank you for taking the time. 

Kevin: Thanks again. 

Amy: You're welcome. 

Kevin: Take care. 

Well, that's it for this episode of OYSTER-ology. Thanks to my guest, Amy Croteau. As always, show notes can be found on this episode's page. And if you enjoyed it, please rate or review us on whatever podcast platform you listen to.

I'm your host, Kevin Cox. Join us next time [00:52:00] when we pry open the shell of another interesting OYSTER-ology topic.

 bubbles.