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The Sound School Inter-District Marine Education Program Newsletter
Habitat Information for Fishers and Fishery Area Managers
Understanding Science Through History

January 2014
The Sound School
IMEP #9

The Historical Importance of Kelp Forests to Lobster Populations
The New England Hurricanes of 1938, 1954, 1955
Timothy Visel

Waves and Currents Keep Kelp/Cobblestone Habitats from failing as juvenile lobster refugia – a look at high energy reef ecological services. This article was part of a 2011 “Capstone Proposal titled “Can We Rebuild Our Lobster Fishery.”
On September 21, 1938 New England sustained one of the most destructive hurricanes in over a century (1815). A storm that moved at 60 miles per hour with winds of 90 miles per hour or more hit coastal regions. The destruction to shorelines life and property is now legendary. However one of the features of this storm is the energy it applied to coastal habitats. The role of such storms leaving markers in of core samples of coves and bays is now under review for habitat quality over time.
One of the most direct 1938 hurricane habitat impacts is from storm tides – surges of 14 to 18 feet along most of Connecticut’s coast (NOAA National Weather Service). The eye passed directly overhead New Haven around 4 pm with sustained winds over 110 mph.
After 1931 eelgrass which grew to enormous densities (1920-1930) wasted away from a density dependent fungal infection. It was a pandemic as eelgrass populations worldwide declined leaving along our coast elevated deposits of loose organic mucks or Sapropel. The increase of storms gradually washed these accumulations away mixing sand with long buried oyster shell. It was also getting cooler and warm air was now interacting with an energized polar jet stream – the beginning of a negative North Atlantic Oscillation.
By 1938 the storm surge from this September Hurricane “cleaned” out any remaining Sapropel muck deposits (personal communications J. Milton Jeffrey 1970s) and left cobblestones on many beachfronts. By the 1940s and 1950s a kelp/cobblestone habitat became established in high energy areas especially in the Guilford, Madison, and Clinton shores. Nothing however could prepare coastal residents for the 1954 and 1955 hurricane seasons. In this case multiple hurricanes occurred almost back to back. The 1954 hurricane season was the most destructive with Hurricane Carol hitting Long Island Sound August 31 and Edna on September 11, 1954. These storms were devastating west and east of New Haven. Not trying to minimize the severity of these storms the three New Haven Break waters held back much of the storm surges and waves. (In 1938, a 50 foot high wave hit the port community of Gloucester, Massachusetts). The coast of Connecticut has ports or coastal communities were built along “drowned” river valleys and as such the funnel shape directed much of the storm energy into the apex. Without the Breakwaters I suspect much of the New Haven Harbor western side would have been destroyed by Hurricane Carol in 1954 and the east side by Edna in 1954 or Diane in 1955. The breakwaters deflected this storm energy and scoured out vast areas of kelp/cobblestone habitats in front of them (personal observations Long Island Oyster Farm Vessels 1971 to 1973). These habitats according to oyster vessel Captains (Dan Daily personal communications 1975-78 ) said these “high energy” habitats contained thousands of “short” lobsters. These kelp/cobblestone areas were south of New Havens three breakwaters, adjacent to the granite blocks in areas of the greatest potential scouring and away from active oyster beds.
In the late 1960s especially after the winter ice left Long Island Sound the waters were often very clear. Visibility to 15 feet was not uncommon in Long Island Sound so anyone close to the shore in March and April would have no difficulty seeing the habitat value of structure – rocks, boulders or seawall rubble-for fish. In our area around rocks and granite reefs contained small kelp forests which grew among fields of cobble stones. The area in which I grew up in was Webster Point, Madison, a point of land created by Toms Creek at the westerly edge of Hammonasset State Beach. Its position as a headland after an indentation of the coast in which formed a one mile stretch of beach against higher ground called SeaView Beach, this area tended to suffer the most change during storms and movements of the creek exit which would change over time according to residents at the time (M. Brown, personal communications 1970s). Some of the largest changes occurred after the 1938 Hurricane which removed much of the coastal “shore” road between Seaview Beach and Webster Point; the remains of glacial cobblestones were left at the low tide line, and after strong coastal storms the remains of this coastal road and cobblestones could be clearly seen in March. By June or July however sand bars moved from offshore to the beachfront covering these cobbles and broken seawall pieces. One of the features that made Webster Point such a popular fishing location was the construction of two driven sheet pile steel and wood jetties that extended 200 feet out into Long Island Sound about 300 feet apart.
Between them was Tom’s Creek, which effectively together stabilized the creek’s mouth. These jetties consisted of the sheet pilings driven about 10 feet beyond the bottom and reinforced with a 12 inch diameter pilings opposite every 10 feet with thru bolts past a 8x12 pressure treated timber with 8x8 wood blocks. The pressure treated timbers made a narrow but sufficient walkway leading out to two higher terminal pilings. This put anglers out (including myself) from the beach and into a kelp cobblestone habitat. Years later that stability and Tom’s Creek had deflected the energy from waves and the jetty back wash kept these cobbles from being buried in sand. At low tide on clear days you could see this cobble stone bottom, and in patches kelp grew heavily on it, creating thick patches of kelp cobblestone habitat some 200 feet beyond the jetties. To the right of the western jetty was clear sand. After a few years it was easy to see that the best fishing especially for winter flounder as at the edge of kelp-cobblestones into the clear sand. Fishing too close to the jetty and you frequently caught a kelp hold fast the tough finger like structure that as its name implies holds the cobblestone with a firm grip. Many a time I snagged one of them believing just hooked a huge winter flounder only to pull in the kelp still attached to the cobble stone. At the lowest tides and calmest of waters you could easily see why winter flounder fishing so good at times the cobblestones were alive with activity, small mud and green crabs abounded in these areas, so it was a place to feed, and therefore a very productive fishing location. The shore areas away from the jetties had the usual sand bars and flat featureless bottoms with few crabs and often few fish. Even the metal jetty its self contained habitat features as artificial vertical reefs.
The inch thick metal plates formed like a flattened W to create an elongated ribbon of steel (Note 1). The sheets were joined in a knuckle connection similar to the connection on old steam train cars for the entire length as one sheet was driven into the next and so on to create a connection over the length of metal pilings. These indented sheets created a slight back current with each wave and small bait fish would tend to gather between them. When snapper blue fishing season occurred, this feature made this “artificial reef” assembly prove that it held small bait close to them especially silversides and this made for excellent snapper blue fishing. Conversations at the time soon showed that word of this reef aspect (Jetty) to provide great snapper blue fishing was well known and people would travel from Rhode Island, inland Connecticut and even New York to enter Hammonasset State Park, not for swimming or the beach, but the chance to snapper blue fish on the west Tom’s Creek “metal jetty.” It was that good. The jetties held this artificial reef habitat feature until they were encapsulated into a heavier granite groin in 1978 (see note 1 for description).
Winter flounder fishers would often seek out these breakwater or island structures and surrounding cobblestones habitat with kelp (oyster beds also) to fish for winter flounder. Often a hold fast would be ripped by a hook and the entire kelp frond would be hauled in. If you fished for winter flounder in coves, kelp/cobblestone was often outside of channels or by rocks which were the places (edges) to catch winter flounder. Many flounder fishers will recall snagging a kelp hold fast offshore and that is why – kelp cobblestone were created in a high energy habitat location. The shallow bays and coves did not contain much kelp as these areas tended to collect organic matter from land as they were areas of lower energy.
In time of cold conditions these offshore cobblestone bottoms were “clean” free of silt or organic matter. The jetties’ such as by those Tom’s Creek had during storms directed the reflected energy off them to clean the area and prevent the movement of sand bars on either side. The kelp/cobblestone patches lay to the west of the jetties into the prevailing mostly south westerly chop of late summer afternoons as a “shore breeze” would frequently develop. It would be a decades before the proximity of kelp/cobblestone would be associated with coastal energy. On a few occasions the water clarity allowed me at low tide to observe the kelp cobblestone patches also in back of Toms Rocks located offshore of Webster Point. Quahog clamming years later in back of Tom’s Rock would often yield a cobblestone with the kelp still attached. Winter flounder fishing was always good among these kelp cobblestone patches from Webster Point to the shore side of Toms Rock. A series of strong storms could end and did change depths of these cobble and sand bars (US Army Corps Study) and after strong storms alter them.

Note: See Beach Erosion Control Study, A Cooperative Study of Connecticut Area 2 Hammonasset River to East River, February 7, 1949. Corps of Engineers, US Army Office of Division Engineer, new England Division, Boston, Massachusetts-Tom’s Creek – Structure recommendations, two sheet pile training walls, 400 and 320 feet long, the latter to be a 210 foot extension on an existing sheet pile groin, stabilization of creek mouth (Tom’s) cost - 9,600 square feet steel sheet piling at $2.25 square foot $21,600.
Basic Agreement – A formal application dated 22 July 1947, from the State of Connecticut; acting through the Connecticut State Flood Control and Water Policy Commission, for a cooperative study of the problems of beach erosion and shore protection along the entire coast of Connecticut by the United States and the Connecticut State Flood Control and Water Policy Commission was approved by the Chief of Engineers, Department of the Army, 28 August 1947, in accordance with the authority conferred by the provision of Section 2 of River and Harbor Act approved 3 July 1930 and Public Law 166, 79th Congress, approved 31 July 1945.
General – The purpose of this study was to determine the most suitable methods of stabilizing and improving the shoreline between Hammonasset River and East River.
The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection has an excellent website – www.deepcoastalhazardouslibrary.ct.gov which has an extensive directory for this 1940s coastal erosion reports. It has a tremendous amount of history and a complete Army Corps of Engineers reports from the 1940s to present day can be found.
After storms, a cobble with a kelp frond would sometimes be washed up by Tom’s Creek, but the waves along the jetty seemed to break the sand bars that generally ran east to west in our area. The jetty also seemed to attract fish; each of the pilings had a crust of algae, barnacles, and at times small mussels circling each of them. Small fish and silversides ran up and down the sheet metal piles also loaded with barnacles (mussels also). Large blackfish (Tautog) would come up and bite off hunks of barnacles, or small mussels crushing them and spitting out shell fragments. It was amazing to watch this process which I did on many occasions.
Because fish seemed to be present many times as much as the open sand bars to the right and left, they (jetties) became popular fishing locations because you could catch fish. Even eels seemed to hang around the poles and by chance, I learned how important it (kelp cobblestone) was to very small lobsters.
Green crabs and small eels were both valuable as bait in the 1970s small eels for stripers but mostly green crabs for blackfish bait. As it was easier to set eel pots from the jetty than to walk hundreds of feet into Tom’s Creek, and battle biting insects which clung to every blade of marsh grass, which was to the east, and we used them to set small traps from the jetty frequently instead. Because the kelp cobblestones were close to the jetty, green crabs there were very dense and small eels also. It was a great place to set bait traps; the outflow of Tom’s Creek also was a great striped bass areas, especially on ebb tides so “floating” a small eel was very successful for catching them next to these jetties and an eel pot by the jetty was a good place to catch small eels. A similar homemade green crab trap often caught both eels and crabs amongst the kelp covered cobblestones next to these jetties. My father who built these metal crab and eel traps and did so out of standard width metal hardware cloth, a metal mesh rectangular weave sold locally. He preferred the smallest mesh 3/8 (three eighths) of an inch square, and wove circular traps with copper wire. (It made good soft shell clam wash baskets also) when baited these traps caught well both green crabs and small eels but if pulled very quickly caught sixth and seventh stage lobsters as well, dozens of them sometimes only an inch long. The smallest of lobsters however would be caught in an unusual way, at times, the usual crab bait, cracked mussels would be hard to get and time consuming, so at times, a can of fish cat food would be used; several triangular openings were made in the small can and thrown in the trap. The smallest lobsters were in the can and I discovered this by accident, a small trap, within the trap itself.
At first I thought of this as an accident, that small lobsters sought refuge from the waves or predators but when it happened several days in a row, I came to the conclusion that small lobsters preferred this, kelp cobblestone habitat. They had in fact had entered for the canned bait not by a chance for refuge but because this is where they lived. Several years went by and eventually a large supply of hermit crabs (caught while commercial lobstering offshore) reduced the need of setting crab traps for black fish bait. When Dr. Stanley Cobb guest lectured for Dr. Andreas Holmsen in 1977 during a University of Rhode Island Fisheries Resource Economic’s class about lobster habitat and lobster capacity, I listened very carefully. When Dr. Cobb stated that between hatching and the first appearance of “shorts” in commercial lobster traps scientists didn’t really know much about where lobsters lived then, I had an answer. After class, I shared my Connecticut experience with these small lobsters in the late 1960s that these lobsters lived in kelp/cobblestone high energy environments. I have since detailed this experience in a short paper about Lobster habitat carrying capacity for the Long Island Sound Study in 2009 titled, “Long Island Sound EPA Habitat Restoration Committee Guidelines Parts II, III, 23 pages.” 2
The kelp/cobblestone was very important to post stage 4 lobsters and that habitat type needed coastal energy to sustain it. Visible observations of small boulders to the west by East Wharf a town beach in Madison also found that beside the boulders the same kelp cobblestone bottoms, it is now thought that theses small boulders broke much of the wave energy and in doing so maintained small patches of kelp cobblestone. Small boulders even the size of refrigerators and smaller rocks were very effective in breaking wave energy and keeping kelp cobblestone habitats clean. These kelp beds were also very productive for catching adult lobsters as well.
A large patch of kelp cobblestone habitat was created over time in Madison by the placement of beach cobblestones once used to weight wooden lobster pots. Once “soaked” (pre 1980 most traps were metal and no longer needed lobster traps were wood not metal) and dumped overboard (when the pots absorbed water), between two existing natural reefs, Whale Rock then the east of East Warf and outer reef a ledge that is awash at low tide directly east of Tuxis Island. There for decades, Captain Dowd had dumped cobbles to make an manmade lobster ground as kelp cobblestones were known to be good lobstering places (Charles Beebe personal communication, 1969-70). In the late 1970s I would lobster over this created habitat. It held small and adult lobsters - in high numbers. The occasional trap with a cobble/kelp frond was worth the extra effort.
The cobbles held in place I feel because the cobble reef was between the two natural reefs. The practice of artificial reefs may be more widespread than just Madison as rotation of lobster traps were made every 4 to 6 weeks to avoid the wood eating marine worms. Lobster traps would need to be dried, and carrying the beach cobbles back to shore was just extra work. Over the years I too, would add my share of beach cobbles to this artificial reef and conversations with other lobster fishers at the time indicated that this has occurred along the coast. Many lobster fishers had created their own kelp beds.
What sustained this kelp/cobblestone habitat was energy. After the 1938 Hurricane and the Hurricanes of the 1950s and 1960s these storms had stripped sand from beaches leaving large areas of Madison’s shore now largely cobblestone (Charles “Bud” Schroeder, chairman of Madison Shellfish Committee, personal communication 1974-75).
The kelp/cobblestone habitat appears to have a direct storm and energy link. In times of warmth and few storms sand bars soon returned and covered cobblestone areas between Tom’s Rock and Sea View Beach in the 1980s. Low tide observations confirmed this decline while looking for areas to set lobster pots during this period.
Later in studies of lobster habitat preference would include the value of kelp cobblestone in our area now become fully validated as structure (such as rocks) was in places limited along this coast. The finding of just one new small boulder at low tide in clear water could yield dozens of adult lobsters over the summer. Every shallow water boulder had kelp cobblestone habitat around it, and potential nursery area for young lobsters, to hide from predators, find food and grow. In time, as these smallest of lobsters grew, they would leave the kelp cobblestone habitats no doubt, and move to the nearby reefs and crevices. I would catch them later lobstering as “shorts”.
In 1998, I would look again at the mouth of Tom’s Creek from a small boat, but the bottom conditions had changed.
In the twenty years since the old jetties had been covered with a granite blocks (1978), sand bars were now observed and the kelp cobblestone habitat was gone not doubt buried in sand. The gradual tapered edges of the groin now deflected the wave energy, as they were designed to do and did not have the sharp flat wave deflection of the previous sheet steel wall. Having fished them in strong storms (striped bass move to the beach front to feed them) and felt the whole metal jetty shake each wave as if it would topple over. Anyone who fished these metal pile jetties will recall the spray of water from the wood blocks going up along them as a big wave ran along side. They definitely had high energy role as they were first intended to break the energy at Webster Point.
That higher energy condition no longer existed and had I felt so also the increased “scour” which kept this kelp/cobblestone habitat viable. When the energy level declined (and also became “hot”), this habitat failed for lobsters, and other species perhaps not instantly, but between 1978 and 1998 in just two decades. I could not find any kelp/cobblestone. The jetties in a small way were an experiment for this high energy habitat type which was now covered in silt and sand in an increasingly hot period of warmer water temperatures and few strong storms. By the time of the huge lobster die-off in the fall of 1998, the cobblestone Madison beaches of 1938 were distant memories, so also was the kelp cobblestone habitats that lobsters in our area needed.
Although much current research focused upon the negative impacts of coastal energy upon natural resource values – very little has been done to talk about high energy habitats or the high energy events that frequently proceed them. The construction of the New Haven Breakwater system might be a great place to start. Manmade structures do have habitat benefits as well. For more information about the kelp/cobblestone or Southern New England Lobster Habitats contact The Sound School, Sue Weber at susan.weber@new-haven.k12.ct.us and ask for “Can We Rebuild Our Lobster Fishery – A Capstone Project Proposal, October 2012 – 33 pages or “Do Climate Factors Lead to Habitat Failures – The Case History of the Southern New England Lobster Fisheries Collapse of 1898 – 1905, 34 pages (NACE Conference Report Dec. 12 – 15 2012) or the Northern Lobster Fishery and Climate Change ISSP – Capstone Project Proposal – May 2012, 20 pages. All three reports are available from The Sound School.
The HIFFM IMEP Newsletter is possible by an Inter-District Cooperative Grant (Public Act 94 -1) and regional marine education bulletins can be obtained or accessed on the Adult Education and Outreach directory by accessing the Sound School website:
www.soundschool.com/publications%201.html.
For information about The Sound School website, publications, and / or alumni contacts, please contact Taylor Samuels at taylor.samuels@new-haven.k12.ct.us
The Sound School is a Regional High School Agriculture Science and Technology Center enrolling students from 23 participating Connecticut communities.
Program reports are available upon request. For more information about New Haven Environmental Monitoring Initiative for IMEP reports, please contact Susan Weber, The Sound School Adult Education and Outreach Program Coordinator, at susan.weber@new-haven.k12.ct.us.