Transect Magazine: Collaborative Science

Transect Magazine: Collaborative Science

This story originally appeared in the Summer 2026 edition of Transect.

Since its earliest days, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences has had a steady, strong partner in the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR). In fact, until 2012, the two organizations were next-door neighbors in adjoining facilities. Together, scientists at both institutions have developed molecular tools for identifying Pseudo-nitzschia, a type of algae that can produce a potent neurotoxin. They've amassed a baseline understanding of zooplankton communities around an offshore wind testing site. They've studied the physiology of larval lobsters coming into the fishery. They've worked to quantify the nutritional value of plankton that whales feed on - and so much more.

"We're advancing foundational science, but we also want to have a real impact," said Senior Research Scientist Nick Record. "With DMR, we're able to answer management questions and translate our research into solutions. Together, we're making sure our work has value to both everyday life and the broader scientific endeavor."

By combining DMR's community connections, long-term datasets, and management insight with Bigelow Laboratory's life sciences expertise and analytical prowess, this joint work has transformed understanding of the dynamic Gulf of Maine and contributed to more sustainable, science-based resource management.

"Our teams approach many of the same questions from different angles," said Jesica Waller, the director of DMR's Division for Biological Monitoring and Assessment who has unique insight having worked at both institutions. "Together, we can build a comprehensive understanding of the Gulf of Maine and what the future may hold for our commercial fisheries, aquaculture industry, and coastal communities."

ADDRESSING A TOXIC PROBLEM

Certain algae species produce harmful compounds that can concentrate in filter-feeding species like mussels. Saxitoxin, for example, is produced by a species of Alexandrium and can cause Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP), which can be fatal in humans. Joint efforts to understand the drivers of Alexandrium blooms and develop methods to monitor shellfish toxins have blossomed into one of the most fruitful collaborations between the two organizations.

"It's an area of long-standing scientific interest for all of us, and with the two labs 100 meters apart in those early days, it was a natural thing to work on together," said Steve Archer, senior research scientist and director of Bigelow Analytical Services (BAS).

DMR has long tracked the abundance of harmful algae species to ensure no shellfish harvesting occurs while toxin levels are high. Historically, they determined if shellfish were safe to consume by injecting extracts into mice that were then monitored to see if they got sick or died. That less-than-ideal method is still the norm in most states.

The agency began looking for alternatives after devastating shellfish closures in 2008 and 2009, explains Kohl Kanwit, the director of DMR's Bureau of Public Health and Aquaculture.

They partnered with Archer to implement an advanced chemical technique out of Canada called high-performance liquid chromatography, which can provide rapid, precise results, even at lower toxin concentrations, and doesn't rely on mice. In 2014, Bigelow Laboratory became the first lab in the country approved by the FDA to deploy it.

"It became apparent that we didn't have the staff capacity to consistently run the chemical method, whereas Bigelow could provide the expertise and staffing, especially when it comes to trouble shooting the equipment," Kanwit said. "This has proven to be a rich partnership that allows for finer-scale decision making and serves the industry well."

Today, DMR monitors coastal waters for spikes in harmful algal species, and then, based on those counts, collects and sends shellfish to Bigelow Laboratory for analysis. The BAS team tracks 12 different compounds in each sample. DMR is BAS's biggest client, Archer says, and the partnership has opened doors for countless research projects and analytical advances.

Despite how dangerous some of these toxins are, there have been no fatalities from PSP in Maine due to the effective monitoring program.

"This is a great example of a really effective collaboration between an independent research organization and government institution," Archer said.

MONITORING A CHANGING ECOSYSTEM

The shellfish toxin program is one of a number of projects that are helping monitor the health of Maine's marine resources.

For the last several years, Senior Research Scientist Doug Rasher has drawn on the agency's extensive monitoring data to understand the causes and consequences - and future trajectory - of kelp forest decline along Maine's coast. In 2024, his team published a significant paper, featuring DMR scientists, that provided the first census of Maine's kelp forests in decades, in part by drawing on 20 years of invaluable data from the state's sea urchin survey. Rasher calls that survey, which is fishery-focused but includes several broader environmental components, the "preeminent dataset of its kind" in the region. The scale and longevity of it - covering much of the coast, regularly, for years - he says, would be impossible for a research institution to replicate.

"To have both widespread and repeated measures over time is really impressive," he said. "Combined with our short-term, higher-resolution sampling, DMR's dataset enabled us to paint a holistic picture of kelp forest dynamics. The results really reflect our complementary strengths."

He adds that the work has catalyzed a number of related projects. Most recently, he has partnered with DMR on a new proposal to study what determines sea urchin reproduction and survival, which will provide new knowledge on Maine's reef ecosystems and could inform future fisheries management.

DMR says the collaboration has filled in critical data gaps and helped them refine the survey so that the agency can better document the broad effects of climate change.

"Bigelow researchers work on the cutting edge of their fields, and we look to them to complement our field-based expertise to answer emerging questions," Waller said. "They've helped turn a single-species monitoring program into a more comprehensive, benthic ecology monitoring program, which will improve the quality of our work and the sustainability of these valuable resources."

Fellow Senior Research Scientist Maya Groner is also working closely with DMR colleagues on one of Maine's most charismatic species.

Epizootic shell disease causes prominent lesions on lobster shells that can be fatal. Even in mild cases, the disease makes them less commercially valuable and eats up precious energy the lobsters must spend molting out of their degraded shells. Funded by the American Lobster Initiative, Groner is working with DMR to understand how the disease has progressed in the past and how vulnerable Gulf of Maine lobsters are.

The project included a large-scale experiment over several months that Groner's team ran from DMR's facilities.

"Our wet lab had recently undergone renovations, and we were eager to utilize its new capabilities for collaborative projects," said Heather Glon, a DMR lobster biologist working with Groner on the project. "We knew that Maya and her team, being adaptable and strong communicators, would be excellent partners. We also knew that their results would be immensely informative for understanding lobster health."

As with Rasher's kelp forest work, the shell disease project relies on extensive monitoring efforts. DMR's powerful lobster survey, for example, collects multiple measurements every month from along the coast on lobster size, sex, and disease state. Combined with environmental information, that data is helping Groner's team model how the disease may spread in the future as the ocean warms.

Both projects reflect the benefits each organization gets out of the relationship.

From a professional standpoint, joint work gives Bigelow Laboratory's early career scientists experience with resource managers, and it gives DMR scientists opportunities to mentor students through the institution's education programs.

DMR's "eyes on the water" and management mandate also gives them unique insight into community needs and the broad-scale patterns shaping the Gulf of Maine. Bigelow Laboratory can then dig deeper with hypothesis-driven studies on what's driving those patterns.

"DMR has a big-picture perspective and an incredible amount of data. We have the capacity and infrastructure to take deep dives into that data," Groner said. "We love codeveloping research ideas with them."

"We greatly value the cross-pollination of ideas and diverse strengths and interests that help us tackle challenging questions," Glon added. "Together, we can reach more people and find answers to big questions that couldn't be addressed by a single institution."

FORECASTING A COMPLEX FUTURE

With the emergence of new computational tools, these collaborative projects have evolved from monitoring the present state of the ocean to predicting how it may look in the future.

Archer and Record, who directs the Tandy Center for Ocean Forecasting, have worked with DMR on a shellfish closure forecast based on the immense amount of toxin data BAS has collected since 2014. The machine learning-based model predicts whether toxicity levels may be high enough to warrant a closure on a weekly timescale. The tool is publicly available online and, though it isn't used for regulatory decisions, it can help shellfish harvesters make more granular operational choices.

"There are existing models that predict the abundance of potentially-toxic algae that give a broad indication of what might happen in the coming year," Archer explained. "We're actually predicting shellfish toxicity directly, which is more useful from a management perspective."

Record adds that the effort has sparked other projects and been a springboard for international collaborations. There's also been growing interest from neighboring states to send their shellfish samples to Bigelow Laboratory and create similar forecasting tools.

"It's been a great learning process, thinking about what information people need and want," he said. "We're constantly improving to make sure what we're providing is as useful and usable as possible."

Record - on the recommendation, in fact, of a DMR colleague - is also part of the North Atlantic Right Whale Take Reduction Team, a multidisciplinary group of scientists, fishermen, officials, and conservationists providing recommendations on right whale management.

One of the challenges, he explains, is that historically there was minimal data on the movements of these endangered whales in Maine waters so models that underpinned management in the area were marred by uncertainty. To fix that, DMR has received an influx of funding in the last decade for intensive monitoring to fill data gaps and better track these behemoths.

Record and his team are deeply involved in that effort. They're using tools like acoustics to better understand the movement of the whales' favorite prey and then incorporating that information into better habitat models. The goal is to turn the new data into actionable information with real-time tools that predict right whale movements and can potentially inform dynamic management.

"There are a million things you could forecast, but they're not all equally useful," he added. "Partnering with resource managers helps us use our skills to answer the questions people are asking, and address the challenges they're facing, here and now."

LOOKING AHEAD

With all this recent progress, researchers at both organizations felt it was time to get everyone in a room together to keep momentum going. In November, Bigelow Laboratory hosted a joint symposium with DMR that provided space for scientists at both institutions to share recent discoveries and new ideas and get to know each other better.

"In the last decade, both institutions have grown in terms of their size and scientific capacity, and the Gulf of Maine has rapidly changed," Rasher said. "We thought it was the right time to get everyone on the same page about the state of our science and what data are available, to then define the most pressing questions for this region and how we can tackle them together."

At the end of the symposium, there was great enthusiasm to hold future gatherings and continue building trust and fostering new ideas. Since then, new projects, like the sea urchin work, have started to develop, and researchers at both organizations have continued meeting.

"As someone with established partnerships at Bigelow, I appreciated the opportunity to learn about what other scientists there are doing and consider new ways DMR scientists can collaborate," Glon said. "At the end of the day, we all share similar goals in marine science, and we've seen how much more effective it is to work together to achieve those objectives."

Photo Captions

Photo 1: Scientists in Bigelow Analytical Services, like Research Associate Gabriella Iacono, can test shellfish collected by DMR for toxins, including saxitoxin, which is produced by a species of the dinoflagellate Alexandrium (Credit: Gabe Souza).

Photo 2: Researchers at Bigelow Analytical Services, like Senior Research Associate Craig Burnell, partner with DMR to run samples for the shellfish toxin monitoring program (Credit: Greta Rybus).

Photo 3: Various fish species swim off Cashes Ledge through some of the healthy kelp forest that remains in the Gulf of Maine (Credit: Brian Skerry).

Photo 4: Postdoctoral Scientist Melissa Rocker handles a lobster used in an experiment testing the effects of temperature on shell disease in collaboration with DMR (Credit: Catie Cleveland).

Photo 5: Scientists point to the tell-tale lesions of epizootic shell disease on an infected lobster as part of a collaborative project on the disease's spread in the Gulf of Maine (Credit: Catie Cleveland).

Photo 6: Tandy Center researchers gather with stakeholders for a harmful algae bloom monitoring workshop in Namibia, an example of global work that has spun out of the toxin monitoring and forecasting efforts here in Maine (Credit: Bigelow Laboratory).

Photo 7: Senior Research Scientist Doug Rasher welcomes scientists to the Bigelow-DMR Collaborative Symposium in November 2025 (Credit: Bigelow Laboratory).