Shellfish Working Group

The Barnegat Bay Partnership’s (BBP) Shellfish Working Group (SWG) is a standing committee formed in May 2014 under the purview of the BBP Science and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC) as set forth in the STAC charter document. The initial SWG charge was to review the conclusions and recommendations of the BBP sponsored white paper “Status and Trends of Hard Clam, Mercenaria mercenaria, Shellfish Populations in Barnegat Bay, New Jersey” by Bricelj et al. (2012), and develop short, medium, and long term research, rehabilitation, and policy recommendations that the BBP, and its partners, could pursue as part of an overall shellfish restoration program (including, but not limited to hard clam (Mercenaria mercenaria), eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica), and bay scallop (Argopecten irradians)) within Barnegat Bay.

The composition of the working group was purposely designed to include representation from a variety of stakeholders, including resource managers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), researchers, and the shellfish industry, in order to capture the breadth of experience and opinions present within the shellfish community. It was hoped that the diversity of organizations participating in the SWG would lead to potentially novel approaches to difficult problems and to new partnerships that otherwise may not have formed.

The original recommendations of the Shellfish Working Group were accepted by the Science and Technical Advisory Committee in December of 2014 and can be downloaded here. The SWG revised and updated the recommendations document in 2019 to reflect projects completed during the intervening period and new needs identified; the revised document can be downloaded here.