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Chapter 2 - Coastal Ecosystemsbehold; likewise codfish, abundance on the coast, and in theirseason are plentifully taken. There is a fish called a bass, a mostsweet and wholesome fish as ever I did eat; it is altogether as goodas our fresh salmon; and the season of their coming was begunwhen we came first to New-England in June, and so continuedabout three months’ space. Of this fish our fishers take manyhundreds together, which I have seen lying on the shore, to myadmiration. Yea, their nets ordinarily take more than theyare able to haul to land, and for want of boats and men theyare constrained to let a many go after they have taken them;and yet sometimes they fill two boats at a time with them. Andbesides bass, we take plenty of scate and thornback, and abundance of lobsters, and the least boy in the Plantation may bothcatch and eat what he will of them. For my own part, I wassoon cloyed with them, they were so great, and fat, and luscious.I have seen some myself that have weighed sixteen pound; butothers have had divers times so great lobsters as have weighedtwenty-five pound, as they assured me. (Young 1846).Even a cursory review of the historical and current conditionsof Northwest Atlantic coastal ecosystems revealsthat tremendous changes, including significant resourcedepletion, have taken place since European settlement. Atleast four marine species in the Northwest Atlantic becameextinct in historic times – Atlantic gray whale (early1700s), sea mink (1880), great auk (1884), and in 1929 theeelgrass limpet was lost during the eelgrass wasting diseasepandemic (Geerat 1993; Carlton et al. 1999). While totalrange-wide extinctions in marine ecosystems appear to berelatively uncommon or go unnoticed, local extirpationsand sharp population reductions with associated loss ofecosystem services are quite evident.Prior to 1900, thousands of rivers and streams weredammed, and as a result, many thousands of kilometers ofspawning habitat for diadromous fish were lost. Intensivelogging cleared entire watersheds, leading to erosion anddelivery of excessive sediment to estuaries, dramaticallychanging bathymetry and impacting a variety of habitatsand species. Silt and enormous quantities of sawdustand wood debris from mills were dumped in estuaries,smothering shellfish, eelgrass, and benthic communities.Meanwhile, urban centers like Boston and New Yorkgrew rapidly into their adjacent estuaries, filling coastalwetlands and hardening natural shorelines. Unregulatedeffluents from textile mills, tanneries, and other industriescombined with untreated sewage to poison and degradebenthic and pelagic habitats (Jackson 1944; Buschbaumet al. 2005). Against this backdrop of estuarine habitatdestruction, largely unregulated harvesting of marine resourcesproceeded with the illusory idea that the ocean’sbounty was limitless (Huxley 1884). However, by the midto late 1800s many authors began to describe the damagethat had begun to accrue and some of their observationsare excerpted below. Modern scientists are revisiting thesame questions, equipped with better scientific understandingwhile also at a great disadvantage due to the longpassage of time. To provide an historical context forseveral of the conservation targets, the following sectionshighlight changes in salt marshes, eelgrass, and oysters.Salt MarshesSalt marshes are intertidal wetlands typically located inlow energy environments such as estuaries. They existboth as expansive meadow marshes and as narrow fringingmarshes along shorelines. Considered one of the mostproductive ecosystems in the world, salt marshes providenumerous ecological functions, including shoreline stabilization,wildlife habitat, and nutrient cycling. Theircritical role in providing breeding, refuge, nursery, andforage habitats for diverse marine fauna is well known.Salt marsh dependent species facilitate the export of nutrientsand carbon from coastal to offshore food webs. Theemerging field of valuing nature (calculating ecosystemservices in economic terms) is sometimes controversial,but by any measure salt marsh is one of the most valuablehabitat types on Earth. Bromberg Gedan et al. (2009)cautiously estimate that the ecosystem services of onehectare of salt marsh exceed a value of $14,000 per year(Table 2-1).In the past few centuries, a large portion of the NorthwestAtlantic’s salt marsh habitat has been altered or destroyed.Soon after European settlement, salt marsheswere ditched and drained to facilitate hay production, andsubsequently to control mosquitoes. Over decades, variousforms of coastal development (urban expansion, roadways,2-4Northwest Atlantic Marine Ecoregional Assessment • Phase 1 Report