Nantucket is renowned for its pristine bay and abundant scallop fishery. But the waters surrounding the island, like oceans across the globe, are becoming increasingly acidic. And the scallops are not happy about it. As levels of carbon dioxide rise in the atmosphere, a reduction in the pH of ocean water spells trouble for sea creatures with carbonate-based shells and skeletons, as well as for those organisms higher up in the food chain, like humans, that feed on them.

But there is hope on the horizon. Research has shown that kelp and eelgrass beds can help improve the ocean’s pH by sucking up excess carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, creating a safe haven for scallops, clams, oysters, and countless other sea creatures. According to scientists, by protecting and cultivating Nantucket’s eelgrass, we can actually help stem the tide on ocean acidification, addressing some of the issues around habitat degradation for marine life, while providing an even broader benefit to the climate as a whole.



Still, a deeper understanding of the effects of ocean and coastal acidification is key to enacting the kinds of land use reform measures necessary to reduce the pH-skewing nutrient loading that, in addition to atmospheric carbon dioxide, is negatively impacting Nantucket’s coastal waters. With the recent acquisition of a cutting-edge oceanographic monitoring device, the Maria Mitchell Association is effectively poised to help the community address some of these pressing issues.

MMA Executive Director Joanna Roche believes in bringing the community together around quality data to better inform the decision-making process surrounding the health of Nantucket Harbor. According to Roche, the deployment of the MMA’s new EMM700 environmental monitoring module—a high-tech, solar-powered buoy that can continuously gather multiple streams of data from the ocean environment—"creates a partnership of organizations that are interested in supporting the health of the harbor—a critical mission. And the data will be available to anyone, and we will start this summer by taking the temperature of the water, measuring its pH, and monitoring the nitrates."

A dream 10 years in the making that started with just a conversation between former MMA Executive Director Jack Dubinski and Roche, then a founding member of the Clean Water Coalition, "The Mitchell Curve" (which is what the collected, scrubbed, and translated data will be called) has come to fruition through the strong leadership of Roche and her team of scientists, including Jónelle Gurley, director of Science and Programs, with a joint funding endeavor by Remain Nantucket, the Great Harbor Yacht Club Foundation, the Osceola Foundation, and a private donor.

The EMM700, which was being launched this summer in a location deemed optimal by the harbormaster and MMA scientists, is essentially a cutting-edge computer system contained within a virtually indestructible platform buoy capable of performing much of the work of a field scientist, only continuously and in any and all weather conditions.

Dr. Rich Blundell, MMA’s scientist in residence, is excited about the possibilities. “I’ve done a lot of oceanographic research and worked out of schooners that sailed out of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, and so I have a long history of dealing with deep sea oceanographic equipment that studies everything from ocean currents, salinity, temperature, conductivity, phosphorus—all the things that this buoy is going to measure.”

With his hands-on experience, Blundell can contextualize The Mitchell Curve as a science communicator who aims to bring the community together around the important issue of environmental stewardship. “The local and state governments are going to be making decisions that are going to affect resource management,” he says. “They also are going to have access to the data. And here’s the thing—we only have spot checks on it now. What this buoy is going to do is give us real-time, continuous data. Having multiple streams of data on different metrics over time, in a continuous stream, brings exponential value to the actual data.”

A self-described “neurodivergent scientist and cultural communicator,” Blundell studies Big History, a new branch of science that contextualizes human and natural evolution together. Like Maria Mitchell, he is a transcendentalist who believes in the inherent goodness of humans and nature. “Maria Mitchell was also a Big Historian,” says Blundell, whose research and work as an educator seeks commonality in what can often be construed as a disparate narrative—human versus nature.



On the subject of Nantucket’s marine ecosystem, Dr. Blundell envisions a paradigm shift in thinking. “I think it’s really important to get people to see the beauty and the diversity that’s out there. If we care about it, then we’re not making an argument that you better stop fertilizing your lawn. We’re actually saying, ‘You know, by doing that, you’re hurting this thing you love.’ I love the green lawn as much as anybody else, but come sailing with me out there one day, and look at these flowing green expanses of eelgrass, and you’ll fall in love with it, too. And so there’s different kinds of logic that we can call upon to take care of this harbor.”