Nantucket Biodiversity Initiative Grant Awards

The Nantucket Shellfish Association is pleased to formally join the Nantucket Biodiversity Initiative this year. The mission of the Nantucket Biodiversity Initiative (NBI) is to conserve the native biodiversity of Nantucket through collaborative research, monitoring and education.

Each year, NBI funds projects that support biodiversity research on the island through the Small Research Grants Program. Since 2005, the group has supported over 100 research grants with over $100,000 of funding.

In 2024, the Nantucket Shellfish Association is proud to extend the reach of NBI by fully supporting two Small Research Grants for a total of $6,350. With this support, we are able to increase NBI’s research grant support by almost 40% this year!

• Assessing the Ecological Implications of Seagrass Wasting Disease: Effects on Carbon and Nitrogen Sequestration in Coastal Seagrass Meadows Determined through Sediment Core Quantitation, Stable Isotope Tracing, and Genomic Sequencing

  • Charles Mitchell, Boston University, Advised by Alyssa Novak and John Finnerty

• Assessing Bay Scallop Clustering in Nantucket Harbor with Aerial Drone Mapping

  • Jacob Tinkhauser, Independent Researcher