“The clams will have to come from Canada so we’ll all be eating Canadian clam chowder.Exclusive analysis of biotech, pharma, and the life sciences Learn More “Without surf clams the restaurant business cannot make New England clam chowder,” he said. With a lot less product likely to be coming through the plant come April he is unsure whether he will be able to keep everyone working. They are used for breaded clam strips and the adductor muscles we chop and they go for chowder,” he explained. “We cut the tongues and pack them in gallons. As he talked a line of workers behind him were busily shucking and cutting newly arrived surf clams. “The industry is only fishing 60-70 percent of its allocation and the surf clam and ocean quahog industry is the best managed fishery they have, the government is telling us,” Alan said. The surf clam fishery has always been sustainable and as the mayor told the Council in person, it is worth $10 million a year to New Bedford. I was not at the Council meeting in December when this decision was taken but it does not seem to be supporting this goal. The first one talks about achieving, “on a continuing basis, the optimum yield from each fishery for the United States fishing industry.” That seems pretty unambiguous. The legislation that governs fishing in federal waters, the Magnusson Stevens Act, sets forth ten national standards for their conservation and management. “A lot of this came from assumptions made by the habitat committee.” The Council also rejected an offer from the clammers to pay for a survey to gather some hard data while they continued to fish, he said. “They can’t justify taking this decision without the science,” Alan told me. It was taken without any science, he said, except some data gleaned from a SMAST scallop survey, using a drop camera that took pictures of the seabed at one kilometer intervals. Conversely, groundfish such as cod and haddock are found on hard bottom.Įven more troubling to fishermen is the fact that the decision was made without using the “best available science” as is the standard in fishery management. It’s too hard on the gear and anyway clams prefer sand bottom, he said. “We can’t tow over rocky bottom like a scallop dredge,” he told me. There were no fish, rocks or cobble to be seen, just a solitary skate, on a sandy bottom littered with old mussel shells. He also played me some high-resolution video, taken from a dredge-mounted camera, showing the sea bed in the area known as the Rose and Crown, the largest of the areas to be closed. Well, come April 9 it will not be nearly as valuable for those who participate in the harvest and that includes fishermen and shore workers in New Bedford, Gloucester and Bristol, Rhode Island where Galilean Seafood employs around 120 people in this fishery. NOAA also tells us that surfclams support a valuable fishery. Seafood Facts.’ The salient quote, with respect to the Atlantic surfclam, spissula solidissima, is this: “Fishing gear used to harvest surfclams has minimal impacts on habitat.” In spite of this fact these traditional grounds have now been designated as essential fish habitat and clamming is banned there indefinitely. With respect to protecting fish habitat allow me to quote from NOAA Fisheries’ own web site () which bills itself as ‘U.S. Questionable actions such as these undermine industry confidence in fishery regulators and serve only to alienate, and embitter, fishermen and the many others on the waterfront whose livelihoods are threatened by such draconian measures. Last month you may have read about the dubious nature of a decision by the New England Fishery Management Council to close a large area of Nantucket Shoals to fishermen who harvest surf clams there, ostensibly to protect fish habitat. When it comes to fishery management controversy never seems to be too far away.
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