New law lets clammers combine catches

A law that could save commercial clammers money by letting them combine their quota of surf clams on fewer boats has been signed into law by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, but not soon enough to help legendary clammer Bob Doxsee.

"I'm out of the business," Doxsee said Friday morning, after being told about the enactment of a law sponsored by Assemb. Fred Thiele Jr. (I-Sag Harbor) that eases permit restrictions and allows for clam-harvesting cooperatives.

Passage of the law would have allowed Doxsee, 80, of Point Lookout, to cut his expenses in half by catching more clams on fewer boats -- he owned two until last year.

Last year, Doxsee cited his age in deciding to get out of the business his family launched and had continued for five generations, but he also fumed over the tightening regulations.

In a story in Newsday last year, Doxsee bemoaned then-new state rules that limited to 13,000 bushels annually the amount of surf clams he could harvest in state waters. The previous limit had been 20,000 bushels.

Doxsee had pushed for relaxing the rules so that he could combine the allowable catch of his two clam dredge boats on a single permit.

At the time, both of Doxsee's clam dredges had reached their allowable limit by mid-2010. They never returned to the water. He said he sold the operation to a larger clamming conglomerate.

Thiele, in a release, said the new law will "make harvesting of the surf clam and ocean quahog fishery more economical, safer and sustainable into the future, all without any detrimental impact to or increased harvesting of the resource." Cuomo signed the bill last week.

Specifically, Thiele said, the bill will enable harvesters to operate fewer vessels "more safely and productively, thereby avoiding the enormous overhead associated with maintaining a separate vessel" for each individual fishing quota.

"From an environmental standpoint, reducing the number of vessels in the fishery would better protect the surf clam and ocean quahog resource from the effects of inefficient dredging by older dredges," Thiele's release said.

In addition to allowing consolidation of the allowable catch permits, it also permits cooperative harvesting of surf clams and ocean quahogs.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation currently licenses 22 vessels to harvest surf clams.