From the archives: 90 acres of Centerport Harbor is reopened to winter shellfishing

It's the water, the way the waves rock the tiny power boat. It's the sky, the way it opens just enough to let the gulls come out and soar.

It has been a long time since the money alone was enough to make Dean Yaxa get up at the crack of dawn and push his weathered boat off the sand.

"I have great reverence for the water," said Yaxa, a clammer for more than 30 years. His home as a child was on the waterfront, and his father loved to fish. It was no surprise that he was one of the first clammers out yesterday pulling clams from what was once forbidden ground.

Not even his thick white moustache could hide Yaxa's smile as he watched the scores of boats in Centerport Harbor.

For 20 years, much of this once-productive spot in Huntington Town was closed to winter shellfishing, the victim of coliform bacteria that travels in stormwater runoff.

The tenacious work of marine biologists got 90 more acres opened again after two decades. But it was not intense cleanup efforts that got the clamming boats back in the water. It was simply better testing.

"The quality of the water hasn't changed," said Emerson Hasbrouck, a marine investigator with Cornell Cooperative Extension. "The testing just shows the quality is good enough to harvest clams."

In a study funded by the Town of Huntington and Cornell University, scientists took larger samples of the area and tested them more frequently. The result was more data and new figures, which, when combined with earlier results, met state qualifications.

The new numbers were good news for the clammers, who huddled in small clusters to sink their rakes to the bottom in search of little necks. As the days go on, they will spread out, as the supply of clams begins to dwindle.

Most in the water are only there part time, supplementing their incomes as firefighters, police officers or school teachers.

The rest, like Yaxa, give the water all their time, either because they love it, or, as Yaxa explains, "they own their own houses; they've paid their bills, and their wives have good jobs."

The improved testing came after the Town of Huntington petitioned the state for a winter certification. The approval allows clammers to dig through April. In the summer, the beds are closed because there's more stormwater runoff and higher water temperatures, which allow bacteria to flourish, said Chris Lawrence, a member of the North Shore Baymen's Association.

In past winters, clammers could use the harbor only when it didn't rain.

But as shellfishers celebrate the long-awaited reopening, industry analysts doubt the new territory will have much impact on the overall market.

Most of the state's 1.2 million acres of shellfish lands are off Long Island, and although only 16 percent of that acreage is uncertified, those closed areas are among the most productive in the region.

Coliform is most often the culprit that forces the state to shut down shellfishing grounds, and has damaged such spots as Patchogue and the Port Jefferson Harbor in Brookhaven.

Ninety additional acres is a blessing, to be sure, but in the long run, it may only be a drop in the bushel basket.

Yaxa knows that there are only five months, only so many clams. That is why he is getting all he can, now. He is an optimist, and he knows that even when all the clams are gone, or the harbor is closed again, he still has the water.