Set rules to encourage a clam revival on the Great South Bay
A seagull keeps a clammer company in the waters off the Sayville Marina in the Great South Bay. (2011) Credit: Joseph D. Sullivan
Those who harvest hard clams, those who eat them, and those who study them can all agree on this: Clamming in the Great South Bay is not what it was. Something has to be done.
There's no doubt about the sharp drop in these bivalve mollusks. In the mid-1970s, baymen landed 700,000 bushels a year -- half the national take. The harvest in the bay is now below 10,000 bushels. The causes are no mystery, either. The key culprits are overharvesting and declining water quality, including algae blooms like the brown tide.
In 2008, then-Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy called together a Great South Bay Hard Clam Restoration Working Group. It included baymen, government officials, scientists and The Nature Conservancy, which owns 13,000-plus acres of the bay bottom and has been trying for years to seed hard clams there. The working group submitted its final report in December, recommending new town rules.
Now it's up to Islip, Babylon and Brookhaven to adopt comprehensive rules to prevent future overharvesting.
The few remaining baymen should have the chance to pursue this physical, solitary work in the future. And advocates of the report say the rules it recommends won't hurt them. But the resource is in such a fragile state that it can't withstand too many clam rakes. In fact, the working group's report said the clam population can't support more than 18 to 24 full-time commercial baymen. As of the December report, there were 27 in Babylon, 50 in Islip and 125 in Brookhaven.
Back in the glory days, the three towns issued thousands of permits: 6,500 in 1976, for example. There was no limit on the number of permits, no effort by the towns to take into account the actual state of clams in the bay.
Now the three towns need to adopt rules that will protect both the resource and the diminished number of baymen who harvest them. The rules should be at least comparable, if not identical. They should use scientifically sound estimates of what the real clam population is in deciding the number of permits. Those rules, along with continued seeding, plus reduction of nitrogen levels in the water, are our best hope for a return to an abundance of clams.
