Clamming!

You wouldn't know it was July would you? Here I am blinding the beach in my sexy foul weather gear.

Perhaps some of you are interested in what I do at my new job! I do a ton of different things, but here is the latest project. One of the goals of my job is to enhance clam populations along a beach on the reservation. Why? Well, some tribal members cannot afford a boat to go out and fish, but it is free to go walk to the beach and dig up some clams. Although it is not clear to me yet, we will be shooting for either a year-round subsistence harvest or a year-round commercial harvest. Hopefully the enhanced beach will provide these people with a free source of healthy food and/or a modest income.

Washington is an odd state. It is the only state (that I know of) where tidelands are bought and sold just like private land. So you can’t just walk down any old beach and dig. The reservation owns its tidelands and I have been working on one beach in particular called Lone Tree Point. The view from Lone Tree Point is an ugly tree with bald eagle chillin’ on top (usually) and a crappy view of islands, mountains, and almost Deception Pass National Park. Note the sarcasm. It is gorgeous!

Adding clam seed (i.e. baby clams) to the beach is nothing new to Washingtonians. Many of the private beaches are owned by shellfish growing companies. In fact, Taylor Shellfish is the largest shellfish grower in the USA (I think) and most of their operation is based in WA. To make my life even more easy, WA Sea Grant has a little publication with directions on how to enhancement clam populations on a beach. So, I just read that carefully and set to work!


First thing first! My boss, Jim, and I surveyed the beach. We had to know what clams were there before we added more. Next, I used GIS (mapping software) to map out the tide lines (a rough estimate of elevation) and figure out where to put some test plots. I didn’t want to go too crazy and seed the entire beach yet. So this year I planned an experiment that tests seeding densities and the effectiveness of predator nets (to exclude crabs and ducks from eating the little dudes). We have plots with no netting (our control), plots with netting that receive no seed, and plots that get the little clams at one of two different seeding densities. The plots that have netting but no seed are a neat idea of mine (if I say so myself). What if the beaches receive natural recruitment (i.e. little baby clams naturally settle there) but those recruits are eaten up by predators? Well, by adding netting and not adding clam seed, I can find out if there is natural recruitment to the area. It would be awesome if we didn’t have to spend money on buying baby clams from a hatchery. Did that make sense?

Here is Jim hauling out some of the predator netting

Nets ready to be unrolled

You can see two nets here

Liza checking out some of the little clams

Here is a link to all the photos - http://picasaweb.google.com/globalscents/2010WorkPhotos#

Ray and Pete spreading the little clams out - look carefully and you can watch them flying from Ray's hand...

And finally, on a somber note…. I went to a workshop on ocean acidification for tribal fisheries managers today. I bet most of you know what ocean acidification is – but the long story short is that the ocean naturally absorbs CO2. As humans continue to add absurd amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, the ocean soaks more CO2 up. Through the bad luck of a chemical reaction, this makes the oceans more acidic. Thus, the more CO2 we put up, the more acidic the oceans become. Since many humans and governments (ours) are showing no desire to change (or any concern for future generations), it seems that acidic oceans will be the wave of the future. I knew ocean acidification was a huge problem, but in this workshop I learned that Puget Sound will, unfortunately, be the canary in the coal mine when it comes to seeing how more acidic oceans affect our marine life. In the spring and summer months a lot of upwelling occurs off the west coast. More acidic waters are typically found deeper in the ocean, but upwelling brings that deeper and more acidic water right up to the surface along WA, OR, and CA. That water manages to get all the way into Puget Sound. This past year, water was already so acidic that the hatcheries that raise little clams had a big problem. The 3-day old clams were literally dissolving in the acidic water and dying. I was shocked. I expected this to happen in 10 years or so – but it is already happening here in WA. So, the hatcheries managed to get some money from the feds to try and save their businesses (I believe about 3000 people would be affected if shellfish operations kicked it). Now they have these crazy systems that determine where the least acidic water is in the bays. They pump that specific water into their tanks so the little clam shells don’t dissolve. Unbelievable. So, are feeling like you need to get that smaller car with better mileage yet? Wow.