Good News, Clams Returning to GSB

Chinacat said:
Very cool basket you made there.....
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Yes, it is. They call them clam rollers in Maine. When you rock the basket sideways while it's in the water, the clams roll around inside from the bottom to the top and cleans the clams to perfection. Really works great on steamers. I made this one about 20 years ago and it's my go-to "bucket" while clamming.
 
Chinacat said:
Crabman-
I'm a little younger and and the boat me and my brother had was a 1975 13'3 whaler with a 40hp Evinrude.
To this day that is still my favorite boat I ever had.
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I remember the day I got my Whaler. It was my 13th birthday in 1966. My father set it up with a 20hp Johnson. I lived on that boat until it was stolen when I was in college. I found it 35 years later when I went up the channel on the south side of Oak Island to one of my clam treading spots. It had an unmistakable mark on it a friend of mine and I put on it while blackfishing at the Captree Drawbridge. I pulled up beside it and got a closer look and there was no doubt it was mine. By that time, it was totally trashed and I just motored off and went on my way. I still see it there to this day. Someone uses it as a tender to get back and forth from the Captree Island parking lot to their island home.on the island.
 
Here's a story from Newsday today titled "Stony Brook project helped restore Shinnecock clam population, report says"

I can personally attest that I believe it is a fair and accurate assessment based on my local experience being based right here in Shinnecock and actively clamming.
I can also say that Chris Gobler is someone that I personally know and highly appreciate and respect his work and efforts!!
As recently as 2 years ago there was a member on here, who adamantly proclaimed that these types of projects were BS and absolutely, can not, will not, and do not work. He was actually quite aggressive with his efforts to put me down LOL

A 10-year effort led by Stony Brook University marine scientists to create special "spawner sanctuaries" of hard-shelled clams in Shinnecock Bay restored clam populations in a wider area while vastly improving water quality, a new scientific paper reports.

Clam populations in Shinnecock Bay had collapsed around the time the work was initiated in 2012, according to the paper in Frontiers in Marine Science, with harvests dropping by 99.5%.

To reverse the decline, the plan by a team of scientists led by Stony Brook's School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences was to densely seed 64 newly designated spawner sanctuaries with more than 3.2 million adult clams, and to designate them "no-harvest" zones. The areas, which were identified after more than a decade of research and study of the bay, were chosen for their ideal qualities for clam spawning, with peak sediment and seawater conditions to retain larval clams.

The clams were allowed to spawn undisturbed between 2012 and 2019.

The results were dramatic. Spawning within the densely seeded not only intensified but also transported clams to areas outside the sanctuaries, where clam densities increased more than 18 fold over seven years, while harvests increased 16 fold over nine years, according to the paper.

The research indicates that the higher clam densities led to faster rates of water filtration by the filter-feeding clams than is typical, to as little as 10 days compared with the usual three months. That faster filtration rate saw concurrent significant decreases of brown tide algae and chlorophyll. The work has also led to the restoration of critical sea-grass in the bay, researchers said, expanding sea-grass beds by some 100 acres.

The results were so dramatic that projects have already begun to replicate the success in waterways around Long Island, said Christopher Gobler, an Stony Brook professor and director of the New York State Center for Clean Water Technology at Stony Brook.

"Due to the early success," he said, he worked with former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and the state Department of Environmental Conservation "to establish the Long Island Shellfish Restoration Project, which replicates what we did in Shinnecock in four other estuaries," including Bellport Bay, Huntington Harbor and Hempstead Bay.

But the restoration of Shinnecock Bay isn't complete. Gobler said the work, funded in part by grants from the Laurie Landau Foundation, was conducted primarily in the eastern part of Shinnecock Bay. "In the western part, there's still work to be done," he said.

Still, he said, the work appears to have set the stage for the elimination of brown tides, the "scourge of Shinnecock Bay," which hasn't experienced one since 2016.

Hard-clam landings in Shinnecock Bay now exceed those of the Great South Bay, Gobler said, despite the area being around 10 times smaller.

"This type of research has international implications," said State Assemb. Steve Englebright (D-Setauket).

Gobler acknowledged that creating no-harvest zones, which locked out local baymen from some traditional fishing grounds, was "critical" to the success of the work. "We wouldn't have had the results we did without them," he said.

Ed Warner, a bayman and Southampton Town Trustee, who worked with researchers to build support for the restoration, said baymen can now make a living clamming in Shinnecock Bay while 40 years ago, a day's work might net a clammer half a bushel. "Everybody in our community is going to benefit," he said.

Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman called the promise of the work "extraordinary," demonstrating that "through science we can find a way back" from the detrimental effects of pollution and climate change.

The paper details ways similar spawner sanctuaries can be used in waterways around the globe.

"Given these outcomes and the global need for rebuilding marine life, the implementation of spawner sanctuaries using the criteria set forth herein may be a promising approach for restoring hard clam and other bivalve populations in estuaries elsewhere," the paper states.

"It's a blueprint not only for our area but regionally and nationally," said State Sen. Anthony Palumbo (R-New Suffolk).
 
Great article CC. I actually have been involved with the re-population/transfer of clams in Northport. We did it about ten years ago. A study was done in Cold Spring Harbor by the boat ramp. Seems the spat/larvae of the hard clams was drifting out of Suffolk County, in particular CSH, and going into Nassau County waters. I was hired to catch as many clams as I could and transfer them to the Northport area. The work took a few weeks. The number of clams we caught daily was staggering. The beauty of the whole operation was how clean I did the work. The Huntington DEC picked me because they didn't want the water to be churned up during the catch process. In total, I probably moved 1500 bushels of clams. Clams are doing much better on the North Shore than the South Shore. The water is much cleaner. My opinion is the bays up there are smaller and clean water keeps flushing the area on each tide. We are seeing a much better growth of our south shore clams because the water is finally flowing a lot better in the GSB than in the past.
 
Crabman said:
Great article CC. I actually have been involved with the re-population/transfer of clams in Northport. We did it about ten years ago. A study was done in Cold Spring Harbor by the boat ramp. Seems the spat/larvae of the hard clams was drifting out of Suffolk County, in particular CSH, and going into Nassau County waters. I was hired to catch as many clams as I could and transfer them to the Northport area. The work took a few weeks. The number of clams we caught daily was staggering. The beauty of the whole operation was how clean I did the work. The Huntington DEC picked me because they didn't want the water to be churned up during the catch process. In total, I probably moved 1500 bushels of clams. Clams are doing much better on the North Shore than the South Shore. The water is much cleaner. My opinion is the bays up there are smaller and clean water keeps flushing the area on each tide. We are seeing a much better growth of our south shore clams because the water is finally flowing a lot better in the GSB than in the past.
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Wow, that is way cool to have been part of something like Crabman(y)
I'm curious if both the area in Nassau where you harvested from and the area you moved them to are both doing well 10 years later?
While my son was still in the local elementary school here, maybe 7 or so years ago, he went on a field trip where they went on a SUNY Southampton boat and got to throw and dump both seed size and mature clams into one of the established sanctuaries here in Shinnecock Bay. He felt it gave him a vested interest in the clams we would harvest.
I'm sure having been part of that project gives you a nice feeling of helping and contributing to the cause, and put some $$$ in your pocket too:p8-)

Similar too what you say about the number of clams you harvested was staggering, I have found similar areas here in Shinnecock that are loaded. Even during the so-called lean years, I never had any trouble finding clams and always kinda shook my head when people would say there were none to be found. Of course, I have to admit I am fairly secretive when it comes to my "sweet" spots and when people ask me where I got those clams, my most common answer is "all around the boat" :ROFLMAO:
 
I'm amazed at all the clamming activity currently going on in the mouth of Hempstead Harbor, in 40-50 feet of water. 10-20 or more boats a day.
 
CC, you're right, the project was really cool. What was really amazing, was I never caught clams before with this type of method. It all started with a trip to the NYSDEC office in Setauket. While there, I saw this announcement about the clam transplant program open for bids. I talked with the person in charge of shellfish and she told me what they wanted to do and how they wanted it done. Normally clams can be harvested in the amounts they required to be moved by pumping water to a manifold on a dredge. That really churns shallow water into a muddy mess. They wanted the clams to be caught without the use of a high-volume pump. I bought my boat up in Machias, Maine from a real knowledge deep water mahogany clammer. I planned to use it for tuna fishing and crabbing. I never expected it could be used for clamming on Long Island. Well, I won the contract bid and still had no idea how to catch the clams. I called the previous owner and explained what I got myself into. He said he had a dredge that he felt "could" do what I needed to do. My wife and I jumped into the pickup truck and took off for Bucks Harbor, Maine. We met up with Billy Moore, a well-known clam and lobsterman. He had this contraption that looked like a steel cage shoe box. He assured me, that this would be clean while being used to meet their requirements but it was usually used in 150' of water. We loaded it into the truck and took off for home. While driving down, my wife and I both questioned the wisdom of the plan. The dredge was loaded onto the boat and two days later we left Babylon Village and headed for NY Harbor, up the Hudson, and through Hell's Gate to the LI Sound and eventually to a dock in Huntington Harbor. It was a beautiful trip. If you have never taken a boat around Long Island, you should. The next day, with a Huntington DEC official observer onboard, we set out to catch clams. The contract had a provision stating I had to produce but never specified how much. I asked the observer what his expectations were. He stated, that he would like to see 10-20 bushels a day. To me, that was a wow moment. Holy Crap, 20 bushels of clams. Well, we cruised to Cold Spring Harbor and he pointed to the spot he thought most of the clams were. I told him I doubted the clams would be on the bottom of the narrow channel. It was my experience that the bottom of a channel like this would be muck and seaweed. He insisted and I complied. The dredge was dropped to the bottom. The wind was from the north and we were heading south. The smell of rotten eggs was horrible. We churned up seaweed and muck. This was a total failure and I began to worry. Just cleaning out the equipment took ten minutes and we didn't catch one clam. But, I was not surprised. If any of you are familiar with the boat ramp in CSH on the east side, I decided to drop the dredge right alongside the ramp. I began a tow but only went 100' when a saw some wreckage on the bottom. I decided to haul it back to clear the hang. As the mouth of the dredge broke the surface, the sediment in it was very clean and had no stink. To wash it out, I had to power up the boat to about 10kts. To do that I had to leave the small channel with a mooring field on the west side to not make a big wake. I could feel the dredge was heavy but could no longer see the mouth. My wife walked into the wheelhouse and said, you are not going to believe what's in the dredge. I asked her if it was clean and she said yes. We hauled it up and there was nothing but clean clams. When she dumped the dredge on our picking table, she shoveled eight bushels of clams into totes that hold two bushels. The total time from drop to drop again was ten minutes. In two and a half hours, we caught 110 bushels of clams without breaking a sweat. The Town of Huntington was thrilled as was I. When done stacking the limit I would put on the boat, we steamed around Llyods Neck and into Huntington Harbor and dumped the clams into Duck Island Harbor and Northport Bay. What a blast. The scenery was gorgeous and the weather was beautiful.

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Crabman said:
CC, you're right, the project was really cool. What was really amazing, was I never caught clams before with this type of method. It all started with a trip to the NYSDEC office in Setauket. While there, I saw this announcement about the clam transplant program open for bids. I talked with the person in charge of shellfish and she told me what they wanted to do and how they wanted it done. Normally clams can be harvested in the amounts they required to be moved by pumping water to a manifold on a dredge. That really churns shallow water into a muddy mess. They wanted the clams to be caught without the use of a high-volume pump. I bought my boat up in Machias, Maine from a real knowledge deep water mahogany clammer. I planned to use it for tuna fishing and crabbing. I never expected it could be used for clamming on Long Island. Well, I won the contract bid and still had no idea how to catch the clams. I called the previous owner and explained what I got myself into. He said he had a dredge that he felt "could" do what I needed to do. My wife and I jumped into the pickup truck and took off for Bucks Harbor, Maine. We met up with Billy Moore, a well-known clam and lobsterman. He had this contraption that looked like a steel cage shoe box. He assured me, that this would be clean while being used to meet their requirements but it was usually used in 150' of water. We loaded it into the truck and took off for home. While driving down, my wife and I both questioned the wisdom of the plan. The dredge was loaded onto the boat and two days later we left Babylon Village and headed for NY Harbor, up the Hudson, and through Hell's Gate to the LI Sound and eventually to a dock in Huntington Harbor. It was a beautiful trip. If you have never taken a boat around Long Island, you should. The next day, with a Huntington DEC official observer onboard, we set out to catch clams. The contract had a provision stating I had to produce but never specified how much. I asked the observer what his expectations were. He stated, that he would like to see 10-20 bushels a day. To me, that was a wow moment. Holy Crap, 20 bushels of clams. Well, we cruised to Cold Spring Harbor and he pointed to the spot he thought most of the clams were. I told him I doubted the clams would be on the bottom of the narrow channel. It was my experience that the bottom of a channel like this would be muck and seaweed. He insisted and I complied. The dredge was dropped to the bottom. The wind was from the north and we were heading south. The smell of rotten eggs was horrible. We churned up seaweed and muck. This was a total failure and I began to worry. Just cleaning out the equipment took ten minutes and we didn't catch one clam. But, I was not surprised. If any of you are familiar with the boat ramp in CSH on the east side, I decided to drop the dredge right alongside the ramp. I began a tow but only went 100' when a saw some wreckage on the bottom. I decided to haul it back to clear the hang. As the mouth of the dredge broke the surface, the sediment in it was very clean and had no stink. To wash it out, I had to power up the boat to about 10kts. To do that I had to leave the small channel with a mooring field on the west side to not make a big wake. I could feel the dredge was heavy but could no longer see the mouth. My wife walked into the wheelhouse and said, you are not going to believe what's in the dredge. I asked her if it was clean and she said yes. We hauled it up and there was nothing but clean clams. When she dumped the dredge on our picking table, she shoveled eight bushels of clams into totes that hold two bushels. The total time from drop to drop again was ten minutes. In two and a half hours, we caught 110 bushels of clams without breaking a sweat. The Town of Huntington was thrilled as was I. When done stacking the limit I would put on the boat, we steamed around Llyods Neck and into Huntington Harbor and dumped the clams into Duck Island Harbor and Northport Bay. What a blast. The scenery was gorgeous and the weather was beautiful.

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That is just so amazing in so many ways
I have a bunch of questions but don't want to overwhelm you :p
My first 2 are this:
1. How did the area where you harvested them from rebound? Is it still a sustainable area that still produces?
2. Did the transplanted clams take OK? I always wondered what the survival rate of a clam is one it is removed from the mud and "thrown" back....
 
Chinacat said:
That is just so amazing in so many ways
I have a bunch of questions but don't want to overwhelm you :p
My first 2 are this:
1. How did the area where you harvested them from rebound? Is it still a sustainable area that still produces?
2. Did the transplanted clams take OK? I always wondered what the survival rate of a clam is one it is removed from the mud and "thrown" back....
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I love talking about this stuff. I had a really cool boat and it's really fascinating to have such a connection and sampling of what's on the bottom in different areas of the bays around Long Island and NY Harbor. I towed nearby the Statue of Liberty. Deep water or shallow water as shallow as 4'. Over the years we caught a really cool bottle collection. Many are from local area breweries and milk farms. There was a high percentage of Citrate of Magnesia bottles. In the old days of "ice" boxes. If the ice melted you had a box with your food. People pushed the limits at times and the food was bad. So sick stomach, break out the Citrate of Magnesia which I'm guessing is now Milk of Magnesia. I have two bottles that have the Fire Island lighthouse embossed on the back. Seems there were a fair amount of Jewish breweries. Another bottle is Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup. I caught a lot more than here but these are the pick of the litter.


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As for the survival of the transplanted clams, I would say very high 98% and wouldn't be surprised 100%. They came up clean, were shoveled into totes, and stacked. Yes, some got sun on them but we would spray them down during the trip back. A large washdown hose is always going and it's very easy to give a cooling spray. Once we got to the transplant area, we put a tote on the gunwale and slowly dumped them back in as we motored along. The clams move and dig themselves in pretty quickly. I know we did our best and it seemed you really couldn't go wrong unless you were stopped and poured them into a pile. I heard from the DEC the transplant went perfectly to plan.

We did a lot of sampling for one of the great old-time DEC Department Heads, Phil Briggs. He was in charge of Finfish and Crustaceans. Very knowledgable. He wanted samples of the bay bottom. With my equipment, we could get an 8' wide dredge up and down in minutes for samples and my wife was the entire back deck crew. Phil was amazed. He looked at and touched just about everything that came up. He showed how he looked for the eggs the long-gone blackback flounder we had in the GSB in such numbers. Showed me how the female blue claw crabs died after a 1 1/2 year life. Seems their open circulatory system just hemorrhages. With that info, I began noticing while dredging winter crabs in the GSB that in the spring there would be slicks near edges or depressions I became familiar with their location after many years of doing dredge work. Sure enough, the slick areas were the areas of dead blue crabs. Their life cycle was over. 90% female crabs. Males will live for 3 years or so. Their life is under constant threat due to environmental changes. Very interesting is that the GSB is on a giant aquifer. I find areas of freshwater up-dwelling through a mostly muddy area. Fresh water freezes at a higher temperature than salt water. My theory is when the bay gets rough and the air temperature is very cold, near freezing surface salt water is rolled down the bottom in these areas of the bay and freezes the fresh water coming out of the up-dwelling. In that area, the bottom freezes. The dredge would come up with what looked like 3" thick black asphalt. I heard it was called anchor frost. Can't confirm but the bottom was frozen. Crabs around the area, all dead. But, it didn't matter, they would be dead in two, max three months anyhow and nothing happens with them in reproduction or anything else during that time. They just hang around until they die. When they do, they kind of gas off and form the slick that I began to notice in the late winter and early spring. And, it wasn't a chum for flounders. We tried fishing in the area but the crab was a real sour-smelling dead creature and no self-respecting flounder would be around that as chum.
 
Well I’m very appreciative and thankful that there are folks like you that are involved with these types of projects. Thank you????

Thanks for sharing your stories and adventures.
I find it very interesting so keep it coming

We are getting to cook these up tgat came out if shinnecock bay on Thursday. I got about a half bushel in an hour or so which is more than enuf?
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Those look beautiful. "In an hour or so", is a very nice pace for treading the amount you caught. I like the catching part of clamming. For me, I find it very relaxing being with a friend clamming. It's no different than fishing. I don't want someone to give me fish, I want to catch them. I have an old Navy flying buddy coming into town from Dallas. He's never clammed or fished for fluke. We are going to have a fun week. We're going to catch and cook and drink while sharing old memories of flying in the Navy. We had a blast together in our very early 20's flying supersonic aircraft while dropping bombs or shooting rockets and coming home to an aircraft carrier. We are both proud to say we are Veterans and we would do it again in a NY minute.

Today, 9/11, is a solemn day for America. It's sad that terrorists don't have to fly into the country anymore. With this administration, they can just walk across the border or they can take a flight aboard a military transport from Afghanistan without vetting. Two crews flying from United Airlines JFK base were pilots and flight attendants onboard two of the doomed four airplanes. One Captain, who was in command of United Airlines Flight 93, displaced the regular Captain and flew the flight in order to maintain currency in the aircraft. He was my office partner at United Airlines Flight Training Center in Denver, CO. We were both flight instructors and this displacement was a normal occurrence for us to keep our hands-on experience. The original Captain got to stay home with pay. Capt. Jason Dahl, along with his First Officer, LeRoy Homer, were two men you would walk into a dark alley with. Both were killed instantly while buckled in their seats and at the controls of Flight 93 which later crashed in Shanksville, PA. They, like all others, will be missed. We should never forgive and we should never forget all of those who lost their lives or were injured in the 9/11 tragedy.
 
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Was I right or was I right. Clam numbers in the GSB are exploding. Fire Island Inlet is loaded with seed clams on the bar near the Sore Thumb. Any given weekend it's mobbed with people. Unfortunately, many are taking very small seed clams which are illegal to harvest but the numbers of seed coming up is staggering. In another year that bar will be loaded with beautiful clams. Many blamed the commercial clammers for the decline but it was actually the water quality that killed the clams. For twenty years the Babylon and Islip area had no pressure on the clams and only a handful of commercial clammers were still active. Most were retired guys who still enjoyed the peacefulness of tonging. With Snake Hill Channel opening up to more water flow, the clams population has increased dramatically. The cleaner water has them growing like the old days. Back in the 70's, a hard clam would grow to a legal clam in 3 1/2 to 4 years in the GSB. When the water quality dropped in the 80's and 90's it took 8-12 years to grow to a legal clam. Unfortunately, most died as BB sized clams. Clamming in the GSB will only get better and better. Now we need a set of scallops before I take the dirt nap.
 
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Its been about 8 years since i clammed but could fill a bucket consistently in under 30 minutes. South Oyster Bay. Ankle deep at low tide. Only yaks can get there without a long wade from even a jet ski. Don’t know if that area had a setback but it did me good for barbecues.
 
Yes. The clamming to the west has always been very good over the years. There is a much better flow of nutrient rich, clean water coming in from Jones Inlet compared to Fire Island Inlet. Snake Hill Channel in the GSB has been a choke point and water flow went down the south channels past Ocean Beach and through Range and East Channell bypassing the bay. Our bad areas were from Lindenhurst to Oakdale. Babylon and Islip were the worst. It was sad to see withered clam meat in the 80's and 90's that was gray instead of tan. The algae in the bay was horrific. The clam is a fllter feeder. It's filtering system clogged with algae and the clams were starving and suffocating. Over the years, as the water began to clear, the clams began to get healthy and release spat (clam larvae). The spat would float to the surface and drift with the tide while growing. As the spat grew, it got heavier and sank to the bottom and that's where it spent it's life in the bay until death or harvest. Interestingly, a clam can easily live 40 years. I watched the south shore tide line and the BB sized dead clam numbers began to decrease as the small clams grew faster and sank before washing up on the beach. And, my prayers have been answered, the clams in the GSB are making a comeback. Good for us, the bay and the clams. Now, let's all pray a set of scallops takes off. I don't know how many of you remember the scallops we had in the bay. Back in the 60's, during scallop season, I could easily catch 10-15 bushels of scallops per day. Over harvesting was not the cause of the collapse. A scallop only lives two years and then dies. Spat was released before scallop season and by the spring if not caught, the scallop dies. I'm happy to say, I have gotten a few each time I treaded in different areas of the bay this year. It doesn't take many to to release spat and begin the process of repopulation. Very important, we need the eel grass to flourish again on the flats, that will really help the scallop and the bay in general.
 
In the late 50's and 60's, there were 8' trees marking the entire Snake Hill Channel. The bars to the south end were not there. Once in the channel, it was deep water to the south end of the channel. The pier, where the sunken barge is, was really nice and regularly used by boats going to the bar called Way Way Yonder. My Dad and Uncle Bill were regulars as I played on the pier and beach catching crabs and blowfish. Uncle Bill owned a deli on the corner of Steinway Street in Astoria. He would pay me a nickle per blowfish. He and my Dad caught and supplied the deli with fish for the Catholics on Friday. Life was great back then. And yes, fluke size limit was 14".
 
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