The future of clamming could lie in seeding and growing clams in tidal areas, to mitigate declines of the wild resource.
The Times Record reported that Manomet — an environmental research nonprofit in Plymouth, Mass, with an office in Brunswick — recently installed experimental clam farms in Scarborough and Arrowsic, adding to the experimental farm it operates in Georgetown. Manomet and industry and academic partners hope clam-farming can help rehabilitate the harvest, because clam farmers can use nets to keep growing clams safe from predators like crabs.
“If this lets a clammer work, and he just needs to set up nets and things to make it, he’ll do it,” Wendell Cressey, a clammer who plans to farm in Arrowsic, told the newspaper. Manomet’s experimental Georgetown farm yielded enough clams to bring to market for the first time last year.
According to a February 2017 post on Manomet’s website, the Gulf of Maine is heating up faster than 99% of the world’s oceans, and scientists foresee a time when historically lucrative fisheries—like clamming and lobstering —are gone. Soft-shell clam flats are being decimated by a growing population of green crabs. Clamming is Maine’s second most seafood industry, after lobster.
Manomet installed the Georgetown farm in May 2014, in conjunction with Chris Warner, a licensed harvester in Georgetown. The farming method involves seeding the flat and then covering with protective nylon netting.
