Clam Dredge Impact on
Habitat Weighed

by Laurie Schreiber

PLYMOUTH, Mass.—The New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) recently weighed a potential clam dredge access framework among final Omnibus Essential Fish Habitat Amendment 2 measures that have been in development.

At NEFMC’s late-September meeting, NEFMC hear from some that hydraulic clam dredges just push sand out of the way and don’t damage bottom.

And from others, NEFMC heard the opposite.

Potential access would be in the northeast corner of the Great South Channel habitat management area (HMA), which is otherwise closed to all mobile bottom-tending gear. Potential access is also proposed throughout the Georges Shoal HMA.

In both cases, temporary exemption for the gear would extend for one year from the time of the amendment’s implementation. This most likely means exemptions would expire around June/July 2017.

According to NEFMC, the Great South Channel and Georges Shoal HMAs are important fishing areas. Catches in the New England region tend to be surfclams, not quahogs. Landings per unit of effort are very high on Georges Bank. The fishery operated in and around Georges Shoal in the 1980s; the area reopened in 2013 following a long-term paralytic shellfish poisoning closure, with test tows before 2013.

Clam vessels are equipped with vessel monitoring systems, and report using a clam logbook system.

The Habitat Committee earlier this year recommended that NEFMC initiate the framework adjustment to consider hydraulic clam dredge access within the two HMAs, which are approved in Amendment 2.

Jeff Pike, with BumbleBee Seafoods, earlier this year testified that his is one of the largest quahog processors.

“We’re concerned on the impact to the company,” Pike said. “What happens when we fail to designate open areas for clam dredges? We plan to work with the Plan Development Team and others to discriminate between habitats in need of protection and areas suitable for clam access. We want to work with you to make sure the fishery continues to operate in a sustainable way.”

Pike said an extension to the one-year exemption should be considered.

Jud Crawford, with Pew Environmental Trusts, said, “We’ve heard that the clamming would only be in sandy areas. How are we to be persuaded that they just fish in sandy areas and not the areas intended to be protected by the habitat plan? How do we know vessels don’t operate in sand and gravel?”

Jeff Kaelin, Lund Fisheries, NJ, asked whether protecting the habitat in these particular areas was worth eliminating a fishery worth tens of millions of dollars.

Dave Wallace, representing an ad hoc group of clam fishermen, shared Kaelin’s view and said NEFMC risked shutting down the small clam boats on Nantucket Shoals.

Wallace said the processing plants that process those clams would also be out of business.

“On Georges Bank, we may be able to find other areas for a short period of time, that have catch rates high enough to justify the expense of fishing out there, but the PSP monitoring and compliance costs are substantial,” Wallace said, according to a NEFMC transcript. “The value added to the economy from these landings is substantial, and is underrepresented by the landed value of shellstock alone.”

Crawford said the gear “is arguably the most damaging gear in this region,” according to the NEFMC transcript. “To allow access for the clammers in areas designated for habitat protection begs the question of why you have HMAs at all.”

“We need to find a way to make this work for the entire industry, ocean quahog and surfclam,” said Peter Hughes, adding, “One of the things I’d like to explain very quickly is that clamming is not fishing, where you can add ice to preserve the product at sea. Vessels have 36-48 hours to harvest the resource and transit to and from Georges Bank, so they need to operate on areas with very high catch per unit effort.”

Tom Slaughter, a surfclam fisherman who noted that he was fishing on Georges Bank during the mid-late 1980s prior to the PSP closure, said this is not a new fishery, according to the transcript. Slaughter said most vessels use dredges on the smaller end. He said tidal shifts can cause larger substrates to be uncovered, which causes dredges to catch on the coarser material. When this occurs, he said, fishermen move out of the area.

“We fish in these areas because it is where the clams are located,” Slaughter said. “We move around to allow the resource to recover back to high CPUE [catch per unit of effort], so we need that flexibility to move about within these areas.”

Slaughter added, “Closing these two areas to clamming would shut down the industry in New England.”

At the most recent discussion in September, Crawford reiterated his concern for the new HMAs. “These areas are supposed to improve conservation of essential fish habitat and conservation of benthic habitat,” said Crawford. “How can you set up new HMAs and set up two radically damaging gear types?” Crawford said NEFMC should either redefine where the HMAs should be, or keep the gear types out of them.

One man, with Sea Watch International Limited, a surf clam and ocean quahog processing company with a plant in New Bedford, Mass., said the plant depends on access to the surf clam resource on Georges Bank.

“The principles in the company I represent invested well over $1 million of their own money in developing protocols…to have access to Georges Bank,” he said. “And now we want to make an additional investment so that there are areas within this HMA where surf clam dredging will not harm the habitat of juvenile groundfish….We’ll show you with evidence that what we propose to do in certain limited areas will not harm habitat for juvenile groundfish…We ask for a reasonable timeframe to make the demonstration necessary in order to have access to this resource.”

According to the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, the Mid-Atlantic surf clam and ocean quahog fisheries exist from New England down to the Virginia coast. With the exception of the Maine mahogany quahog fishery, the fishery has operated under an individual transferable quota management system since 1990. The principal gear used in the fishery is the hydraulic clam dredge, which uses jets of water to dislodge ocean quahogs and surfclams from sediments. Based on the most recent stock assessments, Atlantic surfclams and ocean quahogs are not overfished, and overfishing is not occurring.

In the end, NEFMC voted to support the Habitat Committee’s recommendation to initiate a framework adjustment: “the surfclam/ocean quahog fishery will be granted a one-year exemption for the Great South Channel and Georges Shoal habitat management areas following implementation of Omnibus Habitat Amendment 2, which will allow the New England Council to consider development of an access program through a framework adjustment for this fishery. The Council intends through this action to identify areas within the Great South Channel and Georges Shoal Habitat Management Areas that are currently fished or contain high energy sand and gravel that could be suitable for a hydraulic clam dredging exemption that balances achieving optimum yield for the surfclam/ocean quahog fishery with the requirement to minimize adverse fishing effects on habitat to the extent practicable and is consistent with the underlying objectives of Omnibus Habitat Amendment 2.”