Clamming: a local way of life from page 1 (One retailer owner would ultimately refute that figure, saying that in wintertime clams from Massachusetts and the North Shore could be easily substituted to maintain the profit margin. However, he readily agreed that anyone buying South Shore Long Island clams was procuring among the best in (he world; and that other clams were poor subslutes indeed.) In many cases, restaurateurs will pay up to 30 cents for a little neck clam, and purchasing two bushels a day at 200 clams per increases both the clammers' bottom line and the restaurateur's bottom line when figuring in a charge of $7 or more for half-a-dozen clams. As Mr. Rossi skirted the bay in his "homegrown" flat-bottom boat that would give this reporter vertigo on even a calm day, heading east and eventually south to where we would find the clamming fields, Mr. Rossi first pointed to mid-Baldwin Bay and announced, "There are millions of clams in this bay and we want to meet with the state to see how we can get to them." He would become more specific later in the trip'about what he thinks can be accomplished to open the bay up to shellfishermen. Leaving the 5-mile-per-hour speed limit we picked up speed, terns oblivious to us and diving all around into the water to spear their morning catch of herring. Heading due east Mr. Rossi pointed to the narrow waterways between several channel islands we passed as areas some shell-" fishermen go down in order to dig for clams. They don't get many but, then, shellfishermen will look for any out-ofthe-way area where clams may be. "Some clammers have areas all their own that they may only get one bushel of
clams in spring, one iri summer and one in fall, and that's it. But they don't tell anyone else.'' Which leads to the question of whether shellfisherman are in competition with one another, and will find new fields in order to one-up other shellfisherman. There -is no competition, .he said, because they're all simply trying to make a living. "We'll work an area for a couple of days and then we'll go work another area because there are different areas to go to. And we don't want to deplete an area," he continued. Indeed, there has been dramatic depletion of the fields since the 1900s, remarked Roger Tollefsen, who told The Leader that "98 percent of all shellfishing has been depleted since the 1900s." He added, however, that between 1955 and 1975 the bays (the Great South Bay) were producing some 675,000 bushels annually, up from 60.000 bushels annually, suggesting that nitrogen levels were high enough for clams to grow. Now. he said, nitrogen levels are being attacked as detrimental to the health of the bays, levels which are, ironically enough, responsible for increases of clams at the same time. In fact, the Town of Hempstead's Department of Conservation and Waterways, with the help of the local Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), carefully scrutinizes shellfishermen's movements and catches using water constables to ensure too many clams are not being taken from the bay. "We currently license some 54 commercial shellfisherman," commented Ron Masters, the department's commissioner. Meanwhile, Mr. Rossi noted that while some shellfishernien may indeed have their favorite areas they like to clam, "We
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was not difficult to make comparisons with what this reporter then saw. There were three shcllfishcrmcn in water no deeper than their shins, as they bent over to forage clams from the sand. One even knell as he sliced the water. The striking pose could easily have been of workers in artichoke or potato fields in the west, or of workers bent over •in rice panics in the orient. This, apparently, was the vision of shellfishermen "harvesting" their crops. To be continued
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also tend to stick together for safety reasons, because we don't know what we're going to run into, like gelling cut bad on a piece of glass or broken shell" that requires immediate attention as they rummage the sand for clams. Additionally, sand can be too hard to work, depending on the time of season, so clammers have to move around to varying areas to see where the fields give up the clams. "Sand can be soft or too hard." he said. "Rakes won't go into hard sand because clams are lower than rake teeth can go in." He maintained that during the year there are some places that are hard which turn soft in the spring or summer. "We don't know why that happens." he offered, but they can harvest clams from that area once it turns soft. But when will one know when it turns from hard to soft'.' "To know when it turns we have to keep checking it. but we pretty much know when it will become soft." Then, he said, there are areas where the sand turns from soft to hard, and won't give up clams at all without a light. After a few minutes heading east we then turned southeast, maintaining our speed for a short distance before cutting power, turning a wide swath again anil then slowly idling up to our first field. It
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