Ann Gellenbeck, Martin Stevens and Wyatt Stevens (right), from Yelm, dig for razor clams on Copalis Beach in May 2016.
A razor clam digging season that nearly never was has finally come to an end.
Domoic acid made headlines all year after arriving in a big blob of warmer ocean water and toxic algae last spring. That blob wound up shuttering the final round of digging opportunities early and then settled in over the summer and saturated clam beds to the point that the bivalves had a hard time flushing themselves clean.
At Twin Harbors, the density of domoic acid was so high that the clams are still coming in over the allowable threshold. As a result, those beaches were never allowed to open for digging in the fall of 2015 or the winter and spring of 2016.
In fact, the first digging day of the season, which typically arrives in early October, was not held until Christmas Eve when Copalis served as the location of the clam digging season’s greetings.
That three-day dig was the tip of a fast and furious iceberg that was to follow. In between the Christmas eve dig at Copalis and the final dig at Mocrocks on May 22, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife estimates that 327,545 digging trips were made between Long Beach, Mocrocks and Copalis, those trips resulted in the harvest of 4,665,743 succulent bivalves.
“Certainly for some beaches it turned out better than it might have,” said WDFW Coastal Shellfish Manager Dan Ayres. “We lost the fall season and we weren’t sure when we’d be able to open again.”
Despite that delayed start to the season, Ayres noted that the digging days nearly matched the record setting 2014-15 season when 104 digging days were offered on Washington’s beaches.
“You lose those fall tides and you can’t get them back, but we put the pedal to the metal, at least at Long Beach, and offered 95 days,” said Ayres of the 2015-16 offerings.
That full throttle opening at Long Beach included a wide-open offering that lasted from Feb. 4 through March 31. Typically, the WDFW adjusts digging days to the best low tides, but that opening went straight through in order to help diggers get their feet wet and for the business community to get its bearings.
“We found people digging on tides that we typically wouldn’t expect people to use and they were successful,” noted Ayers. He told of one digger who said he hit the jackpot during a plus 2.5 foot tide. “I just couldn’t believe it,” said Ayres.
Despite the digging blitz, only 59 percent of the allotted clams were dug at Long Beach this digging year.
“A lot of clams that we could have harvested we didn’t, and that’s not a bad thing because they will be there for the future,” Ayres said.
The openings at Mocrocks and Copalis were more limited than the wide open dig at Long Beach because the WDFW and the Quinault Tribe split both the clam resources and the digging days. Despite fewer days, some of the best results came from those sandy spits. Ayres said he dug some of the biggest clams he’s ever seen at Mocrocks near Pacific Beach this year. He added that area is not generally a hot bed for razor clams but this year they were showing for some reason. “Will they be there next year? Who knows. As big as they were they might be near the end of their life cycle.”
Ayres explained that a clam typically lives for about 5 years and the biggest clam he’s ever seen was about 7 inches long and fat enough to nearly fill his hand. He said he dug that girthy bivalve at Mocrocks a few years ago.
The news was not so good at Twin Harbors though, where the razor clam season shuttered early in May 2015 and has yet to reopen.
“Where it was good news for Long Beach and Ocean Shores, it was definitely not a great situation for Westport and Grayland and the other communities in Twin Harbors,” said Ayres. He noted one business owner who recently contacted him and explained that she is $10,000 behind in business that she can relate directly to a lack of clam tides. The business owner said that she will likely have to close up shop as a result. “That’s hard to hear for businesses like that,” said Ayres.
The allowable toxic threshold for domoic acid is set at 20 parts per million. From January through May, the count at Twin Harbors hovered around 30 parts per million. “It’s not new toxin. It’s just those clams got so high that they don’t want to lose it,” explained Ayres, who noted that the toxicity level did dip as low as 22 parts per million at one point before jolting back up again. “They just got a bigger shot of it (domoic acid) at Twin Harbors. Those clams certainly held onto it.”
As for when Twin Harbors may open again, Ayres was uncertain but used recent history at Kalaloch Beach as a guide. “There was a year a while ago at Kalaloch that took 18 months to open up again,” said Ayres, who added that he is hopeful for an opening at Twin Harbors this fall.
Ayres is also optimistic that the tides will provide good clams at the other area beaches once clam season rolls around again early next fall. “I think we’re going to have another great season ahead, short of another toxin outbreak,” said Ayres.
Although he warned that “long term speculations are really tough,” Ayres also noted that a cool La Nina weather pattern appears to be moving in to replace the warmer El Nino cycle. Ayres pointed out that warm water conditions are conducive to the algae that produces domoic acid and that the warm water “blob” that preceded the toxin marine conditions last year has since dissipated. Ayres said that if the cooler pattern holds its form, “That would be good news and would likely indicate that our biology won’t be a problem.”
On Wednesday Ayres was in Seattle learning about a new program being launched with the assistance of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that will help scientists to look into the future a little more precisely. Appropriately known as the ESP, the Environmental Sample Processor is a gauge that samples water conditions for plankton content and then sends the data back to dockside scientists via cellphone signal.
The ESP will be tethered to a buoy some 13 miles offshore of La Push. It will be the first time that an ESP device, also known as a “lab in a can,” will be deployed off the coast of Washington, although similar devices have been used successfully off the coast of Maine and California. Scientists had to develop a special bungie cord to hold the device securely in Washington’s notoriously “snarly” marine environment, said Ayres.
“We’ll have the ability to see what’s coming at us. If we knew far enough in advance we might step up our harvest a bit,” explained Ayres. “In theory we’ll be able to give fishers better advance warning so they can plan their vacations or give restaurants more advance warning so they can plan their ordering and staffing better.”
Ayres noted that even with the improved data there, WDFW officials and clam diggers alike will still be at the mercy of the weather and the tides. “There is no magic potion that you can spray across the ocean to make it all go away,” said Ayres.
The hope is that the improved data and advanced look at changing ocean conditions will allow the WDFW to communicate and plan more effectively in the future. This year, “We spent a lot of time talking to individuals and the news media and people trying to plan vacations. I did a lot of planning people’s vacations it seems like,” said Ayres. “But that’s OK. It’s part of what we do.”
