Rush on California clam stocks spurs temporary ban on hydraulic pumps

Immature clam larvae settle at least a foot or two under the mud or sand, where they mature, growing to as much as 5 pounds. Tubelike siphons that extend to the surface allow them to filter food out of the ocean water. When the tide is out, their siphons make tiny holes on the surface of the beach or exposed sandbars, like the islands that appear at low tide in Tomales Bay, marking the clams’ presence.

Traditionally, clam diggers will use a shovel to remove the sand or soil around them — sometimes inserting a wide, stiff tube to prevent the area from caving in — until they get to the shellfish. A “good sportsman” will fill up the hole after harvesting a clam to protect any smaller clams around it, said Willy Vogler, a co-owner of Lawson’s Landing on Tomales Bay.

The hydraulic pumps look like large bicycle pumps and are typically assembled from parts available at most hardware stores, though increasingly they are turning up at tackle shops and elsewhere, Fish and Wildlife personnel said.

They include a cylinder with a water inlet at the base, compressor handle and a flexible tube with a rigid nozzle used to shoot a pressurized stream of water into the sand or mud flats around a clam. This liquefies the substrate, allowing the clammer to just reach for the targeted bivalve rather than having to dig down to one.

Since the base of the pump needs to be in several inches of water anyway, it also allows for clamming before and after low tide, as well as in areas that aren’t fully exposed during low tide.

Participants typically wear wet suits, with one lying in the water directing the nozzle and collecting clams. Being partially submerged also lends itself to concealing illegal conduct, including taking more clams than daily limits allow or high-grading for size — tossing smaller, legal clams back only after securing larger ones, which is illegal and nearly always results in the death of a clam that’s been dug up. By law, clam diggers can only keep the first 10 legal clams they dig up.

Harvest limits flouted

Fish and Wildlife personnel said wardens working in Tomales Bay on Saturday, Jan. 9 observed 180 people digging clams during an afternoon low tide, many of them working in teams with hydraulic pumps. Six groups contacted were cited for removing more than their allowed limit. The next day, 50 clammers came, and all the groups contacted were cited for high-grading, the agency said.

Wardens find they’re contacting and citing some of the same people time after time, Fish and Wildlife Lt. Ed Morton said.

On a single day last fall, seven poachers were fined between $582 and $3,372 for overtake of clams in Marin County Superior Court, Morton said.

“That’s almost $11,000 in fines, and people are continuing to do it, so that’s very concerning for the resource,” he said.

Even if everyone makes only his or her legal limit, the overall pressure on the clams is greater, since many, maybe most, clam diggers would go home without a getting a full bag limit using traditional means in the past.

A 2017 count of clammers conducted during low tides over three months put daily numbers between 339 and 554 people at Tomales Bay, state Fish and Wildlife said. Clam diggers need only a fishing license and don’t need to report their catch, so there is no real available harvest data, said Ian Kelmartin, an environmental scientist with the agency.

But if 400 people collected 10 clams each, that’s 4,000 a day — 8,000 if they are collecting 10 of both kinds.

Rush depletes shellfish stocks

Vogler, whose family’s operation at Dillon Beach has featured clam digging as a main attraction since the 1950s, said the impact has been clear.

Restrictions imposed by the California Coastal Commission cap Lawson’s Landing at 100 vehicles a day, but Vogler said it’s still possible to see that many more clams have been harvested over recent years, in part because of bigger groups coming through, with bigger buckets full of clams.

“Where there used to be just clams everywhere, like a carpet of clams, it’s not just that they’re getting hard to find, but there’s more space between them, and the size is going down,” he said. “Everyone around here, everyone who worked the landing, could see that it was happening.”

Something similar happened back in the 1990s, when visitors could ride the Lawson’s Landing Clam Clipper barge out to the sandbar for $10 a pop, 120 people at a time, eventually resulting in such diminishing clam numbers the barge was docked, Vogler said.

Vogler already had become concerned about increased harvests and use of the hydraulic pumps in 2019, as were Fish and Wildlife wardens, who were increasingly busy issuing citations and staging undercover enforcement actions. When Vogler consulted with the agency, they suggested he petition the commission to consider enacting restrictions on the hydraulic device.

The emergency approach was proposed when it became clear just how quickly the pressure on the clam population was exploding, Kelmartin said. “We’re not sure that it’s sustainable,” he said.

The emergency regulation prohibits use of the hydraulic pumps for the harvest of clams, sand crabs and shrimp, and requires each person to keep their clams in a separate container. It was approved for a 180-day period, with two possible 90-day extensions. Suction devices known as “shrimp guns,” “slurp guns” or “clam guns” are still allowed.

It is expected to take effect around March 8, though interested parties can still submit comments to the state Office of Administrative Law this week, at staff@oal.ca.gov.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.