U.S.A.
June 1, 2015
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 7
Geoduck farming takes off as demand for clams grows in Asia
By Phuong Le
The Associated Press
ARSTINE ISLAND, Wash. —
John King plunges his arm up to
his shoulder into the mudflats of
Puget Sound, roots around and soon pulls
from the muck the world’s largest
burrowing clam. The mollusk squirts
water from its long obscene-looking neck.
King dodges the spray, already using a
water hose to loosen sand and harvest the
next one.
Within hours, the geoduck (pronounced
gooey duck) is packed live on ice at nearby
Taylor Shellfish Farms — on its way to be
served raw as sashimi or added to hot-pot
dishes to satisfy a growing appetite for the
unique Pacific Northwest delicacy.
“It’s gained this luxury status. A big
driver is the growing middle class in
China,” said Gina Shamshak, an assistant
economics professor at Goucher College,
who has researched the geoduck market.
She added: “They want to consume the
higher-valued seafood items, and geoduck
is one of them.”
Last year, the U.S. exported $74 million,
or about 11 million pounds, worth of live
wild and farmed geoduck, mostly to China
and Hong Kong. That’s double the volume
and value exported in 2008. An average
clam weighs about two pounds and can
fetch up to $100 per pound overseas.
Demand in Asia is prompting shellfish
farmers to grow more of the clams along
Washington’s private tidelands. Several
new farms have been permitted in recent
years, despite challenges from opponents
concerned
about
plastic
pollution,
aesthetics, and potential environmental
harm.
And now, backed by new research
showing mostly short-lived, localized
environmental effects, the state is
preparing for the first time to lease 15
acres of public tidelands for geoduck
aquaculture.
The native geoduck, which comes from a
Native American word meaning “dig
deep,” has been dug recreationally in
Pacific Northwest intertidal areas for
decades, and it thrives in the inland
waters of Washington, Alaska, and British
Columbia.
But commercial harvests of wild clams
H
MUDFLATS OF MOLLUSKS. Pumped sea
water (left photo) is used to loosen the muck while
harvesting geoducks for Taylor Shellfish Farms near
Harstine Island, Washington. Demand in Asia for the
giant clams is prompting shellfish farmers to grow
more of the marine bivalve along Washington’s private
tidelands. Pictured above are slices of geoduck clam
served as sashimi at the Maneki Japanese restaurant
in Seattle, Washington. (AP Photos/Ted S. Warren)
didn’t begin until 1970 in Washington,
after divers discovered them aplenty in
Puget Sound and lawmakers established a
fishery. Commercial geoduck farming
followed in the mid-1990s, really taking off
in the last decade with modernized
growing techniques.
Today, geoduck aquaculture represents
one-tenth of the global geoduck market,
and Washington claims 90 percent of that
share, according to Shamshak.
“There are people interested in farming
geoduck. There’s a demand for them. It’s
lucrative,” said Laura Hoberecht, an
aquaculture coordinator with the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA). NOAA is working with local and
state agencies to make the shellfish
permitting process more efficient without
reducing the protections, she said.
Raising these unusual-looking clams
isn’t for the impatient, however. Growing
geoducks from seed to market takes five to
seven years and plenty of gear.
For Taylor Shellfish, the country’s
largest farmed shellfish producer, it
begins at its hatchery on the Hood Canal,
where wild geoducks are coaxed into
spawning eggs and sperm in a water tank.
Once fertilized, microscopic larvae are fed
algae, which the company grows itself on
site, for several weeks.
Then it’s off to a floating seed nursery in
south Puget Sound. Thousands of tiny
clams are placed in cages and lowered
below the water’s surface where they’ll
grow there for another year or so until it’s
time to be planted in the mudflats.
The half-dollar-sized clams are planted
several inches deep and protected for the
first one or two years by a six-inch
diameter PVC tube or mesh pipe inserted
into the mud with several inches exposed.
The pipe is covered with plastic netting or
canopies to keep away birds, fish, and
other predators.
“It’s relatively slow and steady. A big
challenge has been getting these farms
permitted,” said Bill Dewey, a spokesman
for Taylor.
One major roadblock has been
opponents who have sued in court over
concerns about potential environmental
harm to salmon, eelgrass, and other
marine life.
“There’s no limit on aquaculture. They
want it all. At what point is there enough?”
said Laura Hendricks, with the Coalition
to Protect Puget Sound Habitat. She
worries the region’s tidelands are turning
into industrial farms and questions the
long-term,
cumulative
impacts
of
intensive farming where thousands of
clams are planted with plastic gear and
nets.
Several studies by University of
Talking Story: Simply solid, Portland
Continued from page 6
dignify our families, is hard. So hard.
It’s all so unjust. It’s all so paralyzing.
And then, something really right
happens. A moment bringing it all
together. An instance so solidly, so
simply Portland. What remains of my
essay is about one of those, and what
we might learn from it.
At 2:45 on a Friday afternoon in
mayor Charlie Hales’ office, the
president of the Oregon Bhutanese
Community Organization (OBCO),
Deo Bhandari solemnly handed Mr.
Mayor a small mountain of 5-, 10-,
and 20-dollar bills. Plus two ziplock
baggies packed with silver. All of it
donated by Bhutanese Portlanders
since Nepal’s April 25 monster
earthquake.
Three weeks before the gathering,
a series of Himalaya quakes took
approximately 8,700 precious lives,
injured more than 16,000, and made
roughly 500,000 (almost as many as
Portland’s population) homeless.
At City Hall, it was a breathtaking
instance of poor Portlanders giving
what they have to even poorer people.
For River City, it was an instance of
the oceans and the histories, of the
neighborhoods and the politics, that
make us who and how we are.
Mayor
Hales
handed
Mr.
At Portland City Hall last month, members of the community witnessed the president of the Oregon
Bhutanese Community Organization (OBCO), Deo Bhandari (second from left), handing to Portland
mayor Charlie Hales (right) a small mountain of 5-, 10-, and 20-dollar bills as well as two ziplock
bags of coins — an instance of poor Portlanders giving what they have to even poorer people. Also
pictured are OBCO past president Chhabi Koirala (left) and Pax Bennett of Mercy Corps (second
from right).
Bhandari’s expression of compassion
to Pax Bennett and Jared Rowell,
community giving officer and South
Asia programs officer of the
Portland-based humanitarian relief
agency Mercy Corps.
In a voice that brought it all home,
OBCO
past-president
Chhabi
Koirala quietly added: “This is our
small gesture of gratitude to Nepal
for sheltering us, for more than two
decades, after the Kingdom of Bhutan
expelled us, and neighboring India
refused us.” A silence followed,
during which Portlanders both
settled and new, rich and poor,
shared a world of sorrow and common
cause. Bhutanese Oregonians had
delivered a New Portland narrative.
Of course, there are a thousand
daily instances of this River City
ethos, in our crowded schools, in our
crazy streets and robust workplaces.
This example’s not unique. But what
is rare is this reporting. Our telling
and retelling. Our relaxing into a
narrative as generous as the braiding
of 141 cascading tributaries into
rivers Willamette and Columbia, a
narrative as blessed as the auspicious
confluence of our two grand
matriarchs, right here. Right now.
Washington researchers found mostly
localized, transient effects from geoduck
farming.
“We didn’t see a lot of impacts of geoduck
aquaculture in the studies we performed,”
said P. Sean McDonald, a lecturer and
research scientist at the University of
Washington who co-authored several
studies.
He said they found short-lived effects to
some groups of animals in a few areas,
mostly because nets and PVC tubes
change the habitat dramatically, but the
effects of harvest are mostly negligible and
beaches appear to recover quickly
afterward.
He noted that some unanswered
questions remain, including what happens
to areas farmed year after year.
Dewey said Taylor and others have
adjusted practices to respond to
complaints, including trying out mesh nets
instead of PVC pipes and switching to
quieter pumps.
Back at Taylor’s farm, workers race
against the narrow window of extreme low
tide one recent morning, scanning for little
depressions in the sand, tell-tale signs of
clams burrowed below. The harvesters are
sunk up to their waists, working their hose
to liquefy sand around the clams below and
plopping them into orange crates.
Within hours the geoducks will be
air-shipped, headed to restaurants in
California and banquet tables in China.
Museum’s stolen bonsai tree
recovered, but severely pruned
FEDERAL WAY, Wash. (AP) — A valuable bonsai tree
stolen from a Federal Way museum has been recovered,
but museum officials say it doesn’t look the same after it
was severely pruned.
The executive director of the Pacific Bonsai Museum
says the thieves’ pruning job undid decades of careful
work to shape the 60-year-old San Jose juniper. Kathy
McCabe says the tree will survive, but it will take years to
restore it to the work of art it once was.
The bonsai tree, measuring about 16 inches tall, was
recovered two miles from the museum. Museum officials
received a tip and alerted police.
McCabe doesn’t know who took it or why. She’s just
grateful to have it back.
The tree was snatched from a public display on May 18.
It is estimated to be worth thousands of dollars.
The Asian Reporter
Foundation’s 17th annual
Scholarship & Awards
banquet airs on
Portland Community Media
cable channel 29 on:
n Saturday, June 6 at 2:30pm
n Sunday, June 7 at 8:00pm
For more information, call (503) 288-1515
or visit <www.pcmtv.org>.