Red tide forces clam diggers onto dry land

A light northeasterly breeze blows across the Rowley clam flats on this early summer morning, just enough to keep the midges and deer flies in a holding pattern. Off in the distance, an azure sky meets the ocean. The tide will be low for several more hours.

On most days like this, Gump Grundstrom would hitch his boat trailer to his truck and haul a 14-foot skiff to the boat landing.

He would make the short trip up the Rowley River to the clam flat and dig for four hours, filling a pile of old onion bags with softshell clams until he had harvested 180 pounds - the legal daily limit for commercial clam diggers.

At $2 a pound, this would be a pretty good day's work.

But on this day, and many others, Grundstrom will forgo the flats. Instead, he'll be at the controls of a commercial lawnmower because the pesky and potentially deadly microscopic algae known as red tide has forced closure of the flats, and he has to make a living.

For diggers like Grundstrom, this is nothing new. Summer bouts with red tide have been almost routine since the late 1970s, and this year is no different.

Just weeks after imposing a ban on all shellfish harvesting from the New Hampshire border to Cape Cod due to an expanding outbreak of red tide (paralytic shellfish poisoning), the Division of Marine Fisheries reopened clam flats last week for the harvesting of soft-shelled clams in Essex, Ipswich, and Gloucester.

But despite the good news, flats in Newbury and Rowley remain closed, and all areas remain closed to harvesting of mussels and oysters. There is also no guarantee that the reopened flats will stay open.

Red tide carries a toxin absorbed by shellfish when they filter algae from seawater as food. The shellfish digest the algae in the same way that a rabbit digests grass. Toxins contained in the algae remain in the flesh of the shellfish, causing no harm to the shellfish but representing a significant threat if consumed by humans.

"You could die from it," said Don Anderson, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. "Consume just a small quantity and you could get very ill. It shuts off your ability to breathe; it is a potent toxin, and it is found all over the world."

But how much should shellfish consumers worry?

Not a whole lot, according to David Whittaker, senior marine biologist at the state Division of Marine Fisheries.

The division begins weekly monitoring of shellfish for red tide in April and continues through November.

At the first sign of an outbreak in Maine, monitoring efforts are stepped up even more.

Prevailing northeast winds that carry the algae blooms south from the Gulf of Maine to the Massachusetts coast make concentrations of red tide blooms in Maine a good indicator of things to come.

"Testing is almost a mantra with us," Whittaker said. "We test extensively - three to five times per week when we have an event. Consumers in Massachusetts can feel very safe about shellfish coming from our waters."

Red tide toxicity was discovered in Maine for the first time in 1958, but according to Anderson, it has probably been around for hundreds or even thousands of years.

The Woods Hole approach to red tide is to monitor. And while there are parasites that can control outbreaks, Anderson said that societal acceptance of using them could present a problem.

Of course the consequences of a major red tide outbreak go beyond health concerns.

With an estimated 300 diggers working the flats from Gloucester to Newbury, shellfish harvesting adds millions of dollars to the North Shore from digging alone.

As Rowley shellfish constable Jack Grundstrom tells it, a commercial digger "worth his salt" can harvest the maximum 180 pounds of clams a day allowed.

"At $2 per pound, if we get 210 days of digging [the number of days the flats were open in 2007], clamming has the potential to generate almost $23 million annually from digging," he said.

Jack Grundstrom said the industry uses a market multiplier of seven for certain intangibles, like restaurant servers and workers, clam shuckers, and food and fuel consumed by diggers. Using the multiplier, he estimates that clam harvesting contributes close to $160 million to the local economy.

For Jack's son Gump, a fifth-generation digger, red tide means having typical odd jobs lined up - mowing lawns, shoveling snow in winter, cleaning out basements and garages - and some that are kind of bizarre.

"A few years back, I dug up four dead cats for a woman who refused to sell her house until she had them cremated," Gump Grundstrom said. "It was like they were buried in little beds. The lady offered me $300 to do the job, but I charged her only $150 because the work was easy, and that's a true story."

In addition to red tide closures, environmental regulations require closures for five days after a half-inch of rainfall, making the window for cashing in on clamming even smaller.

Last year, the flats were closed for 125 days because of excessive rainfall.

In 2005, the local flats were closed for 60 days during the last widespread red tide outbreak.

"This is a tough job; I walked into it, and I can't blame anybody. I drive an old truck with 300,000 miles on it, but I feel more sorry for the guy at GE who loses his job," said Gump, whose real name is John.

Steve Woodman, owner of Woodman's Restaurant on the Essex Causeway, agrees that clamming alone is no longer a livelihood and that young people have lost interest in the business.

"When I was a kid, in the late '60s, it was the best summer job. You could work for three to four hours and make more money in a shorter time than you would if you did just about anything else. When you were finished, you had the best playground in the world - the back side of Crane Beach. Today it's different."

Local clam shacks like Woodman's maintain their supply of clams by tapping into supplies from parts of Maine and Cape Cod that are not affected by the red tide.

But for clammers, red tide means a lot of down time with no income.

"I cannot imagine doing anything else," Gump Grundstrom said of his life digging on the remote flats. "This is the only thing I want to do, and I want the digging end. It's like a guy golfing; I can't wait to get out clamming."