Maine news, sports, weather from Waterville Morning Sentinel

Moon snails are destroying clam

BY SHARON KILEY MACK

LUBEC -- Clam diggers in the Lubec area are fighting a devastating predator, moon snails, and are desperate for help.

Landings of softshell clams in the Cobscook Bay area have decreased 100 percent in the last two decades, Dr. Brian Beal of the University of Maine at Machias said Friday, and moon snails are to blame.

The explosion in the moon snail population seems to be concentrated Down East, a loss confirmed by more than a dozen clam diggers who attended a Lubec Shellfish Committee meeting Friday.

Beal said that last spring volunteers collected snails and collars -- the sand-constructed egg cases of the snails -- and in one area in Lubec, 3,273 collars were collected in one day. Each collar contains 1.3 million moon snail eggs.

"If you were a clam digger in Freeport right now, you could dig five bushels of clams at low tide," Beal told more than a dozen diggers gathered in Lubec on Friday. But pickings are mighty slim in Cobscook, he said, an area where 5 million clams were dug not too many years ago.

"The saddest thing of all is that this is not a sardine plant. This is not a paper mill. When 100 jobs are lost in the clam industry in Lubec, nobody pays attention," Beal said. "This is a human loss."

Lubec has the largest clam flat area in the state and the smallest yield due to the predator moon snail.

"This is a community issue," digger Julie Keene of Trescott said. "It's about a heck of a lot more than just clams. We've been reduced to picking [periwinkles]. We're starving. We're losing our homes."

Clammer Shawn Tinker said, "Yesterday, we had some clam diggers come up here from southern Maine. They couldn't even get a bushel and they'll never come back again."

Beal recently conducted scientific trials in the Haul Up bay area of Lubec. His findings revealed that the carnivorous moon snails are having a catastrophic effect on soft-shelled clams.

Beal seeded the clam flats at Haul Up with 1.5 million juvenile clams in May 2008. When the clams were retrieved in November, 80 percent were dead.

"We expected death and destruction, and we found it. This is pathetic," he said. In addition to finding the dead clams -- each with the trademark circular hole bored into their shells by the moon snail -- Beal found hundreds of the egg-filled collars.

Once a productive clam bed, the Haul Up is barren today. "There are no clams there now," Beal said.

"If this is a microcosm of what is going on in the rest of Lubec, this is a very big deal. These snails are wreaking havoc and it is scary," Beal said. Although green crabs, not a native species, also eat clams, Beal said the majority of damage is done by the snails.

How serious is the problem? One digger summed up thusly: ""I used to be a clammer when you could still find clams," he said.

The diggers appealed to John P. Graham, Rep. Michael Michaud's Deputy Chief of Staff, for help, particularly in light of Beal's recent denial by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for a grant that would not only have decreased the moon snail population, but would have put dozens of local people to work mitigating the losses.

Beal's grant would have provided seasonal jobs for 40 shellfish restoration workers, five hatchery jobs and two field coordinators. His plan was to restore and enhance the clam flats.

With the loss of the grant, Beal and the clam diggers are resorting to removing any moon snails and collars on a volunteer basis.

Other options discussed were marketing the moon snails -- they are a delicacy in Korea.

Following the meeting, Graham said Michaud had sent him to hear the clam diggers' concerns.

"Boy, I'm glad I'm here," he told the clammers. "We have heard you loud and clear." Graham said he would immediately begin looking into how Michaud could help Beal obtain some restoration and mitigation grants.