![]() In addition to studying geoducks in the lab, Sizemore’s team of five divers check on geoduck beds in Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. “In 10 years, you would wipe out the population.” “Ten percent sounds like a pretty low number, but for a very long-lived animal with very low natural mortality, 10 percent is huge,” Sizemore says. That’s why the total allowable harvest rate is 2.7 percent - anything higher would not be sustainable. But each time a geoduck bed is harvested, it takes about 40 years for the population there to recover. Puget Sound has hundreds of millions of geoducks, a seemingly endless supply. “So you need to be very careful with the harvest rate.” “If you cut down a forest, it takes a very long time to come back,” Sizemore says. These slow-growing, long-lived clams have been called Puget Sound’s old-growth trees. And that information helps Sizemore’s team decide how many can safely be harvested. They were alive when Abraham Lincoln was president.”Ī cross section of a geoduck clam’s shell shows its growth rings. “They have rings that you can count, just like a tree,” says Bob Sizemore, turning a hard white shell over in his hands. They cut cross-sections and look at them under a microscope to determine how old they are and what kind of a life they’ve had. That’s in part, officials say, because of the ongoing scientific research that informs the harvest limit.įrom a WDFW lab in Olympia, Sizemore and his team study geoducks by analyzing their shells. I just continually try to rack my brain to try to figure out ways to tackle this.”ĭespite the black-market pressure, Washington’s wild geoduck fishery has been called one of the best-managed fisheries in the world. “Our biologists have confirmed that these areas are being poached. “I guess you always wonder what you’re missing,” Olson says. But they find no one who seems to be poaching geoduck or other shellfish. #Clam to horse clam to geo duck full#Over the course of two full nights, they will stop a handful of boats on the water. Olson and Peters continue patrolling the darkness. “Well, that was really anti-climatic,” he sighs after climbing back aboard the fish and wildlife boat. #Clam to horse clam to geo duck registration#Olson checks their registration and tells them they need to have an all-around light on their boat. They say they’re not harvesting tonight, just checking on some of their beds. Olson turns on the overhead police boat flashers. “It looks like they’re looking for something. “They’re supposed to have that all-around white light,” Olson says. ![]() Peters can barely make out a boat with a couple people on board. It’s another boat that’s running without any lights. He’s looking for small red dots offshore that could be a boat of divers illegally harvesting geoducks. Olson scans a fraction of that shoreline appearing on the radar screen. It is the hardest place to patrol, but we’ve got to give it a shot.” ![]() “The harvest location is the only place we’re locked solid in terms of if we caught someone poaching. Photo by Katie Campbell/KCTS9/EarthFix“We’re looking for anything and everything on the water tonight,” Olson says. Erik Olson, WFDW, patrols Puget Sound by night looking to catch shellfish poachers in the act. His partner, Officer Carly Peters, peers through night-vision binoculars, calling out directions to avoid floating logs or buoys. Erik Olson of Washington State Fish and Wildlife is at the helm. The boat is a Fish and Wildlife patrol vessel and Sgt. The motor’s hum and the faint spray of bioluminescence in the boat’s wake is the only evidence of its presence. A boat runs blind through the inky blackness - no onboard lights, no radar signals announcing the location. Clouds blot out the moon and the stars, making it nearly impossible to tell where the sky ends and the water begins. Those soaring prices have created an incentive for poachers back in Puget Sound, giving rise to an international black market.Ībout 90 percent of the geoducks harvested in the United States are sent to Asia, where they are served raw at sushi restaurants in Japan, used in soups and stews in Korea, or cooked in a fondue-style hot pot in China. Rising demand, especially among China’s growing middle class, has sent geoduck retail prices in Asia to as high as $150 per pound. Graphic from Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife At the same time, the overall value of geoduck prices has risen dramatically. The total amount of geoduck catch reported by fishers (landings) has remained fairly steady since a 2.7 percent harvest rate was established in the 1980s. ![]()
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