The quahoggers themselves have a
hand in ensuring the long-term viability
of the harvest, too, by helping to grow quahog
seed and transplanting them around
the bay. They also helped to establish
the Rhode Island Commercial Fisheries
Research Foundation to conduct research
to support the sustainability of southern
New England fisheries.
Thomas Heimann, a fisheries scientist
at the foundation, says there is a “fairly
substantial” distrust between the industry
and the state in how quahogs are being
managed, especially over DEM’s use of
a hydraulic dredge to assess the quahog
population. “DEM is basing the entire
abundance estimates on a survey the industry
says doesn’t catch quahogs well even
in the best conditions,” Heimann says.
So the fisheries foundation launched a
Quahog Research Fleet in 2016 to compare
the efficiency of bullraking to the hydraulic
dredge. It found that bullraking is a
more efficient harvest method, meaning
that DEM has probably been underestimating
the number of quahogs in the bay.
“The fishermen love that they were right,
but it didn’t change any of the long-term
trends in quahog abundance in the bay,”
says Heimann.
Three hours into his fourhour
workday, Jody King
notices a slight breeze in
the air. Glancing at his boat’s
GPS, he notes that the boat is now drifting
at .27 miles per hour, just below what he
considers the ideal speed for quahogging.
It enables him to rake at a faster pace
while using less energy. After ten minutes,
he hauls in his rake, sorts his catch and
announces, “That’s thirty-five bucks just
for pawing around on the bottom. I need
ten hauls a day like that.”
But he doesn’t get even one more.
Instead, after slipping his rake into the
water one last time and digging for a few
minutes, he feels it strike a large rock on
the bottom, which causes him to twist
the rake. “I probably just dumped forty
quahogs on that rock,” King says. “But
that’s okay. I’ll get them next time. It’s
part of the deal.”
As he disassembles his stales and packs
his equipment, he bags up a total of 221
littlenecks and a handful of topnecks.
“Not a great day, not a good day, but not
a bad day,” he says. “God said, ‘No clams
for you today.’ ” �
RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l AUGUST 2020 111