Puget Sound shellfish growers are looking — with questions — to the North Olympic Peninsula to raise the world’s biggest burrowing clam.
And state lawmakers are awaiting a state Department of Natural Resources’ recommendation whether state aquatic lands should be used for geoduck aquaculture.
With more than 20,000 acres of ocean and shoreline geoduck beds around Puget Sound — including about 90 acres now cultivating the clam — state officials say geoducks make up 25 percent of the Sound’s total marine biomass.
Commercial growing of geoducks in Clallam and Jefferson counties largely depends on the future of water quality, business and government representative say.
“It’s questionable whether we’d be able to do it in Clallam County or not,” said Robin Downey, Pacific Coast Shellfish Growers Association executive director.
Downey, her husband, Peter, and Seattle Shellfish Co. president Joe Gibbons are in the process of leasing about five private acres in Discovery Bay where they plan to plant Geoduck seeds.
To the west at the head of Sequim Bay, the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe will plant about 13,000 geoduck seeds on an acres of tribal shoreline next month, Kelly Toy, the tribe’s shellfish manager, said of the pilot project.
Sequim and Dungeness
The tribe has other clam and oyster beds in Sequim and Dungeness bays, although the Dungeness Bay beds are threatened by growing pollution, much of which is linked to increasing Dungeness Valley development.
“It will take about five years for the project to show results,” said Toy.
“We’ll check them next year and monitor the survival rate. If it looks good, we’ll plant some more.”
The tribe operates the largest export operation of wild geoducks on the Peninsula, selling thousands of pounds of the clam each year, mainly to China where the giant bivalve is considered a delicacy.
With private cultivation of geoducks taking shape on the Peninsula, the 2003 state Legislature directed the state Department of Natural Resources to develop a pilot project proposal to study the feasibility of geoduck aquaculture on the tidelands and submerged lands that DNR manages in Puget Sound as public trust.
“We’ve gone to Legislature trying to get them to open up DNR lands for aquaculture,” said Downey, adding that geoduck divers are beginning to report declining stocks in the region’s deeper waters.