By
FRANK CARINI/ecoRI News staff
Shellfisherman Dan Briggs
blames the discoloration of soft-shell clams on the amount of chlorine being
used at wastewater treatment facilities. He believes the buildup of chlorine in
Narragansett Bay is having unintended consequences. (Joanna Detz/ecoRI News
photos)
Dan
Briggs is afraid he’s losing his job. That explains his angry posts to social
media this summer. His venting, however, isn’t doing anything to solve the
problem, but at least his boss doesn’t mind.
For
the past 20 years, the South Kingstown resident has run a one-man commercial
operation that sells streamers — dug by hand, with help from a short rake —
from tidal areas throughout Narragansett Bay.
The soft-shell clams he’s digging
up now — far fewer than he was a dozen years ago — often don’t look right, at
least when it comes to the color of their shells. He stopped eating his own
catch several years ago.
“I
know this is bad advertising for my business, but I want the bay cleaned up,”
said Briggs, who comes from a long line of quahoggers and diggers. “I just want
a cleaner bay, a better protected bay, so I can keep my job and sell
high-quality shellfish. But we don’t care about cleaning up spots; we just
cover our asses and close them to shellfishing.”
ecoRI
News recently spent a Saturday morning with the frustrated fisherman. We meet
him at Bissel Cove, which, according to the Environmental Protection Agency,
was an impaired waterbody in 2014, 2012 and 2010 when it came to shellfish
consumption.
Rhode Island’s 2014 list of impaired waters also
noted that Bissel Cove didn't support the consumption of shellfish, because of
the presence of fecal coliform.
Briggs
took us to two spots that he said once supported plenty of steamers. Today,
both locations — Fox Island, a short boat ride from the shore of Bissel Cove,
and the western shore of Jamestown — are largely graveyards for bleached clam
shells.
Our
guide blames the discoloration of the shells — and his dying livelihood — on
the amount of chlorine being used at wastewater treatment plants to kill
pathogens.
He doesn’t buy the argument that the ultraviolet systems used at
these facilities to remove chlorine before the treated effluent is released
into Narragansett Bay is adequately addressing the accumulation of this element
in the Ocean State’s most important natural resource.
His eyes, and years of
shellfishing experience, tell him something is wrong.
“We
can’t continue to treat the bay like everyone’s private leach field,” Briggs
said. “We’re dumping too much chlorine into the bay.”
The
use of chlorine is reducing the amount of bacteria in Narragansett Bay, but
Briggs believes the buildup of this element is having unintended and overlooked
consequences. “Do you want to eat a bleached-out white clam?” he asked.
Chlorine
at concentrations to bleach shells would be toxic to bivalves, according to
scientists and researchers ecoRI News contacted after our late-July visit with
Briggs. It's doubtful, they said, that that much chlorine was being released
into Narragansett Bay, because of dechlorination procedures being conducted at
wastewater treatment facilities to comply with the Clean Water Act.
Michael
Rice, Ph.D., professor of fisheries and aquaculture in the Department of
Fisheries, Animal & Veterinary Science at the University of Rhode Island,
said the bleaching phenomenon in many species of clams can be caused by acidic
bottom conditions, mostly in coves, brought about by summer decomposition of
organic material that builds up during colder months.
"Microbial
decomposition converts the organic sediments to carbon dioxide that causes
local areas of low pH (acidic conditions) that erode the outer layers of the shells
leaving chalky white surfaces," he wrote in an e-mail to ecoRI News.
"Quahogs coming out of Greenwich Cove look like this often. The bad side
of this is that steamers are less tolerant of these types of conditions than
the quahogs that have a thicker shell."
Marta
Gomez-Chiarri, Ph.D., chairwoman of URI's Department of Fisheries, Animal &
Veterinary Science, said biogeochemical reactions may lead to conditions in
sediments that can lead to the bleaching of shells.
"Of
course, these are all hypothesis, and I don’t know of anybody that has tested
them rigorously or done any measurements in the field to check if chlorine is
present in areas where the bleaching occurs," she wrote in an e-mail.
"This is a great question for researchers, and something that fishermen
(not only clam diggers, but also lobstermen) have been interested in having
scientists study."
Dan Briggs, a longtime
shellfisherman, often finds more dead shells than live steamers after flipping
a section of a tidal area.
On
the Jamestown shore, Briggs flipped a dozen or so spots, typically finding more
dead shells than live steamers. On one flip, he counted 14 dead and just three
alive. The shells of both featured a lot of white. He noted that the percentage
of dead steamers to live ones is disturbing.
“There’s
nothing but dead shell here,” Briggs said. “No babies tells me there’s nothing
here. Something is killing them.”
Ribbon
worms alone can’t be held responsible, but David Gregg, Ph.D., executive
director of the Rhode
Island Natural History Survey, said research shows steamers are
being affected by green crabs.
On
the banks of Fox Island a little later, nearly a dozen more flips with his
short rake exposed an even bleaker picture. Briggs uncovered only a handful of
live steamers, but plenty of whitewashed dead shells.
He said the same picture
exists in once-fertile spots around the Jamestown and Newport bridges and along
Prudence Island.
“Chlorine
is killing them,” Briggs said. “There must be other ways to treat our sewage
than dump it in the bay. I’m not a scientist, but there must be a better way to
collect and treat our sewage.”
Chlorine
is widely used as a disinfectant for sewage treatment plant effluent and to
treat combined sewer overflow discharges. Chlorine can cause environmental harm
at low levels, and is especially harmful to organisms that live in water.
It
combines with inorganic material in water to form chloride salts, and with
organic material in water to form chlorinated organic chemicals.
The
impact of chlorine use in wastewater treatment facilities on shellfish health,
however, is largely unknown, as little research has been conducted, anywhere.
"I’m
sure chlorine in effluent does bad things but bleaching steamers white isn’t
one of them," Gregg wrote in an e-mail.
He
also noted that chalky shells "are more likely a symptom of ocean
acidification caused by too much carbon dioxide in the air from burning fossil
fuels."
Gregg said he couldn't confirm that Narragansett Bay is more
acidic now than before, but noted that chalky shells "is what I would
think it could look like."
Briggs
is one of the last remaining shellfishermen dry digging for steamers in Narragansett
Bay tidal areas. His income dropped by $15,000 last year, despite working 300
days in 2015.
A typical day means flipping some 200 square feet of coastline.
He’s having a harder time filling his tall white buckets with steamers, which
he currently sells for $4.50 a pound wholesale.
Briggs
said state and local officials can’t just blame the disappearance of steamers —
and other marine species — on overdigging or overfishing.
“We’re
polluting the bay with chlorine and poop,” he said. “All the regulations, all
the paperwork, are on us. We just can’t hide all this sludge in the bay. I love
my job. That’s why I’m complaining.”
