Softshell clams flourished for centuries on the Passamaquoddy’s Pleasant Point Reservation, before overfishing and climate change.
Archaeological digs at ancient tribal sites have uncovered “middens,” or piles of discarded clamshells from generations of summer harvests, according to tribe member Brian Altvater.
But the population of adult softshell clams in the waters around the Sipayik peninsula have plummeted due to a century of overfishing, development, climate change and invasive species.
A group of volunteers from the tribe have created a community clam garden in an attempt to bring the species—and its historical role as a major tribal food source—back.
Altvater, 69, remembers digging clams for pocket change during his childhood.
“You could get clams by the bushel. But those days are gone,” he said.
Along the entire coast of Maine, softshell clam populations have declined by an estimated 85 percent in the past 50 years, according to the Downeast Institute.
“It’s out of control how fast it’s actually diminishing,” said Erik Francis, a Passamaquoddy tribe member and the steward of the community clam garden.
The clam flats available to the Passamaquoddy for harvesting are “pretty much barren,” Francis said.
The causeway between Sipayik and the city of Eastport has interrupted tidal flows and caused sediment to build up on the clam flats for nearly a century, destroying habitat.
Rising ocean temperatures have also made the Sipayik area more accessible to invasive green crabs, which can eat as many as 40 juvenile clams in a single day.
“The green crabs are actually our biggest competitor,” Francis said.
The loss of Sipayik’s wild clams has been a human tragedy as well as an environmental one. In November 2015, a 23-year-old tribe member named Majik Francis died after his canoe overturned while he was attempting to harvest clams in a nearby cove.
Majik had planned to sell the clams to afford Christmas gifts, including for his infant son. Without accessible clams nearer the shoreline, he and two friends paddled out into choppy and treacherous waters, Altvater said.
Majik’s two friends were able to swim to shore, but his body was only found after a three-day search.
“It was really terrible because, you know, when an older person passes, that’s really the cycle of life, but when somebody’s young and their life is just beginning …” Altvater said. “It really hurt the community.”
From his kitchen window, Altvater can see the cove where the trio’s canoe capsized.
In 2022, Altvater was part of the group of tribe members and nonprofits that launched a community clam garden to try to bring the mollusks back to Sipayik’s shores.
They started with 250,000 juvenile clams. Altvater’s wife and grandson were also part of the initial team that launched the gardens.
Erik Francis also began as a volunteer but now leads their efforts as the garden’s steward.
It has been a process of experimentation, he said. Their first crop of juvenile clams was almost entirely eaten by green crabs after they removed the plots’ protective nets for the winter.
The idea was that the cold weather would drive the crabs back into deeper waters, keeping the clams safe until spring. But the green crabs quickly proved them wrong, Francis said, and they had to change their approach.
“We found that out kind of the hard way, but now we have a good understanding,” he said.
Now the nets stay over the garden plots all year long, and volunteers monitor both the clams’ health and the green crabs’ behavior to keep the clams protected. Altvater said the nets seem to be helping—in fact, some of the plots’ populations have increased, a sign that wild clam seedlings have also settled there.
Bringing clam populations back to Sipayik is a game of patience. It takes three to four years for clams to mature to a harvestable size.
“With a regular garden, you know, you plant in the spring and harvest in the fall. But with this, you plant in the spring and in the fall three or five years later, you harvest,” Altvater said. “It’s a risk, but I think if you’re vigilant and do what you need to do, it’ll do OK.”
As of this summer, the Sipayik clam garden has 1.25 million clams spread across 170 plots.
Francis said the clams were looking healthy when volunteers sampled them in June, and he’s hoping to have the first community harvest next summer.
That harvest will open up mature plots for members of the Sipayik tribal community to dig, Francis said. He said he’d like to see the community’s children involved.
“We want everyone to benefit from what we’re doing here,” Altvater said.
A healthy clam population in the waters around Sipayik could become a supplementary income source for the tribe’s fishers and lobstermen, as well as a regular part of Sipayik residents’ diets.
Francis said he hopes the clam gardens will inspire former clam diggers in the community to pick the practice back up again, connecting them to thousands of years of tradition in Sipayik.
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.
