MANA 



By Cynthia Henderson • Photos by Scott Taylor 



Yankee ingenuity's got nothing on Carolina clam 

 fishers — although it could have something to 

 do with the research partnering of, in Eileen 

 Vandenburgh's words, "a girl from New Jersey and a 

 fisherman from Cedar Island." 



Vandenburgh, who grew up on the Jersey Shore 

 and is now a doctoral student in ecology at the 

 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the 

 Rachel Carson National Estuarine Research Reserve 

 System (NERRS), has been working with fisher Dallas 

 Goodwin to study the effects of mechanical clam 

 harvesting. Goodwin practices clam kicking — 

 an efficient fishing technology homegrown in Core 

 Sound that is extensively practiced, according to 

 Vandenburgh, only in North Carolina. 



Clam kicking is so efficient, in fact, that the 

 N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) has made 

 new regulatory changes for the practice — changes that Vandenburgh 

 recognized as a unique research opportunity. 



The DMF has closed an area of northern Core Sound to kicking for 

 two years as part of an ongoing rotation plan. During the time that Core 

 Sound is closed to kicking, an area never-before kicked, in southern 

 Pamlico Sound, will be open. The idea is to allow the overharvested 

 northern Core Sound to recover while the new area is being kicked. 

 Vandenburgh proposed sampling in spring and fall 2001 in the Pamlico 

 area before kicking began so that effects of the fishing technology can be 

 assessed. 



She found support for the research from the North Carolina Fishery 

 Resource Grant Program (FRG). Partnerships such as Goodwin and 

 Vandenburgh's have become the hallmark of FRG, which is funded by 

 the General Assembly and administered by North Carolina Sea Grant to 

 combine fishing expertise with academic research to improve and 

 protect the state's fishery resources. 



HOMEGROWN TECHNOLOGY 



According to an article by James Guthrie and Curtis Lewis of the 

 National Marine Fisheries Service in Beaufort, a form of clam kicking 

 started in the 1940s when sails were being replaced by small motors in 

 North Carolina fisheries. 



Fishers noticed clams were exposed — or kicked — by wash from 



I 



ABOVE: Eileen Vandenburgh and research 

 technician Jeff Smith carry equipment into the 

 shallow area of Middle Marsh during a predation 

 experiment with clams and stone crabs. 

 RIGHT: Vandeburgh holds an M. mercenaria 

 that's been attacked by a stone crab, while 

 Smith checks an experimental cage. 



propellers that passed 

 over them. Soon, 

 innovative clammers 

 were devising methods 

 to make use of the 

 phenomenon for 

 harvesting clams. One 

 method, believed to 

 have started at Harkers 

 Island, according to Guthrie and Lewis, was to anchor a boat and pass 

 it in an arc in shallow waters where clams lay buried in sandy bottoms. 



Bob Austin has fished commercially for more than 25 years and 

 can remember when clamming was a "subsistence fishery." 



But the fishery for hard clams — whose scientific name, 

 Mercenaria mercenaria, is reputed to have come from the clam shell's 

 use as money by native Americans — was to change dramatically as the 

 kicking method was perfected. 



Around 1980, Austin says, "People got real good at it." Boats were 

 made with deeper keels and with specialized flood bins to lower boats 

 into the water for more efficient kicking, he explains. 



"Efficiency was dramatically improved with the innovation of 

 topless nets, replacing nylon netting with steel rings and replacing the 

 net tail bag with a steel cage," he adds. 



16 HOLIDAY 2003 



