Coast Lines

End of an Era. MA closes Plum Island clam cleaning plant.

The End of an Era

Plum Island

Late last winter I joined a bird watching group on the Merrimack River. We saw lots of bald eagles, cormorants and ducks, but what really intrigued me was the tide.

The day before, the last Nor’easter of the season had coincided with an extreme high course tide. Now, the river appeared to be flowing upstream above Newburyport.

The same appeared to be true at Cashman’s Landing but we finally figured it out. The tide was so high the incoming salt water was flowing upstream on top of the downstream flowing freshwater.

But we discovered the real problem at the north end of Plum Island. The storm had torn through the dunes and a river of water was flowing over the parking lot and into the state’s depuration plant.

The depuration plant consisted of a series of concrete tanks where clammers could purify clams they had dug from slightly contaminated areas. Now the whole facility was inundated.

Little did we know it, but we were watching the end of an era. The storm had so damaged the plant that the state had to hire a Norwood based engineering firm to evaluate whether it made sense to rebuild the plant.

They concluded that climate change was the main reason the clam fishery had collapsed over the past twenty years.

Warmer waters, ocean acidification surely play a role but I think they lost sight of the fact that clamming is damn hard that very few young people are willing to spend their whole life bent over a clam rake even if they can earn six figures during an occasional good year.

The firm also concluded that the north end of the island will probably wash away in twenty-five years. If so, it will truly be an end of an era for both clammers and Plum Island itself.