NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — October 6, 2013 — When Andrew Rencurrel finally fills his cargo hold and heads home after days raking the bottom of the sea, the captain of the large trawler makes a call that triggers a series of e-mails alerting state and federal officials, local labs, and dozens of others closely monitoring his lucrative haul.
Over the past five years, federal officials have allowed the Sea Watcher 1 to scoop up millions of pounds of clams from the bountiful waters of Georges Bank, something fishermen throughout the region have been banned from doing for more than two decades because of concerns about food poisoning.
Now, after federal officials have deemed the five-year trial a success, they’re allowing other fishermen to harvest the prized clam beds that for years provided the meat to fill chowder bowls around the world.
“We’re very careful,” Rencurrel said. “If we’re not, that could jeopardize everything.”
The National Marine Fisheries Service banned dragging for clams and other molluscan shellfish in Georges Bank in 1990, when state and federal officials found a spike in toxins that cause paralytic shellfish poisoning, which can be lethal. Fifteen years later, the agency barred clamming in an additional 15,000 square miles of seabed between much of the Massachusetts coast and Georges Bank when a massive bloom of single-celled algae that carries the toxins extended from northern Maine to Nantucket.
The scourge of the so-called red tide has halted business for thousands of clammers, oyster farmers, and mussel harvesters, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars over the years.
“There was great concern that we were closing shellfish beds and not doing anything to reopen them,” said Stacey DeGrasse, a marine biotoxin specialist at the US Food and Drug Administration, noting scientists have yet to understand what has caused the large algae blooms in recent years.
Read the full story at the Boston Globe