GEORGETOWN

Though the Maine clamming industry is having one of its best years ever, there are factors creeping in around the edges that will threaten the industry’s viability in the coming years.

The over-arching specter of warming ocean waters brings with it a host of more immediate issues, including the advancement of green crabs and their subsequent feasting on soft-shell clams. John Hagan, president of the nonprofit science group Manomet, may have come up with a solution to the problem with his Heal Eddy Clam Farm.

“The challenge here is how do we keep the soft-shell clam industry going when there are these invasive predators around,” said Hagan, who along with landowner John “Jay” Holt has created the first large-scale aquaculture clamming farm in Maine on Holt’s Bay Point property in Georgetown. “One way that seems to work is seeding the flats with baby seed clams and covering them with nets. The green crabs can’t get in, the baby clams grow up, and you remove and harvest the clam.”

The nets are made out of plastic mesh and set out over an acre of mud flats that are only exposed at low tide. Each net is 14 feet by 20 feet and can hold between 2,500 and 8,000 clams. It takes three growing seasons for the clams to reach commercial size, about two years and three months.

The clams currently growing at Heal Eddy are in their third year, and will be ready to harvest this October. Hagan walks the nets once a month to check for damage and to determine how the clams are growing, keeping meticulous records in the process.

“We are looking at different clam densities to determine the optimum yield,” said Hagan. “Some nets have different sized mesh, some have netting and no seeding, and some have seeding but no netting. We know the netting works because as you walk by the nets you can see lots of clam holes under the nets and no clam holes between the nets. It’s just a question of how much financially do you get out of it. Putting the nets out is a lot of work, so you want to make (the clams) as dense as you can. But if you make it too dense, you run the risk of (shell) breakage.”

Hagan pointed out that Heal Eddy is a sub-productive site, meaning that wild clams can grow there but there were hardly any present before farming began.

“The wild clam harvesters don’t like you putting a farm on their productive sites, so we chose sub-productive,” said Hagan.

Holt, who is a third-generation landowner in Georgetown, added, “You don’t put nets where there have never been clams before. Even with sub-productive sites, clams have been there at one time.”

Hagan stressed that while Heal Eddy is technically an aquaculture setup, there is no feed or antibiotics spilling into the water.

“There’s nothing in the water here except seed and nets,” Hagan said. “Clams filter the water, so if anything the water is cleaner (than when we started).”

Hagan and Holt explained that clams also produce “spat,” microscopic larvae that travels with the tidal currents and seeds clam flats to the south.

“(Commercial clammers) in Georgetown rely on spat from Penobscot Bay and Washington County,” Holt said. “What we planted here is attracting that spat to land here, and we know that’s true because we can tell hatchery clams from wild clams, and we find a lot of wild clams underneath our nets.”

Having more nets like the ones at Heal Eddy will theoretically boost Maine’s clamming industry during a time of uncertainty. Even though Maine is in the midst of a strong clamming season, prices for local soft-shell clams are rising, forcing most restaurants to purchase clams from Canada, where they are much cheaper.

“Canada doesn’t have under-size limits, and our undersize limit (in Maine) is two inches,” said Holt. “Market demand is driving up the price. It’s $140-160 a bushel right now, and Canada’s are much cheaper. They can afford to dig them because they subsidize health care. We can’t compete.”

Holt said most clams dug in Maine go to wholesalers who provide them to three-and-four-star restaurants in Portland and Boston. Local restaurants, like Five Islands Lobster Co. in Georgetown, have to go the Canadian route, Holt said.

Clam farming would help produce more clams locally, but is thus far suffering from a lack of regulations.

“The industry is like the Wild West, where the homesteaders and the cowboys are still in a fight,” said Holt. “Farming in the inner tidal zone is not protected by any fishing laws. My worry is the state of Maine has a great resource here and right now it’s managed by cowboy economics, free range.”

Holt believes if the green crab problem — and climate change in general — gets worse, this lack of regulations will “no longer suffice.”

“They won’t have to reinvent the wheel,” Holt said. “They have statutes on state laws from Massachusetts to Florida that protect inner tidal zones.”

Hagan agreed that something will have to be done in the long term.

“Some harvesters are quite skeptical (of clam farming), but if green crabs keep doing what they’re doing, we’re going to need this technique,” Hagan said. “There are some differences in opinion, and I totally get all of them.”

Though there are many hoops to jump through and a vast array of people to convince, Hagan sees clam farming as the future of the clamming industry.

“I think it will grow slowly,” said Hagan. “You want law-abiding landowners and a site that’s preferably sandy like this one. This farm takes up about an acre, and that’s all one harvester could really handle. There are about 1,200 acres of inner-tidal flats in Georgetown alone, and only 19 commercial harvesters currently. That’s 19 harvested acres in town out of 1,200.”

Said Holt: “We feel the future of the industry is probably farming.”

bgoodridge@timesrecord.com