Kids Dig Clamming in Washington County

"Local shellfish dealer has harnessed area students to dig clams this summer creating 45+ well-paying part-time jobs. In these locales, hardworking kids took to area mudflats to earn money for their own cell phones, school clothes, classroom supplies and even their upcoming driver’s ed fees."

Published by Fisherman's Voice

Winter Weather is Tough on Clammers

By Stephen Rappaport

"The winter weather that is driving Mainers to distraction is making life even tougher than usual for Maine’s clam diggers. 

From the shores of Cobscook Bay way Downeast to Waldoboro on the Midcoast, diggers are struggling to get access to the softshell clams they harvest for a living."

Published by Fishery Nation

Digging in to Rebuild Bay’s Clam Fishery

by Edward French

A Pembroke seafood buyer is hoping to encourage more people to dig clams around Cobscook Bay and to rebuild the fishery by eventually offering a good, stable price for the product throughout the year. Tim Sheehan of Gulf of Maine, Inc. (GOM) has already helped get more people into the industry by assisting them with getting started in the fishery. A number of the new clam diggers are women, mostly Passamaquoddy.

"It's a pretty decent profession," Sheehan says. "I can see more people getting into this. I think it's something to be proud of. Who makes $30 to $50 an hour?"

Philomena Look of Pleasant Point comes from a family that digs clams and fishes for eels, halibut and lobsters. "My aunts and uncles and mom have dug since we were kids," she says. Although she has harvested periwinkles and fished for urchins, this has been her first summer digging clams commercially. "It's nice out there. It's peaceful work," she says, noting there are not many job opportunities in the area. Sometimes seven or eight members of the family will all be digging together. She appreciates that Gulf of Maine stays open late, waiting for the diggers to come in.

For an Eastport woman who began clamming three years ago, Gulf of Maine provided the $230 for license fees, which she paid off over two weeks, making about $30 a tide. "If it hadn't been for him, I never would have started clamming," she says of Sheehan. "It's one of the best things anyone could have done for me." She goes clamming from March or April to the start of the wreath season in October. With five children, she says clamming "supports the family. I make more in a day than most do in a week."

She clams for perhaps three hours a day, then has the rest of the time to spend with her children. Although the tide determines when one can dig, it also allows for a flexible work schedule.

Paul Francis of Pleasant Point, who digs part-time and has been averaging 100 pounds a day, says,

"When the price is good in the summer, you can make some money."

An average digger may harvest 40 or more pounds a day, for perhaps three hours of work. Diggers are presently receiving about $2 a pound, and seasoned diggers may get 100 pounds in a day and earn $200 or $300 during the summer. Although the work is hard, Sheehan notes, "That's pretty damn good pay." A clammer who needs money can work every day of the week, digging two tides a day, using LED headlamps at night.

Sheehan points out that in any profession there are barriers to getting started. To become a clam digger ones needs a license, equipment and transportation. Gulf of Maine has been helping people get started by providing the measuring rings for the 2" minimum size, the Department of Marine Resources license applications and tide charts. The company also sends out group text messages about the price, the tides for the day and a list of shellfish closed areas, so that diggers can access the information on their cell phones. "We're using technology to optimize the harvester base in the fishery," he says.

Sometimes Gulf of Maine will buy the license for a new digger, and the digger will pay the company back.

"There's some risk," says Sheehan, "but we've gotten a lot of loyal followers that way." GOM also sells the rollers that hold the clams, also called kibbens or hods, having sold 200 during the past two years, and the clam hoe and gloves. They've even loaned out boats. If a new digger doesn't have the money, the company may give them the equipment initially. "Within a week he can have the gear paid off," Sheehan says. But he notes that some people have child support payments or debts to pay off and "for some it takes all summer to pay us back."

The company has loaned out about $5,000 this year, with the harvesters having paid back all but $500 so far.

With the company providing assistance, the number of diggers who are selling to Gulf of Maine has grown from three dozen last year to about 130 this past summer. Gulf of Maine has been buying 50 to 60 bushels a day during the summer, paying out perhaps $5,000 each day into the community, seven days a week.
 

Rebuilding the Industry

Sheehan notes that there are different types of people who clam - year-round diggers, commercial fishermen who dig when they're not fishing, students who dig in the summer, and "pleasure diggers," who just work in the summer when the price is high.

While most harvesters don't clam year-round, Sheehan is trying to build a following of diggers so that he can continue buying throughout the year. "We're trying to come up with a way to buy and sell at a set price on a year-round basis," he says. "We want to pay $2 a pound year-round," so that harvesters would dig every month, knowing they could plan their family's budget on a definite price. Because the price goes up and down, the industry ends up attracting transient diggers. Sheehan believes a value-added product that's frozen and packaged is needed to provide a stable price.

"I'd like it to be more fair for the harvesters," he says, noting that steamers may sell for $6 a pound in the city but the digger only may earn $1 a pound. "It's a huge discrepancy," he says. "I'd rather have 50 good diggers and give them a guaranteed price with a value-added product to rebuild the industry."

The best price is from May to October, and then it drops to about $1 a pound. "Every winter it's been getting a little better," he says, noting it used to go down to 80 cents a pound.

Sheehan understands that there used to be hundreds of clam diggers around Cobscook Bay, with clammers able to dig a barrel or two in a tide. But the clam population has declined in this area, although it's still strong in some other areas of the coast.

He notes that having more clammers dig the flats helps the seed clams settle in better.

"With the hard-packed mud a little clam can't set up shop there."

Of those who dig clams, Sheehan observes, "It's a community of harvesters." The clammers all help each other with boats and rides. The atmosphere at the seafood buying station in Pembroke is "clean and friendly," he says, with a family atmosphere. The Sheehans give a scratch-off lottery ticket to everyone who brings in a bushel of clams, which he says is

"a built-in bonus" and "adds to the fun."

A sign on the wall at Gulf of Maine sums up the company's philosophy:

"Sell locally and help us build a business that offers better prices and local jobs."

Published by The Quoddy Tides

Washington County Seafood Business Sets up Workers

By Tom Groening

Gulf of Maine, Inc. using unique approach to land employees.

You can’t say Tim Sheehan hasn’t been creative in trying to grow his seafood business, Gulf of Maine Inc.

But trying to keep clam diggers working throughout the year—critical for the business, because restaurants want a steady supply—has left him at wit’s end. It also has hurt the business.

And it’s ironic, in a county that had an unemployment rate of 9.3 percent in July.

One of the creative steps Sheehan has taken is to buy clammers the licenses they need from the state and town, buy the digging and raking equipment and sometimes, even the boots they use. They repay him with their earnings over the first couple of weeks.

He estimates that he’s “fronted” money for about two dozen clammers in recent years. Still, that hasn’t bought him the loyalty he hoped it would.

Too often, he said, clammers can’t afford to lay out the $133 for the state license and between $100 and $200 for a town license, along with about $150 for boots, a roller and a digger.

“Half of them didn’t have licenses or equipment,” Sheehan said of those who have been providing him with shellfish. “All of a sudden, one would disappear and you’d realize he got caught,” clamming without a license.

Still, even by providing licenses and gear, he struggles to keep a crew of diggers providing him with product on a regular enough basis. Some workers leave him to pursue a more lucrative, though temporary, job, like “tipping,” cutting branches for Christmas wreaths.

“How do you tell a restaurant in New York City, ‘Well, it’s wreath season, so we can’t supply you with steamers’?” Sheehan asks. “I don’t have diggers that will go year-round.”

Digging clams is hard work, he readily admits. But he has evidence that if clammers committed to working several hours on most days over the course of the year, they could earn between $16 and $40 an hour. It’s not that he wants to impose a Calvinistic work ethic on Washington County. It’s just that restaurants want a reliable and steady supplier, he explained.

Finding Solutions

Sheehan also has been creative with advertising, reasoning that prospective clam diggers may be wary of the job, thinking there’s a trick to finding the critters. So he’s posted ads on the Craig’s List web site, seeking “trench diggers,” and dangling that $16-$40 per hour pay.

It wasn’t always so tough. Sheehan launched Gulf of Maine Inc. in 2002 as a company that provided sea organisms to colleges and universities, research centers and aquariums.

“The New England Aquarium used to call us,” seeking hermit crabs, sea anemones and spending “thousands of dollars at a time.”

So did Brown, Middlebury and Harvard universities. The business was selling 300-400 different marine species, even different kinds of plankton.

“That’s what our bread and butter was,” Sheehan said.

But when the recession hit, instead of ordering bloodworms for $5 a piece, those researchers must have decided to head to a local bait shop and buy them at 50 cents a piece, he said.

NORTH BY DOWNEAST

Sheehan, 46, a native of Patten in Aroostook County, earned a degree in biology with a concentration in marine studies at the University of Maine. He settled in Washington County as a biology teacher in Baileyville, then started a seasonal eco-tour business called Tidal Trails. With captain’s and master guide licenses, he offered lighthouse tours and charter fishing on his boat.

Then came the sea creatures business. After the recession took its toll on the scientific supply side, Sheehan got into seafood. He provides markets in southern New England with several kinds of seafood, but clams provide a good example of the region’s challenges.

“We’re in Washington County, which is the toughest of the tough,” he said, so he understands the approach many take, which is to rake rockweed, paint houses, dig worms and clams, depending on what is paying best.

In the winter, clam diggers get 80 cents a pound. In the summer, when demand is high, they might get $2 per pound.

“The guys that are good can get a bushel a day,” he said, even digging just four hours a day. “If a fellow digs one bushel a day for 300 days a year, and if the price stays at $1.50 per pound, a digger could earn $22,000 a year.

While that’s still below poverty levels, it can go a long ways in that area, he said. His sons and some of their friends earned about $10,000 each during the summer months digging clams, he said.

Sheehan has developed an informal relationship with members of the Passamaquoddy Indian Tribe on the nearby Pleasant Point reservation. The majority of his harvesters are tribal members and are reliable, he said.

One of Sheehan’s ideas is to use the tribe to brand frozen seafood products and have the Passamaquoddys use their connections to have the shellfish sold to Indian casinos around the country.

If a steady market could be found for frozen seafood, he said, Gulf of Maine could employ people on site to shuck, cook and package all sort of seafood, from clams to lobster.

“If we had 30 people who would dig 30 bushels of clams a day and 10 shuckers,” the business would succeed, he said. “We have coolers, we have a forklift.”

Sheehan’s dilemma is not unique in the region, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating. Substance abuse remains a problem among the labor pool, he said, which is yet another obstacle.

“If I was in Kenya, buying sewing machines for women to make clothing on, the New York Times would write about me,” he said ruefully.

Published by Island Institute's Working Waterfront