No Clams from Long Island's Great South Bay

The south shore of Long Island is alien territory to me butI remember looking down from an airplane landing at Kennedy a few years ago and being amazed at the extent of the shallow bays and estuaries there. Hard to believe then that clams -- Mercenaria mercenaria -- are virtually gone from the Great South Bay. Also hard to believe that there's a bloom of algae occurring now that stretches from Massapequa to Shinnecock. Senator Schumer and some others want federal disaster relief for the Great South Bay's clammers, similar to the disaster relief that Long Island Sound lobstermen got after the 1999 die-off. Newsday wrote about it, here,