Shellfish at the Farmers Market

Is it true that they sell clams, oysters and lobsters from Long Island Sound at the Wooster Square Farmers Market in New Haven? Apparently it is, if this blog post and this website are to be believed. What a great idea. Dolan Brothers Shellfish Company is the purveyor; Norm Bloom, of the famous Tallmadge Brothers family, is a co-owner.

Clean Water, Piscatorial and Bivalvular Rights, and Sunbathing Nuns

My earliest memories include a clear recollection of the waters off Staten Island’s south shore being clean enough for swimming – Midland Beach, Great Kills, Wolf’s Pond Park, Arbutus Beach, which was my favorite because of the odd name (I had no idea that trailing arbutus was a local wildflower) and because next to it, screened by a wooden fence, was a private beach that my mother told us was for nuns. Nuns went to the beach!? Did they sit on beach chairs in their black habits? Did they wear outlandishly old-fashioned bathing suits out of modesty? I remember the beach and I remember the fence but I never got a look over or under it, and so whatever was happening remained a mystery.

One of my other early memories is of the water on the south shore suddenly becoming polluted, swimming being banned, and the beaches – many of them, anyway – shutting down. Thus did they resemble the waters of the Kill Van Kull on the north shore, which when I was a kid were dark and oily, sloshing in and around crumbling docks and piers and bulkheads.

Almost nothing changed over the years, particularly not my perception of the quality of Staten Island’s waters, which is why I was surprised many years later to be invited to visit the brand new Great Kills Shellfish Corporation. And so on a warm early-April day in 1981, I drove to Great Kills to meet the proprietors, Eddie Curry and Bill Ryan, both in late middle-age but otherwise as different in temperament as they could be. Ryan was loud, loquacious, almost loutish, florid of face, and apparently bibulous. Curry, also florid, was small and polite to the point of diffidence, a retired politician – New York City Councilman, State Assemblyman, State Senator – an Irish Democrat back when conservative Democrats still dominated politics on Staten Island. I happened to be working for one of them, Assemblywoman Betty Connelly, who sat on the Environmental Conservation Committee, and I guess they invited me to see their operation and have lunch with them because they needed Betty’s support for something, probably legislation that would ease whatever regulatory burden was keeping them from becoming millionaires, although I don’t remember specifically what.

The Great Kills Shellfish Corporation was in fact a depuration plant – a word I had never heard before – on the shore of Great Kills Harbor, A depuration plant is basically an indoor purification system for clams that have been harvested from waters that are too polluted to be safe to eat, a description that still applied all-too-well to the waters of Staten Island’s south shore. The Great Kills Shellfish Company would take clams from Raritan Bay and store them in a tank through which clean salt water rich in dissolved oxygen would flow. After 48 hours the clams would be clean, depurated, free of harmful bacteria and viruses.

Curry and Ryan told me that clamming had been banned from Staten Island’s waters for 18 years – or since 1963, which is roughly when I remembered the beaches being closed – allowing the clam beds to revive and the clams in them to fatten. They told me that to sell clams you separate them into four sizes, measured at their thickest part, from top to bottom, which I took to mean from hinge to lip: Little Necks, 1 7/16-inches wide; cherrystones, 1 ½ to 1 ¾ inches; top necks, an inch and a half, and chowders (which in New England are called quahogs) bigger than an inch and three-quarters (writing this now from notes taken then, I can see that the size categories don’t necessarily make sense, because of the overlap, so who knows if it’s right).

Almost nobody else was trying to sell clams from Raritan Bay in those days, and to Curry and Ryan, each clam – each specimen of Mercenaria mercenaria – was like a fattened dollar, sitting and bubbling in the water, waiting for some enterprising person to harvest it and depurate it.

For lunch we went next door to a place called the Café Marina. We sat for an hour. I had six clams (an absurdly restrained number, it seems in retrospect), a chef’s salad and two Heinekens. I’m not sure what Curry or Ryan ate, but Curry had a modest glass of wine with his lunch. It was Ryan’s performance though that knocked me out. Before lunch, he drank a Manhattan. I love Manhattans and I can attest that they are powerful. If I were to have one before lunch, I’d need a nap after lunch. Before the meal arrived, Ryan ordered a second Manhattan. When the meal arrived, he ordered a third Manhattan. I suppose the three-Manhattan lunch is no different than the three-Martini lunch, but until then I had assumed it was merely mythical. It wasn’t. When Ryan finished eating and drinking, he suggested coffee and a Sambuca. I think Eddie Curry must have been embarrassed, or worried, because he gently persuaded Ryan that three Manhattans was probably sufficient.

I never heard of the Great Kills Shellfish Company again and I don’t know if Betty Connelly was able to come through with whatever they needed from Albany, although I know Betty liked and respected Eddie Curry. I Googled the Great Kills Shellfish Company this morning and came up empty, so I assume it went out of business, if it ever really got started.

But apparently clammers working off Great Kills now are coming up anything but empty, which is good news. The Times reports this morning that the clamming is good enough to be causing conflicts between the boys from Jersey and the boys from Staten Island. One of those boys is Tim Ryan, whose back is adorned with a tattoo that says “Hell or High Water” and whom the Times describes as the head of the Staten Island Baymen’s Association.

Ryan is only 25 and I have no idea if he’s related to Bill Ryan – it’s not an uncommon name, and I myself have Staten Island cousins named Tim Ryan and Bill Ryan. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s Bill Ryan’s grandson, which for Staten Island would probably qualify as a traditional fishing family.

The Times, by the way, reports that conflicts among shellfishermen in Raritan Bay aren’t new. As long ago as 1862…

… four New Jersey men were accused of piracy after they seized a New York clamming vessel on the Raritan Bay. Their defense, The New-York Times reported, was that “the sloop was engaged in an unlawful infraction of the piscatorial and bivalvular rights of New-Jersey.”

So the waters off Great Kills and the south shore of Staten Island are cleaner, the clamming and the conflicts are back. But I wonder where the nuns swim?

Clammers Busted on Smithtown Bay

When cops bust commercial fishermen for taking clams from polluted waters should we be worried that dangerous shellfish might be getting to the market or relieved that the law is working? Maybe both, I guess. Four commercial fishermen were arrested recently for taking 14 bags of clams from Smithtown Bay. Newsday says,

That part of Smithtown Bay, near the mouth of the Nissequogue River, is closed to shellfish harvesting to prevent people from ingesting accumulated bacteria and viruses associated with sewage.

Nice, huh? The guys arrested were (again, from Newsday):

[Richard] Voorhees, 47, of East Northport, Laurence Kokell, 53, of Northport, Joshua Kokell, 33, of East Northport, and William Kokell, 38, of Asharoken, were all charged with taking shellfish from uncertified waters. Voorhees was also charged with failure to possess a valid shell digger permit. The charges are all misdemeanors punishable by fines of up to $5,000 and or a year in jail. If convicted, the clammers could get their licenses revoked, DEC officials said.

Oysters and Clams, and Where to Find Them on the Sound

It's my impression that there's more interest in shellfishing on Long Island Sound than there has been in a while. Norwalk has always been an oystering center, and the Connecticut Department of Agriculture's aquaculture bureau has worked for decades to help shellfishermen and to improve shellfish beds. But I see more and more stories in the local papers that indicate a growing interest in shellfishing, which might indicate a growing confidence that shellfishing is a proper and safe activity in the Sound.

The folks in Madison, for example, are trying to expand the town's clam beds to make recreational shellfishing easier, which is a great idea, here. And a man who hails from a line of shellfishermen in Greenwich just got a license to harvest clams from the area near the Westchester County border, here.

Alissa Dragan at the Connecticut aquaculture bureau sent me some statistics about shellfish beds in Connecticut's part of the Sound. In 1985 there were 310,000 acres of shellfish beds approved form unconditional harvesting. The number fell to 243,000 in 1990, to 135,000 last year, and to 134,000 this year. Over the same period, the number of conditionally approved beds went from 6,000 acres to 136,000 acres (conditionally approved means the beds are open or closed for harvesting depending on the conditions and the quality of the water, which changes mainly with the weather -- heavy rains mean more bacteria). Here's how Alissa explained the change in the number of acres:

...keep in mind that these changes in acreage, from 1985 to 1990 and 1990 to 2006, do not necessarily correspond to degraded water quality, or conversely to improved water quality. In addition to water quality, there are several other factors that have impacted the classification of Connecticut’s shellfishing grounds over the years. Standards by which areas were classified became more stringent. From 1988 to 1990, shellfishing areas in several towns were downgraded to comply with new growing area requirements. In order to meet the FDA requirements in all 26 shoreline towns, areas had to be prioritized based upon shellfish harvest activity due to a shortage of manpower. Over the years sampling became more frequent, and sampling locations increased, resulting in the revision of growing area classifications in towns for which there previously were no data. The Bureau also conducted shoreline surveys to identify actual and potential pollution sources further contributing to redefining areas. It is more accurate to say the classification changes shown in this historic data are the result of improved knowledge about the areas and the factors influencing them, and a changing regulatory climate.

If Your Shellfish Beds Are Contaminated, You Can Blame Bridgeport But You're Most Likely Wrong

I got annoyed when I read this story, in WestportNow, about shellfish beds off Westport, Southport and Fairfield being downgraded. The fact that the waters of Long Island Sound off Cockenoe Island, at the mouth of the Saugatuck River, and elsewhere nearby are more contaminated now than they have been in the recent past is bad enough.

But what really annoyed me is that Alicia Mozian, Westport's conservation director, somehow thinks it's Bridgeport's fault:

The problems with the increase in bacteria could be from the lack of wastewater treatment plant improvements in some communities along Long Island Sound, Mozian said.

Fairfield and Southport’s shellfish areas were also downgraded, she said, so she questions if there is a problem with Bridgeport’s wastewater treatment plant, which could need some upgrades.

Give me a break. The roads and parking lots and goose-infested golf courses of Westport, Southport and Fairfield are as bad as anywhere when it comes to producing contaminated runoff. Sewage treatment plants may or may not be in bad shape still, but they're all capable of disinfecting wastewater, Bridgeport's included. So when you look for a reason why your shellfish beds are no longer always safe, look closer to home, please.

And WestportNow, which otherwise does an admirable job, should have known better than to take Mozian's opinion at face value.

Greenwich Tests the Waters On Its Shellfish Beds a Lot, and Wants People to Know About It

Greenwich is trying to reassure its residents that its shellfish beds are safe by publicizing just how much effort goes into testing the waters. As recently as 1991 it sold 542 permits to town residents. But the number fell to barely 200, where it has stayed since 2001, according to the Greenwich Time, which quotes Shellfish Commission Chairman Roger Bowgen:

"There was a die-off and it took a long time to bring everything back," Bowgen said of efforts to restore oysters and other mollusks to town waters after disease and other problems about a decade ago led to a steep decrease in recreational shellfishermen.

"Typically people, when eating something from the Sound, say it's dirty, but we're trying to show that testing goes on all the time. The water is a lot cleaner than people think and it's really very safe to take clams and eat them. We take special care to make sure this happens."

Scraping Bottom for Shellfish Off Greenwich and Stamford

Is there a shellfishing revival in Long Island Sound, or are fishermen simply looking for every chance to scrape together a living? A couple of weeks ago, a woman from Darien told me that Norwalk boats were dredging up mussels near her house. Now a fellow who owns a fish market in Cos Cob wants to lease 183 acres of land under the Sound, off Greenwich and Stamford, for harvesting oysters and clams.

The feeling among the state officials who issue the leases is that most of the good shellfishing spots are well-known and already taken, which they say explains why they get only about 10 applications for new leases a year. The Cos Cob fisherman, Jardar Nygaard, says he knows that it's a risk, but it's worth it.

"I just think that cultivation of shellfish is a good business to be in," Nygaard said. "For one thing, it's sustainable, and basically eco-friendly."

Here's an interesting Greenwich Time story about his plans.