Those of us who can remember the 60s and 70s — despite the old saw of “If you can remember the 60s, you weren’t there” — can remember a time when it seemed as if you could get to Fire Island from the mainland by walking across, stepping from clamboat to clamboat — mostly Garveys with a smattering of sharpies — and never get a toe wet.

Many a successful businessman of today put himself (it was, for the most part, men) through college thanks to clamming all summer, although for the regular baymen, it was merely another way to earn a living.

Those days peaked in the mid-1970s (with over 1.2 million bushels being taken from Great South Bay waters) never to be seen again. And the drop was precipitous; by 1986 barely 100,000 bushels would be reported from the same waters.

The demise of the clam fishery was a result of the some of the same things that nearly ended the scallop fishery in the Peconics, and, before both the, oyster fishery on Long Island; the latter entwined with the clam fishery. Raping the resource, overpopulation, pollution, the brown tide all had their effects on the shellfish industry on Long Island, but at one time …

Oysters, Clams and Baymen

Although shellfish undoubtedly played a part in Native American diets, there were no traces or accounts left behind other than middens of shells here and there. We have to assume the Island’s original inhabitants liked a clambake as much as we do, but they just weren’t big on record keeping.

One of the first references to shellfish on Long Island is to oysters. In 1680, Dutchman Jasper Danckaerts noted, “We found good oysters in the creek inside [Coney Island] and ate some of them.” He also goes on to mention going oystering at “Gawanus.” (For those of you into Algonquian semantics, Gowanus, in Brooklyn is not just an expressway, and probably derives from Gauwane’s, the name of “an Indian who planted there…,” according to Tooker’s Indian Place-Names on Long Island. The name translates to “the sleeper” or “he rests.” Apparently it doesn’t mean “big damn clams or oysters.”)

The Dutch were the predominant shellfishers in the mid-1800s having brought their skills from Holland. Jacob Ockers can probably be considered the “father” of the baymen, since he was one of the first to lease bottomland from the town of Brookhaven in 1865. Leasing bottom land would become a contentious issue, so if there are any baymen out there who wish to dispute whether this earned Ocker that title, feel free to fire at will. Other local families became involved in purchasing bottom land. Names like Westerbeke, Vanderborgh, Griek and Kwaak established themselves in the Sayville area.

The beginning of an actual shellfishery doesn’t show up until the beginning of the 19th century when the bottom off of Blue Point became the first big “find” of the nascent industry.

Tonging for oysters (this was a device that operated in a principle similar to a post hole digger) was the means of obtaining these bivalves, and this became an occupation for many a man for eight to nine months out of the year. Oysters were only harvested in months that had an R in them; the rest of the year (the summer), clams became the target.

Things went along swimmingly, so to speak, but by 1824 there were already signs that all was not right; an article in the Gazateer of the State of New York, mentioned Blue Point, only to say it had, “formerly [been] noted for its oyster fishery.” Over the next 40 years, exploration was the key, as baymen discovered that the bay bottom from Smith’s Point to Nicoll’s Point was “one huge oyster field.”

By 1860 tongs (and rakes) had become outmoded in favor of dredges, similar in design to today’s scallop dredges. But the switch was another nail in the shellfish coffin. Some recognized this, and in April 1870 dredges were banned and the baymen went back to tonging in an effort that came too late to save the tasty and world famous oysters.

Next up was oyster planting — no, aquaculture is far from a new idea. City Island saw the first purchase of bottomland in 1855, and this quickly moved east and north. It also started what would become a 100-year war between baymen and the shellfish “companies” that flocked into the area. There still seemed to be plenty of the tasty critters, but the take slowly decreased.

In 1890 there were 25 packing houses in Babylon, Bay Shore, Oakdale, Sayville and Patchogue that shipped 60- to70,000 barrels a year (40 to New York City, the remainder to a growing demand in Europe). In 1891, three companies appeared (Sealshipt Oyster Company, was a primary company. It joined with Ockers and became Bluepoints company in 1912, and didn’t close until 2002) on the Great South Bay and introduced an oyster steamer, that could do a week’s worth of dredging in a day. The Curiosity — called “Hell’s Wagon” by the baymen — was a 60-foot LOA, 18-foot beam, four-foot draft boat, and its appearance was enough for the baymen.

Led — ostensibly — by a Patchogue man, William Underwood (who probably really should be christened with the sobriquet of “father” to the baymen), the baymen declared war on the bottom-owning companies by trespassing on “company” land at night. They declared the “oyster barons” had no legal right to grounds (this turned into a five-year legal battle for Underwood, ending in his favor).

How tough are the baymen? A Brooklyn Daily Eagle account from 1893 notes that because the natural beds had run out, and for three years practically no catch from natural sets was available, the baymen became pirates.

“Down at Sayville … armed men are patrolling the shore and a cannon is held in readiness to blow out of the water the first piratical craft that appears.”

Of course these were days when newspapers started wars, but things got a bit rough on the South Shore, with the company hirees usually choosing discretion over valor when it came to fighting the baymen, known to be so good with their oyster knives.

It was the 1930s that heralded the end of the Great South Bay’s fecundity: a nor’easter opened an inlet near Moriches (today’s Moriches Inlet) increasing the bay’s salinity; it also allowed the oyster drill, a small snail, to flourish which attacked the bays shellfish. Then the infamous hurricane of 1938 opened Shinneccok Inlet (and smaller ones along the barrier beach, further increasing the area’s salinity.

The first algae blooms — traced to the duck farm runoff and the closing of the Moriches Inlet (it was reopened in the mid-1950s) — appeared, and then there was the spike of the 1960s. The hand-operated clam rakes started replacing tongs, which helped the baymen increase the catch, which, as noted earlier, rose to its production peak in the mid-70s. Then came the brown tides commencing in the mid-80s.

Knowledge of the various bay ecosystems surrounding Long Island along with a general movement towards keeping these waters clean has seen the shellfish biomass increase in all the bays on the both the north and south shores, but the days of shellfishing being a major fishery were long gone, though the clams and — once again, oysters — of Long Island remain in demand still.

A New Year’s Day Tale

We (Dave Cullen, Ed and Ted Densieski and myself) shovel out our scallop boat, Outlaw, load here with clam rakes, food and drink, and other accessories required of winter on the water and head out down the Peconic River, encountering some skim ice that makes an audible tinkling sound as our wake breaks the ice up. As we near the Route 105 bridge, thicker ice appears and Ed revs up and we start cutting our way east. Where the river narrows (off the Indian Island Golf Course), the ice gets thicker still, but Outlaw handles it well, and we reach open water after having cut through more skim ice.

We’re heading out to get some clams fro New Year’s Eve 2010, and battling ice and cold is — naturally — the only way to do so. As we head towards our “secret spot” we can see that the ice is thickening again. We try punching through it, but it simply gets too thick, and we have to turn around (this is not easy in Outlaw. Last winter we became stuck and it took us 45 minute to chop our way “around”).

It becomes apparent that ice, wind and tide have conspired to make our “secret” sport unapproachable, so it’s prospecting we go. Since the tide is high, we need an area fairly close to shore; our method of clamming requires us to be in the water with the rakes.

We’re all wearing neoprene waders of various construction, but all are neoprene ones with insulated boots. Undergarments are the stuff mountaineers wear — a wicking layer and an insulating layer — and then we wear various tops, that are intended to keep one dry, along with gloves that are intended to keep one dry and warm, not an easy task. Our rakes are aluminum handled, about eight-foot long, with a cross bar. There’s a chain connected to the back of the basket (the part with teeth that does the work) that’s hooked to a belt that allows you to use hips and arms instead of just arms, to get the basket to dig through the rock and mud layer to wear the tasty little bivalves reside.

Since we’re in an area we’ve not clammed in prior, the pickings are slim, but our floating baskets — which mainly don’t float, but sit atop the ice — start filling up, though filling is perhaps the wrong word.

Moving around is difficult. In some cases slow wading breaks the three and four inch ice, but it others we have to chop with our rakes, make a hole, rake the area, and move on by sliding a fractured floe under the other ice. Ed tries walking backwads and cutting a circle of ice out then breaking it and shifting it out of the way. Dave hacks the surface ice and plunges his rake. Strenuous and tiring, but it does work.

Finally — with the bells of the end of the year calling — we knock off, load up and head home. Another day of winter clamming on Peconic Bay over, and another year of shellfishing looming in the days to come.

*The historical events, data, dates, names, etc., mentioned in this story come from the 1921 version of The Evolution of Long Island, a Story of Land and Sea, by Ralph Henry Gabriel and from a more recent essay (circa-1997), A History of Oysters and Hard Clams in the Great South Bay, by Jeffrey Kassner. Other research relied on the West Sayville Maritime Report prepared for the Long Island Maritime Museum (West Sayville) by Long Island Traditions in 2004, Tooker’s 1911 edition of Indian Place-Names of Long Island (of course), and Blanchard’s 1958 edition of Long Island’s Sound.