Episode 13: Clam Restoration in the IRL

Imagine this, the year is 2050 and you’re sitting down at your favorite restaurant on the lagoon. Your server takes your drink orders and you ask for the specials. And they mention that their catch of the day is wild caught clams fresh from the lagoon.

What is a dream today may be possible tomorrow, thanks to the hard work of partners around the Indian River Lagoon, with funding from the One Lagoon program.

Today, it’s all about clams, clams, clams.

Hi, I am Duane De Freese, executive director of the IRL Council and the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program. Welcome to our One Lagoon, One Voice Podcast.

Each week, myself or one of my staff members will host leaders in the community, scientists along the lagoon, people who know a lot about the system to talk about some of the problems.

And most importantly, some of the solutions to solve the Indian River Lagoon’s health and make sure it’s great for future generations. So let’s get the show started and let’s talk a little lagoon.

All right, guys. Welcome back to another episode of One Lagoon, One voice, the Indian River Lagoon Podcast. I’m your host today, Jessy Wales, one of three community engagement coordinators.

I’m really excited to have our guest today, Dr. Todd Osborne, with the University of Florida Whitney Lab.

Welcome, Todd.

Hi, Jessy. And thanks again for inviting me to do this. I’m really excited to be able to talk about clams to anybody that will listen.

Me too. So yeah, we’ve had the opportunity to kind of work together on this project for almost four years now, so I’m really stoked to have you on here to kind of explain to us a little bit about what’s going on with clams in the Indian River Lagoon. So before we get started, go ahead and tell our listeners a little bit about yourself.

Well, I’m an associate professor at the University of Florida. I’m stationed at the Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience, and that’s up in St. Augustine. I’m a bio geochemist in a marine lab full of molecular biologists. So I am a little bit out of my element here, and I study water quality and coastal wetlands, mangroves and salt marshes and things like that.

But having the perspective of folks that work with organisms, you know, actual living things here at the lab has really broadened my horizons a bit. And so I’ve come by this thing with aquaculture and clams and having worked with oysters here with other folks at Whitney, kind of honestly, I mean it’s a new field. It’s a new thing for me because I’m used to working with analytical chemistry, so it’s very different.

Right.

But I’m so happy about it. It’s been super fun. And I have to say that if I [hadn’t come] here to the Whitney lab, I probably wouldn’t be doing this particular thing. I wouldn’t have had  the exposure to organismal biology and all the different fun things that go along with it. So yeah, I’m an off case a little bit for the biogeochemistry people that are out there going, “Oh, wait a minute, this guy’s supposed to talk about nitrogen. Right.” Well, no, this has been really fun for me, and it’s probably my favorite project that I work on.

I can see how clams would be a perfect mixture between the marine biology side of things and the water clarity side of things, or water quality side of things, especially since they are a prolific filter feeder in the lagoon.

Oh, absolutely. And I mean, I know that  a lot of the listeners here are familiar with the different organisms out there in the lagoon that filter water. I mean, oysters, everybody knows them because you can see ’em, right. I mean, they taste great. I’m sure y’all get in trouble for that comment, but, you know.

No, we’re, we’re gonna be talking about our favorite ways to eat seafood a little bit later. Don’t worry.

Perfect. Perfect. Well, okay. So, you know, I grew up eating oysters and, you know, being on the coast, it’s kind of part of our culture, right? And I have worked in oyster restoration up here in my area quite a bit. 

But the clams are kind of like, I don’t know, I want to call them an unsung co-hero in this story because you don’t see them very often unless you’re out there digging in the lagoon and in the sediment somewhere. But the cool thing about it is they do the same thing, right? They’re out there filtering water, removing algae, and for everybody that’s familiar with the lagoon and what’s happening, you know, we have an algae problem, right? And that is a tremendous issue. 

So, I feel like that’s a foundational thing that we’ve got to figure out, and address it from all the different ways that we might be able to, you know. So I won’t say clams are the only answer, but I think they’re one of the significant answers that we can use to kind of try to help fix this problem.

I like that. That is a very bold statement. Another bold statement that you came up with was dubbing this project, “The Super Clam Project,” which I think ruffled a lot of feathers back when you started it. But now it’s synonymous with clam restoration within the Indian River Lagoon. So can you tell me a little bit more about what [super clams are] like, how did you even come up with that term? And just a little bit more about the history of this project.

Okay, well, I’m going to start by telling you how we got these clams, and then I’m gonna tell you who really came up with that name and give him full credit because he deserves it. You know, and it wasn’t me. 

But, so we rewind all the way back to like 2016 or so, 2017. My senior vice president of IFAS at the time was a guy named Dr. Jack Payne. And Jack, I met with him on a regular basis being an IFAS faculty member from main campus, and, he asked me one day, he said, “So what are you doing now that you’re out [at] the coast at Whitney? What are you doing about, you know, restoration in the Indian River Lagoon?” Because we’ve been very, you know, UF has been very prominent in [the] Everglades restoration, things like that. And he said, “What, how are you contributing?”

And I said, “Uh, well, sir, you know, a lot of these things are already kind of covered. The things that I’m familiar with doing are pretty much well covered down there.” And he’s like, “That wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear.”

He wanted to hear that we were doing something new and innovative and helping this problem. And I was kind of working my way out of Everglades restoration work. And he said, “Well, you know, next time we talk, I’d like to hear what you’re doing down there.”

Which was basically, “Get busy Todd.” And so I said, “Okay, well, what are we gonna do?” Well, I’m at Whitney. I have a biologist in my team that I kind of inherited here, a senior biologist named Jose Nunez, and I sat down with Jose. I said, “What are we gonna do, man? How are we going to, you know, we can’t break into the oyster scene down there. We learned how to do oyster restoration from those people. I mean it’s being done very well. So what do we do?” And he’s like, “Well, you know, maybe we could do clams.” And I said, “Okay, let’s check that out.” Because he had a deep, deep background in clam aquaculture.

Right.

And there’s a history of clam aquaculture here at Whitney from a long time ago. So, anyway, long story short.

Oh, I didn’t know that.

Yeah. Well, so check this out. Way back when in the ’90s, one of our former directors here did a lot of hard clam physiology research, and it just so happens that several, several leading clam scientists had some work and some time spent here at Whitney in one respect or another. Actually, Leslie Sturmer, who kind of heads up the aquaculture side of UF and Cedar Key is here today on campus doing some things. But she had a long history here. And if you guys didn’t know this, the Cedar Key clam industry that we know of today, which took the place of gill netting, which I think is fantastic. Right.

Can you tell us a little bit about what gillnetting is for those who may not know?

Oh. So for those of you that don’t know, there was a long history of fish harvest in Florida waters by gill nets. And gill nets are kind of an indiscriminate netting technique that basically captures fish that can only fit through a net one way [and] captures them by their gills. Right? And so it’s kind of devastating on our coastal systems because indiscriminate harvest is just what it is, right? You get, you know, who knows what you get.

Whatever, yeah. Whatever you can get in the net.

And so the mullet fishermen were out there fishing for mullet for the row market and using these gill nets, but had a tremendous amount of by-catch. And it was being noticed by fisheries scientists saying, “Hey, our populations are really going down. What’s going on?” Well, this gill net was kind of the issue, right? And so a ban on gill netting was brought across the state. But then a lot of watermen, a lot of people that [live] on the coast said, “What are we gonna do now? We need jobs.”

Right.

And so Leslie Sturmer, who most people know, is kind of like the queen of clam aquaculture in the state. She had proposed training some gill net fishermen in Cedar Key to grow hard clams. And she promoted that program and it took off. Well, they needed brood-stock from somewhere to grow this industry. And you know where they got them?

No. Tell me.

The Indian River Lagoon.

Oh, no way.

The IRL actually was the location, the healthy clams they chose from the IRL to base that entire industry on. And that’s a pretty amazing thing, right?

That’s crazy.

And when I earned that background, I said, well, you know, clams were probably pretty important. And then I dug into it and I saw, wow, there’s a tremendous history of clams here. You know, in fact, clams were such a huge part of the Indian River Lagoon that throughout the ’80s and the 1990s, there was [a] massive free harvest of clams from the lagoon. And our estimates based on FWC’s data and other sources is somewhere close to 10 billion large adult clams were removed from the lagoon in like two decades.

Oh, wow.

And it just so happens that if you look at the landing figures, you notice these big peaks and troughs. And then in the early 2000s, those landings really, really got low, low, low, almost to some level that was barely an industry. And then suddenly we [started] having these algal blooms in 2011.

Well, not going to say cause and effect for clams. But if you remove a large filtration capacity from the lagoon, I can only imagine that there are effects — cascading effects for the ecology.

Right.

And so we decided, well, maybe we could do something and bring clams back to the lagoon. Let’s go get some and spawn them at the lab and see about reintroducing them in larger populations. Well that was a pretty simple thought for us until we got down there and tried to find some.

I was going to say, that must be a pretty fun day, right? You put on your clam waders, you get your clam rake, you go out there, get a whole bucket. Like, is that how it worked out? Or?

Well that was the vision, right? I mean, absolutely, Jessy, that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to go down there and just rake up a couple, take them home, spawn them, and go like, “Hey, look, we can bring them back in big numbers.” Well, [on] our first four trips, we couldn’t find a single clam. We found a bunch of shells, and that was like, you know, bummer. But four trips later, we decided, well, we’re going to need an army of people, and we’re going to need some dedicated time for this.

Did you go out to known clam beds in the area?

Yes, we went. 

Looking for clams? And you found nothing.

It was so depressing. There was just nothing.

We looked in places. I mean, we looked, I talked to fishermen, I talked to the old timers at the bait shop. I said, “Where would you get clams at?” And I got their information. Then we started using some work done by Leroy Creswell and others, Bill Arnold [and] William Arnold. [Leroy] was well known for his science and his contributions to clam biology in the IRL back in the ’90s and early 2000s. 

Well, those guys had gone out and actually surveyed shellfish along a series of transects covering mosquito lagoon, the Northern IRL and the Central Lagoon all the way down to Stewart, Florida. So we started doing the same thing. We’d go out on those transects and look and look and look. And it took us, and this is no exaggeration, about two months with four people to come up with 39 clams. And we never found two in the same area. And that’s why we weren’t feeding them. You know, they weren’t able to reproduce in any kind of way that made sense. Like for them, they just could not overcome the distance barrier, right.

Because clams can’t swim the way that scallops can. Right. Or like oysters settle down and then they’re stuck there. So if you don’t have enough adult clams in the area, there’s no way for them to breed. Correct?

Exactly. Exactly.

Gotcha.

And so they were basically place bound. They’re stuck where they are. I mean, clams can move around a little bit, but oysters are kind of fixed and clams are, pretty much for all intents and purposes, they’re pretty fixed too. I mean, wherever they settle out, it’s kind of their zone. They’re not going to pick up and move. And so we realized that all the clams that we found were basically big older clams. We estimated the time in 2018 when we actually got this ball started, they were probably seven, eight, nine years old. They were old large clams. And that basically made our broodstock. 

And so we had been looking for funding and talking about it, but hadn’t gotten any traction because we didn’t have any clams. And most people were saying, “Well, you guys, that’s a great idea, but you won’t find any local clams.” And so being at a lab with a bunch of molecular biologists and a lot of evolutionary biologists, they said, “Well, Todd, if you can find a few, that’s actually going to be just what you need because those guys will be acclimated and/or naturally selected for it. Like their genetics ought to be strong and perfect for the job.” 

And we said, “Okay, well that sounds good.” And we finally found some. I remember coming home relieved, like, “Okay, I can tell our senior VP something, I can tell my director that we actually found some and that we’re not crazy. And I can maybe get something going here.” And so that was the genesis of actually getting a reproductive group of clams in the lab that we could then spawn multiple times and get. Then our first spawn, we got 40 million larvae out of — they just went crazy.

Holy moly.

Like, they were ready. They’d been waiting for years, you know?

Yes. Yeah, exactly.

They were just waiting. And so that start, that kicked us off, and I have to give a lot of credit to a guy named Mike Sullivan. And he owns a company called Premium Seafood. He’s located just up the road from us, but he had all of these lease areas in Mosquito Lagoon.

And when we were about the point of giving up, he said, “Well, you guys, you know, I know some little, little places back in Mosquito Lagoon that you guys haven’t looked. Let’s go check them out.” And we went with him. We found, you know, probably half of what we had collected from Mosquito Lagoon.

Wow.

And so his help was monumental. And as a professional clam grower, he actually helped us work through some of the commercial techniques and all the things that were kind of roadblocks to producing them in the lab. But back to your original question, he didn’t name it “The Super Clam,” right.

Right.

I have a really interesting guy that works on my team. His name is Norman Kolsch. He’s an older guy. He used to own a bunch of restaurants in Brevard County. You guys might know, remember Chowders or The Mouse Trap or Coconuts on the Beach, and most recently, River Rocks Restaurant on the River. 

And we met in a kind of a roundabout way, but as he got involved in this, he was basically a volunteer before I put him on the payroll because he did so much. I couldn’t not put him on the payroll. I said, “Norm, you kind of know everybody.” And he was my connection to meet all of these people, like all the right people. I said, “I wanna talk to someone at Satellite Beach, you know the city of Satellite Beach. ‘Oh, well, okay.'” And he’d call a friend and we’d have a meeting, so he was like my local fixer, right? He’s this guy who knows everybody. Unofficial mayor of Merritt Island is what I call Norm. Anyway, so he said, “You gotta, kind of market this a little bit so that people can get excited about it and recognize it, you know, and if it’s catchy…” And he actually coined the phrase “Super Clam”. And because I’m just not creative enough, I couldn’t come up with anything better.

And I said, “Okay, Norm. Let’s just do that.” And I know we got some flack, we got some pushback on that one, really bad because people thought we were just kind of coming on too strong. But I have to say that that was the propulsion to meet Blair Wiggins, who is huge. Captain Blair is a big supporter of this. This was a dream of his since before we started working with clams.

Absolutely. Yeah.

And that kind of promotion got the word out. So then the Coastal Conservation Association folks who work with Blair a lot, said, “Hey, you know, you’ve been talking about clams, Blair, and we heard this other guy talking about the Super Clam thing, what’s going on?” And they put us together. And that’s how we were able to build [this].

Really jump start this project.

Yeah.

Yeah. That’s awesome. So I didn’t realize that that’s how you guys came up with the name “Super Clam.” I love that though. And honestly, it has grown since then into a superhero of sorts. And it gives a perfect segue into a mascot for you guys — for your project.

Yes.

So I am definitely on the Super Clam train now. So you guys caught, or not caught, because you know, they’re not running away from you. But you guys found 39 of these clams that had survived the major algal blooms that we had back in 2012, and you brought them back to your lab. And I’ve had the opportunity to come and check out your lab, and it is spectacular. It has been so cool to go out to the raceways in the back and just watch you guys scoop your hands in and come up with thousands and thousands of tiny baby clams in your palms. 

So can you tell us a little bit more about how you guys are growing them? I know that in the commercial world, they size them out and that depends on when you guys put them in the lagoon or how much they sell for — if you were to sell them to commercial fishermen and stuff like that.

So can you tell us a little bit more about how they’re being grown and what sizes you guys are looking for?

Well, absolutely. So it’s pretty fascinating. Like, this was all new to me, right?

Right.

It was a process of learning, but I feel pretty confident about it now, and I’ll tell you how it works. So clams are pretty neat in their biology and very much like oysters in that they are what we call synchronous spawners, right? That means that they spawn at the same time given certain cues. And so we manipulate their reproductive cycle by changing the temperature. And so this sounds pretty, pretty high-tech, but really it’s a black plastic tray full of, you know, maybe 10 or 15 clams at a time. 

Clams are interesting also because you can’t just look at them and determine if they’re male or female. And sometimes they decide to change. So, you know, what’s a male this year might be a female next year. And so we mark them when we spawn them, but really, you kind of go into it blind and you put them on the table in water, and we manipulate the temperature. So we try to mimic springtime, right?

Okay.

So cooler water in the sixties, you know, upper sixties. And then we’ll raise the water for a half an hour to a temperature of like 70 degrees, and then we’ll chill it back down to 68, and then we will raise it to 72, and then we’ll chill it down to 70. So these incremental steps for 30 or 40 minutes at a time of warmer water, followed by cooler water by warmer water. This is kind of like their trigger. It kind of imitates springtime, cool at night, warm in the daytime on the flats and shallow water, things like that. So these fluctuations and temperature cause them to spawn. And as soon as one spawns, the others are sensing it, right?

They know that those gametes are out in the water and they sense it, and they all spawn together. And it’s like a strategy. It says, “Hey, if we spawn together, we’ll have the best chance of fertilizing all of these millions of eggs that a clam can make. And [this] will kind of overwhelm all the larval predators that are out there.” Meaning all the things that would eat little baby clams while they’re free swimming because they do swim around for about 14 days — 10 to 14 days they’re in a larval stage and they’re tiny. You can’t see them. You need a microscope. 

But during that time, lots of things want to eat them, right? And so if you put out zillions of these things, literally, that’s a really scientific term, isn’t it? Zillions of these things that are out there, well, then they can’t all be eaten. And the hope is, or the ecological strategy is that [this process] will allow them to settle down and repopulate the population. So those kinds of things, we just manipulate those in the laboratory. So we have these big tanks. They’re full of free swimming larvae that haven’t grown a shell yet. And so they’re feeding on algae cultures every day. And that usually takes anywhere between 10 days and 14 days, depending on the temperature. And though, once they get to the point of settling out, when they basically grow a shell and they get heavy and they can’t swim anymore, they settle to the bottom and we drain those big tanks.

So then you move them to the next tank where they basically exist on a screen that’s a small enough size to hold them, and they get fed algae every day, and they get cleaned every day. And then every couple of days they get sieved and they get separated by growth rate. So some of them are slow growers just like us, and some of them are speedy growers. And so, you know, we kind of keep them separated by size, simply to make the process easier, right?

Then we’ll take them from the raceways and move them out into these large mesh bags. They’re called grow out bags. And they are basically just that — they’re just big mesh bags. Think about the bags that you put your laundry in to go to the laundromat or, you know, your gym clothes.

Right. Yeah.

Mesh bag. And that’s what they are, but they’re big, they’re, you know, 40 inches on a side. And we’ll put maybe 10,000 of those little guys in there and tack them down to the bottom of the river on an aquaculture lease. And [that lease] is a place that the state, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, has set aside for aquaculture activities. And so the lease holder, in this case me, is responsible for anything that goes on that parcel of land. It has to be marked, it has to be maintained, and then it has to be cleaned on a regular basis. You know, so no, can’t leave any junk out there. We put hundreds of these bags out and over the next 18 months or so, well, I’d say 14 to 16 months, they grow up to about adult size. And I’d say adult [size] is anywhere between 15 and 20 millimeters across. And those are, you think about [the] size of a US quarter.

Right. Okay.

That’s an optimal, what we call adult size, because at that size, they can actually reproduce. And that’s the size that we then harvest them [and] clean [them]. We get all the clams out and sieve all the shells out and all that kind of stuff. And just so you know, when those bags come up, they’re usually full of sediment.

Right.

So they can weigh three to 400 pounds, and you have to go out and peel up the bag corners and shake all of that sand and mud out of the bags, and then bring the clams in and sieve them, and then they come to the lagoon. So there’s a whole process. And I think I thought, “Well man, by the time we’re done with this, a clam should cost like $25, right?”

Right. Yeah. Seriously, it’s a lot of work.

It’s so much labor. It’s so much labor. So I want to give a big shout out, big props to the guys that do this commercially [who] put shellfish on the plate for us at the restaurant, because it is very labor-intensive. And when you actually go to the seafood market and they’re 50 cents a piece, it seems like, wow. Um, that’s just not even economically feasible. 

But in fact, I think our process costs us at the end of the day, about 10 cents a piece for these guys. And that’s where we’ve kind of willed down and, you know, made things suitable. We’re not commercial sales here, right?

Right. Yeah.

So, it’s a restoration. But that’s about what it costs us for an adult clam. And I know I skipped through it pretty quickly, but it’s kind of a long haul to get these guys from the spawning table back to the Indian River Lagoon on a site.

So about like, how many months would you say that is?

It’s about a year and a half.

Wow. Okay. Yeah.

It’s about 18 months.

Okay.

And you can imagine, like when we’re doing grants and things like that, you get a little hiccup in the process, or you have a hurricane that messes things up and then all of a sudden you’re really off track. I mean, it’s easy to get delayed. And I try to tell this for everybody that wants to get in on working with clams, “Go for it. But be wary that, you know, plant twice or three times as much as you think you’re going to need so that you have them when the time comes to deliver for projects. Because if you don’t, your next culture set may be six months out or a year out.” So it’s kind of strategic, right. And to overcome that, we’ve really tried to partner with commercial entities, right?

So right now, of course, with Mike Sullivan and Premium Seafood, I also work with Ed Mangano at Orchid Island, which is down by Sebastian. And you and Leighton, who’s developing another hatchery system down there. And I understand that the Brevard Zoo has got a new facility that’s going to be producing clams down in the Sebastian area, or just north of the inlet.

Yep. Yep.

And we’re working with [the] Marine Discovery Center up in New Smyrna to convert one of their old parking lots [at] the back of their property to a shellfish aquaculture facility as well. So that will be kind of dual purpose that will do clams and seagrasses together, which should be pretty neat. But I’m glad to see that it’s growing and that people are interested in that. Also, there’s been some investment and that’s a big thanks to the IRL NEP, the National Estuaries Program, because they funded several facilities that are going to be able to do seagrasses and clams. And I think that’s really good to have the capacity to produce lots of these things for restoration purposes, which is fantastic.

Thanks. We’re pretty stoked about that too. So the clams have been grown out, it is now 18 months since they were tiny.

Yep.

You are putting them out into a variety of areas within the lagoon. And I was scrolling through Facebook last week, and a video popped up of someone emptying clams into a drone.

Oh, boy. Yeah. This is fun.

And the drone going up and putting out all of the clams seat. What the heck, Todd? Can we talk about that?

I know. We just can’t stop coming up with weird things. So actually this is a very ecologically driven product. And I’ll tell you what. So I was sitting out at River Rocks hand planting clams like two years ago with Blair Wiggins and [we had] a big group of folks we had at FWC out, and we had a bunch of folks out there, I didn’t even think Daniel from National Estuaries Program was out there that day.

Right.

And we’re unloading a semi-truck. I think we had like, maybe 200,000 adult clams in 500 bushels of packaged clams inside this refrigerated semi-truck. And you know, Blair’s got a sling on, because he hurt his arm on his airboat, my back was killing me. We’re unloading this giant truck and just handing bags of clams, and each bag weighs about 50 pounds, you know?

Right.

So there’s hundreds of these in there. And he looked at me, he said, “Man, I wish we could just dump these out of an airplane. Like we could just carpet bomb the lagoon with clams and not have to do all this back-breaking work.” And I said, “I am right there with you, brother. This would be great if we could do that.” But it kind of stuck with me, like man, I wonder how we could distribute these in a better way? I mean, it’s fun to be out there. 

For anybody that’s been to one of our clam plantings, I’m so grateful for your help. And you probably got the full dose. I mean, you’re like, “Man, this is heavy and this is like work, you know?” But so we thought about it for a while. I said, “You know, maybe there’s a way that we could go about this differently that would be both economically more feasible so that, [i.e] we could do more with the dollars for restoration. 

And it would be a little bit easier on everybody’s lumbar spine, including mine,” because I’m on surgery number four coming up, and I’m over it, like lifting heavy things. By the way, if you see me lifting clam bags, please yell at me or something.

I can do that.

No. Yes. I need to be reigned in. I need to be supervised because my lower back is done. And so, all joking aside though, the idea of distributing clams aerially was genuinely a good idea. We laughed about it, dropping them out of one of the Patrick Air Force bases aircraft, probably never going to happen, but there may be some other way. And so we thought about it a little bit more and said, “Well, you know, if we could do that, how would we do it? What would that look like?”

And so the thought was like, okay, if we could put out, you know, for the dollar, a million two-millimeter seeds is pretty inexpensive, relatively inexpensive. It’s about $6,000, right? And so versus close to $70,000 for a million adult clams. So if we planted seven times that, say we plant 7 million clams at [a] small size, would we end up with a million adults? You know? And so the math looked pretty good. And we said, “Well, maybe that would be doable.”

Because legitimately we take a lot of labor out of this and a lot of expenses that aren’t necessarily accounted for by the university doing a grant, which would have to be accounted for by the commercial guys when they do this. Because the goal here is not to, you know, for me, not to be doing this forever, but to turn this over to our aquaculture industry so that they’re not only doing restoration, but they’re also still working the waterfront. 

So we have legitimate businesses working in the lagoon, and that also promotes water quality, right? So we saw a bunch of winds on the horizon and we said, “Well, okay, how can we make this more manageable for all involved?” And so we started this idea of broadcasting small clams that have made it through the toughest part of their lifecycle, and they’re about two millimeters in size. And that two-millimeter size, by the way, is somewhere around an “O” in 18 point font. Ah, those of you that are on a computer, type that up and say, “Oh, okay, let me see for a moment.”

I know. I got to type one now.

Yep. That’s about two millimeters, right? That’s about the size. And so a million of those is roughly nine or 10 liters of material. And so about the time we’re doing all this mental math and we’re thinking about this, a guy named Ernest Hale who owns and operates a pretty significant drone, contacted me and said, “Hey, you know, is there anything that a drone could help you do?” And I said, “Absolutely, man, I got an idea. Can you distribute clams?” He’s like, “Well, let me see.” And he started in [our project] and designed a patent-pending device that actually will take the clams from a large hopper, and his drone can lift 50 pounds. So think about that. That’s pretty crazy.

Yeah.

This giant drone will pick up and will carry two little hoppers full of clam seed out and distribute them in a matter of minutes. So, I mean, a million clams can be sewn over a one acre parcel in literally 10 to 15 minutes. It’s pretty amazing. The best part though, is that it actually flies a pattern and distributes them really well. Meaning they’re widely distributed. 

Now, [when we] go out there and we plant clams by hand, we just kind of throw them into the plot and we cover them up with a net. Well, this requires no nets, but it’s very evenly spaced. So we get about 10 clams per square foot across an entire acre. And so that is tremendous. Like to me, that’s like, wow. Okay. So if you can do that, then all the things that eat clams really have to work hard to eat them all.

So, I mean, Cory Redwine and Norman Kolsch every day go out and check these sites and check the nets because we do use cover nets when we plant these adults. And they are high density. So a net that we would place may be 14-feet wide by 50-feet long, and we might have 30 or 40, maybe even 50,000 clams under that.

And so it’s kind of like a hot spot. Now, we designed it that way because we wanted to maximize reproductive potential, but we’ve also learned it’s like ringing the dinner bell, right? I mean, “Hey, here is a bed of clams. I mean, you don’t have to go looking very far. They’re all right here together. And if you can get under the net or tear the net, it’s…

Smorgasbord.

It’s [a] smorgasbord, right?

Exactly.

And we’ve seen some pretty cool research. There is an FIU, I’m sorry, an FAU researcher that presented at the symposium this past year that showed he had tracked stingrays, which are a major predator of clams, and how they would just sit outside of aquaculture areas in the channel, swim up, eat a bunch of clams, swim back down and wait six hours, and then turn around and do it again.

Yeah.

And they’re trained. They’re like my Labrador retriever. They know it’s time to eat.

Yeah. Yeah.

Right. So we thought maybe we could overcome some of that. And then we started thinking a little bit more about, “Well, what other positives would there be besides the financial positive? You know, if we could do more for less money, that helps everybody, right?”

And if we could do this in a way that actually benefited the environment in multiple ways, so not only putting more clams out, but we’re feeding things. And I mean, a lot of people said, “Hey, this is a bad idea. You’re going to feed a lot of fish.” And I thought, “Yeah, exactly. We’re going to feed a lot of fish. And that’s not a bad thing. We’re kind of actually planning on that.” 

If we get 10% of what we plant to survive, we’re doing better than if we did it the old way, right? So, we think about that. We say, “Okay, well, you know, maybe that’s not a bad thing.” We’re going to feed some fish. We’re going to feed some things that eat clams that are then eaten by bigger fish. And I think [helping] healthy fisheries is a part of lagoon restoration, and it’s one of the big economic drivers that we have, right? So all in all, I think there’s a lot of positives that would come out of this approach. And so that’s what we’ve been focusing on for the last year.

And it looks really cool. I’m not going to lie, it looks really cool to see the drone go by and just drop a ton of clams.

It is — definitely got some sizzle to it, right? I mean, puffing sacks of clams until you’re tired is not necessarily nearly as cool as this is. But I will tell you one other story. So this is really neat. Last Thursday we did a distribution over on a clam lease up in New Smyrna. It’s an area called Turner Flats. It’s right up the road from JB’s Fish Camp in Edgewater, right? And we were going to fly out of this community park, and the news came, they wanted to see that, they wanted to do a story on it. 

So we had Blair Wiggins out in his boat, and we had a little reporter there — really nice lady from Fox 35 News. And then Ernest with the drone, and Mike with the clams, and everything was going on. And we pull up to the parking lot and there’s Annie Roddenberry from FWC doing a lecture on seagrasses with a whole group of people.

Oh, perfect.

And they’re talking about, you know, I mean everybody was there. It was amazing. I thought, no way. So [the] Marine Discovery Center was there and all [of] these folks were there doing something anyway. I mean, Sea Grant was there and they were teaching a whole class of master naturalists about seagrasses and marine stuff, and they were going to go kayaking. So they got to see this whole thing happen, right? And the synergy was tremendous, right? I mean, it was just a really cool opportunity to run into colleagues at the same time and realize that all these people are out there working on improving the lagoon.

Right.

And we’re all working together, which is really kind of cool. And that, to me, that was like one of those moments where you go, “Oh, things are all clicking into place.” And it was just really awesome to have them front row while we did that project. And they’re all colleagues and collaborators on these things. And so it was a really fun day. And that kind of made me think about it a little bit. I say, “Well, you know, okay, maybe this is not a terrible idea and it’s going to take off.”

And I think we kind of threw all of our chips in working with the Coastal Conservation Association or CCA. And we said, “You know what? We’re going to go big. We’re going to ask for support to do a billion clams.” 

And I know that’s a huge thing. That’s crazy, right? That’s, if you price it out, that’s about $10 million worth of clam restoration. But we don’t have a timeline on it. We just have a lot of desire and a lot of energy and a lot of people that really want to help. So that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to try to do a billion clams for the Indian River Lagoon. And I think with all the other things that are going on that are positive for the lagoon, by the time we get to that goal, I think we’ll be satisfied with what’s going on.

And I’m optimistically expecting improvement from all of the different things that are being done. You know? And there’s a lot of good projects out there that are helping the lagoon. So if we’re all doing something, I think we’re going to see the gains from all of that work.

Absolutely. So one of the things I wanted to chat with you about before we finished up is I have seen clams that have straight lines on them, and then I’ve seen clams that have zig zags on them. Is that the same species of clam? Is that a subspecies? Like, what’s going on and why the different patterns?

So the patterns that you see on clam shells are pretty interesting, there’s a long story there, but I’m going to lay it on you and see what we think. Okay.

That’s called Notata. The terminology is Notata. And what that is… originally aquaculture found this to be kind of a recessive gene. And those cool little sun ray patterns and things that you see on clamshells were actually kind of promoted in aquaculture so that people could say, “Those are our clams. And those weren’t wild caught. Like, we cultured those.”

And it covers the spectrum of all those different colors. And what that means is that this is well mixed, diverse genetics — but those are still all from the little small subset that we found initially. Right. And we’ve often considered and worried about, well, are they going to be [bottlenecked] genetically? Which means are they going to be kind of too inbred or whatever to be viable. And no, because we found probably 400 more clams over the course of our work in the lagoon that we consider not ours. Right. And so they’ve been added to the broodstock in my facility and Mike’s facility over the years.

And we found a little trick, and I can’t really share that trick, but we found a trick that helped us find clams. And it worked a lot better than a rake — no blisters, no broken back, no cussing, no sunburn, all these things.

Hmm. Some little tricks of the trade.

We found a little trick. And we utilized that trick on our sites to see if there’s anybody there before we plant. And if we do find them there before we plant, we collect them and they go into the broodstock.

Oh, nice. 

And so we’ve been able to find, actually the numbers are right around 380 [new individuals] over the last year. But [what’s] more interesting is that we’ve gone to places that we’ve searched before and found nothing. And we’ve found small clams, which means, and this is my favorite part, that obviously something’s working out there.

Right.

Clams are reproducing and they are viable in other places. And I get some calls. You know, we do the Jim Ross radio show pretty regularly — the Catch a Memory Show.

And it’s really fun to go on with Jim and Blair Wiggins and talk about the clam project. And I do it every once in a while. And so now the fishing community is finding them in places where they’re out waiting or doing whatever, and [if] they find a couple of clams, they’ll take a picture and send it to us. Some of them are without question the same species.

Your clams.

[The same clam species] we’re working with. And we are so happy.

I mean, I hate to try to claim that and say, “Oh, that’s us.” But, you know, before we’d started this work we couldn’t find any.

It’s… Yeah, exactly.

[It’s] definitely no little guys. So I’m thinking whatever’s working is working and we’re going to keep pushing that agenda until it’s a commonality to see them. I mean, I know oysters had a great year last year.

I’m finding little oysters all over the place. And I’m like, okay, we’ve got change happening and good things are going on. We’ve got grass coming up in Mosquito and Banana rivers. You know, things are looking pretty good. And I don’t want to jinx that — I’m knocking on my wooden desk right now — but I would say that we leverage that and take every opportunity to improve each year.

I think as a community, we’re going to come out of this thing with a, well, number one, a better appreciation for the lagoon and how valuable it is to us because we’ve been without, right. And we know what it’s like to be hungry now. So that and then also a rejuvenated lagoon that’s going to function and be that kind of jewel in the crown that it is for central Florida. Right. And so I have a lot of optimism about it, seeing these little things. I mean, it’s a little thing to collect some clams and go, “Wow, we didn’t plant those here, so, hmm. That must be working.” To see oysters. I mean, I’ve got oysters all over my clam bags at River Rock.

I think Corey posted something the other day on Instagram, and she’s got one of our little floatable sleds that we take out there, and it’s half full of clams and the other half is oysters. So these were in the bag.

Wow.

Literally their larvae set on little clam shells that were in the bag because they love to set on another shell, right?

Yeah.

And so there’s a couple hundred oysters in that bag that are doing great. And so that means a couple of things. One, that oyster restoration is working. And also the water quality is coming to a place where the larvae are able to survive. And that’s a big deal — that means that we’re making improvements. And [to me], that’s like, I guess we talked about this before [at] our fundraiser last year. 

It’s not time to be like, “Yeah, good.” No, it’s time to step on the gas pedal and turn up the nitrous, right? It’s like, it’s time to really hit the gas and say, “Okay, now we’ve got a tipping point. Maybe we’ve gone past that point, that threshold that’s been holding us back. Now let’s put all [our] efforts in and really make this swing back the other way for a positive outcome.” 

And I think we’re seeing the beginnings of that, and I’m really excited about it, you know? But I want that message out there. That it doesn’t mean we can stop doing what we’re doing now. It just means we got to…

We just got to keep up. Yeah.

Yeah. Keep it going.

Keep, keep doing it.

Yeah.

So of course the ultimate goal is restoration of the lagoon. Like you had mentioned, a healthy ecosystem. Maybe also a little bit of harvesting and eating some clams on our own one day?

You know what, that to me is like we have done what we’re supposed to do.

We’ve made it. Yeah.

We have made it.

So you alluded earlier that you do enjoy eating clams and oysters. I do as well. So to finish off our podcast today, I would love to hear your favorite way to eat a clam.

Okay. So now, if we were out in the field, I mean, every one of my boats has got some hot sauce and crackers in the box, right? So you can eat [clams] like an oyster — crack them and eat them. But I don’t recommend that right now in the lagoon.

I would suggest that you get healthy clams and there are great options for that — up around New Smyrna, around Sebastian Inlet — healthy clams. Those aquaculture guys are doing their thing and they’re doing it well. And so, those clams are good to eat. Anything in between there and between the inlets, not so much — steer clear of that. But the recipe, okay, here it is. Steam clams in white wine with a really good liberal smattering of butter and garlic.

Ooh.

And to me, that makes for a really great boil. [It] boils them open, steams them open, they’ve got a little essence of white wine. Go for a table wine. Don’t go for the expensive stuff because you’re going to use several bottles, right? For a bunch of clams.

And then drown them in butter and garlic, steam all that, or boil all that together, pull them out, they’ll be open. And then just grab a spoon and a loaf of bread because you’re going to want to soak up all that yummy butter wine sauce with some good bread along the way. And that to me would be…

That sounds amazing.

… the best way to eat clams. And we do that regularly up here. So next time you visit Jessy, just tell me in advance, say, “Hey, I’m coming up and I wanna taste some of the clams up there.” And we’ll definitely cook some up.

Absolutely. That would be great. So before we finish up, Todd, is there anything that we didn’t touch on that you’d like to touch on?

Well, most of the time I’d just like to say thank you. For me, thinking [about] all these groups that have helped us out, you know, the IRL, National Estuary Program gave us our first grant and continues to support us yearly, which I can’t say thank you enough. I want to say thank you to CCA. I want to say thank you to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission — all of which have been great supporters of this. The public that donates to the program and gets out there and helps us. There’s about 45 more folks that I need to thank. But I would say that those guys are the major contributors.

And even the Space Coast Office of Tourism has been helping us do this— helping us get the word out and supporting projects and supporting outreach. I can’t say enough about all the different groups in Brevard County that have been so supportive and help grow the program. I mean we’ve been able to collaborate with Brevard Zoo. We’ve been able to collaborate with several different entities — Riverside Conservancy and all these different groups that are on the same mission.

You know, they’re out there, daily working, trying to improve the lagoon, and we’re just so stoked to be able to interact with them and bring something to the table as a part of the solution. Norm has a great shirt from his group called Lagoon Solutions. And it says, “If you’re not part of the problem, you’re part of the solution.” And the message is [to] be part of that solution. And so my parting shot to everybody is, hey, go do something.

Whatever it is, do something. I watch Corey Redwine who works in my group, but also is very, very active in the lagoon. And she does that. I mean, she embodies that, right? So she’s out there every day doing something. She’s working with Star Brite, which is a big fishing industry company. They make great, what they call sea safe products, which are water quality safe cleaning products for boats and things like that. And they have been supporting the clam project, and they’re also supporting Cory’s work on mango restoration and education. All these different things all make a big difference. And I’m grateful for them too.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Because everybody has a role. And so that would be my parting message — is everybody can do something. Go do something. Support someone.

I love it.

Get in a group, work with a group. Go get wet and put out clams or oysters or seagrasses or whatever floats your boat. Just get involved. And it feels so good to make a positive impact. And so I promise you, for every bit of effort you put in, you’ll get 10 bits of satisfaction out the back end.

Absolutely. Well, Todd, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it.

Hey, thank you for having me. I love talking about this stuff, and I just really appreciate the opportunity to tell people more about what we do.