By Pepper Fisher
PORT ANGELES – The razor clams on the beach at Kalaloch are too small, they have been for years, so officials at Olympic National Park announced Wednesday that we can’t dig them there this year. If there’s any good news, they think they’ve figured out why the clams are so small these days.
Each summer, biologists from the Park, the Quinault Indian Nation, the Hoh Indian Tribe, and the state Department of Fish and Wildlife conduct razor clam stock assessments. They basically inject water into the clam beds, which makes the clams in that vicinity come to the surface and they count them.
This year’s results showed the number of adult razor clams at Kalaloch to be approximately 1.2 million, but with an average size of just 3.5 inches long, and almost nothing over 4 inches.
Park officials say that poor adult survivorship at Kalaloch may be due to a bacterial gill pathogen called NIX, that plagued razor clams on Washington’s beaches in the 1980s. Virtually all Kalaloch razor clams are infected with NIX, which is potentially deadly to razor clams, but harmless to humans who eat them.
It’s been a problem at Kalaloch since 2006, and scientists are still working on it. In the meantime, we are in the middle of a clam digging week south of Kalaloch at Copalis, Twin Harbors and Long Beach, that wraps up Friday night.
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