Screenshot_2019-11-03 ReClam the Bay - Sorting Clams Facebook - RCTB Rakeout - 2 Nov 2019 pdf.png

On Saturday, November 2nd, over 45 RCTB volunteers came to our Waretown lease site for our annual clam rake out and planting.  We planted approximately 178 thousand seed clams from five different upweller sites.  We raked out previously planted clams and divided them into three sizes:  large legal size, legal size and smaller than legal size.  By taking several measurements of the legal size and the smaller size we determined that there were 20 legal sized clams in each liter and one hundred and twenty of the smaller ones per liter.  From that point on we simply filled five gallon buckets with the clams and counted the number of buckets for each of these two sizes.  Knowing that each bucket holds 20 liters, it was easy to determine the number of clams we had for each size.  For the large legal size, we counted them as we filled the mesh bags.  We filled five buckets with the smallest clams totaling 12,000, three buckets with legal sized totaling 1,200 and 713 of the largest clams for a total of 13,913.  These numbers are by far the lowest we ever raked out of the lease.  Previous year’s rake outs were between 40 – 60 thousand.  Despite the low numbers, there was an abundance of great food, perfect weather and and a great effort on everyone’s part to make the day a success.

Frank Vives