Text of Senator Charles Schumer's Letter to Dr. William T. Hogarth, Administrator National Marine Fisheries Service

Drear Dr. Hogath,

I write to ask the National Marine Fisheries Service for help finding a source of clams that may benefit from the existing infrastructure of the Raritan Bay Shellfish Transplant Program.

Last week, New York State was forced to cancel the 15-year old Raritan Bay Shellfish Transplant Program. Under this program, clams from polluted waters in the Raritan Bay off the coast of Staten Island were transplanted into the Peconic Bay on Long Island to cleanse themselves. Three weeks after they were transplanted, the clams were harvested by East End fishermen and sold at market.

This highly successful program, which produced 40 to 45 percent of the clam harvest in New York State and most of the clams in the Peconic Bay, had to be cancelled after the New York Department of Environmental Conservation found that the Quahog Parasite Unknown had contaminated the Raritan Bay clams.

Any permanent loss of the Raritan Bay clams would be devastating to the economy of the East End of Long Island, and the loss of almost half of the clams harvested in New York would hurt families across the state.

But this loss may yet provide an opportunity. We have in place a system that had been proven effective in making inedible fish clean and marketable. I strongly suspect that somewhere on the east cost, there other clams that could benefit from it.
I ask for your assistance in locating another source of clams that would benefit from this program. Please survey your regional offices and state contacts and let me know as soon as possible if there are clams in southern New England, New Jersey or even the Chesapeake Bay in Delaware and Maryland that, after transplantation into the Peconic Bay, would be clean and marketable.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

Sincerely,
Charles E. Schumer
United States Senator