CAH MAY COUNTY MAGAZINE 15 JUNE '93

22

The Only Way to Cet a Lot Of Clams Js To Find 'Em

(i:i) NOTE Eblhwlng • In Pxcerptrd ■from an inlcrvic\i> with •Bill Kleb of Wildwood Crpnt. bni’ of a neripn conducted by Dr THoman Cheliun of Atlantic'Com munity ( oIIckc and Cape May Coimty mpnhe agent Stewart Tweed an renearch fnr-a history of the county'n cofnmefclal flnhlhg InduntYy ) Intervlrwfr: With me today is Bill Kleb. who is goin^ to discuss wittvus something alniut The history of the clamming in duslry. also something about himself .as a Clammer. and - the' Atlantic Surf Clam, which is also called the Head Clam, his particular specialty We decided thht we'd start this interview where you are working for Snow's Industries. I guess it’s clamm ing industries Is that the term 0 Kleb It’s Snow Clamming Company I: We’re going to begin this at (•reenport... K In around 1!MB. we had this fish plant in Greenport I originally come from Freeport The Snow Company was buying surf clams from this outfit in Freeport, but no one else could get in to sell them anything. They seemed to have enough supply So we went about our business and went to Greenport and niade a fish business, my partner and I It wasn't long

after that we had an inquiry for clams from a party in Warren, Rhode Island, by the name of Bloun’s Seafood, Nelson Bloun He was going to pack minced clams for the Ocean Spray Cranberry people, and in a big way. So we were quite interested We started up with trucks and boats and what have you. people, benches and all the paraphernalia it took to process clams For some reason or other, they weren’t wise enough in canning that they tried to mix the ocean quahog and the surf clam together The first thing you know, everything backfired In the canning in dustry, if you have an eight-ounce can. the law says that you must have four ounces of grain weight and four ounces of juice in your finished product And the weights were all off The ocean quahog that they used and the lacquer in the can didn't jive It started to have a little green mold on it They lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and we were shut off. naturally From there. Mr Snow became interested We were progressive in furnishing what he needed I knew that Mr Snow eventually was going to be a big outfit and use a lot of clams So I said the Only way to get a lot of clams is to find out where they are And I kept searching

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books that I was able to get my hands on At this time I want to stop and say, How did we find them?' I made up an ingenious device out of a piece of steel tubing, six feet long, put two telephone receivers, this is true, inside, and put tines that you would use on a hay rake to scrape the bottom. And with that and a power pack from a B-29, because this was in the war days-.and a pair of earphones that we could hear in our ears so we could lay in a dishpan And we could tell you whether we were In fine sand, coarse sand, gravel, stones, and clams Everything had their own sound. I: This was the first type of technology that would he able to find and identify what type of shell fish was on the bottom? K This was the first kind of locating device that was ever Used to find this clam. . I: How did they do it before? K: Before, they ortly worked out of Freeport and that was enough for the demand. So they looked nowhere else. I was the only one that ever got it in my mind that I had to know what was along the coast. And I figured I couldn't be dropping the dredger every minute so I Aised this device to tow the hind boat and when we heard the sound of clams, and the sound of clams was so distinct that it was exactly the same as breaking a set of billiard balls on a table, a stone was sharp, metallic. And we had everything down so we could read it. It wasn't an intelligent outfit. It was a very plain thing, but it worked, off Sandy Hook we found clams...beds of clams See, clams are in beds, they're not just all over The beds are large sometimes, sometimes they’re small ..Actually. along the Jersey coast, there was clams pretty near everywhere you went. I: Beds of clams, right? K That’s right We were interested in beds of clams at a size. We didn’t look for small clams. We didn't know anything about clams, in other words. We didn't know why, when you pulled up a dredge, that you had two dozen six-inch or fiveinch clams, and you had three dozen or four dozen three-inch clams. We didn't know anything about that but we had them So anyhow, we came on down , south of Atlantic City we found a heavy accumulation, and along from there to Cape May Jetty was beds of clams, big enough to harvest. We went across the Delaware Bay to the Delaware shore and we found clams off the Fenwick Island shoals and right on down till we got to Chincoteaque we kept finding beds of clams I: Why did you pick Cape May? Why didn’t you go up to Atlantic City? K You see in Cape May we found an abundant supply I was very careful about the size because we had all men openers It wasn't done by machine like it is now

Bill Kiel and clam.

PKoloi by Al 5ch#!l

Everything was done by hand The larger the clam, the easier to open The more the shucker had in his pot, the quicker he could get a gallon to get paid for and it was an economic thing The smaller clams take up too much time to open we could finally get the boats that Were fishing to understand we liad to have five-inch clams, not only for tJ»e shucker, we needed it for Conservation Even the government sees now where conservation is the only thing left to keep this clam in the ocean It 's pretty well petered oit now I do knew from what I read in the papers that they’re only working one day a week And goodness knows, I used to have 20 boats gocut . at six in the morning and be in at four o'clock in the afternoon and each one had <00 bushels of clams. And today they go out from daybreak until dark with these bigger boats ...they haven't got 600, 700 bushels So that shows how depleted they are. And today they'll take any size. This is the thing Jvat's bad. They have no way to control the size of these clams because, when they’re catching them, they put hem in baskets and reak 'em, smash ’em. We never allowed that We always wanted a good, whole clam so a man could get a hold of it. And today they're Liking everything because the openers Jiey have, these mechanical openers, they just push this stuff through and it separates the meat from the shell, whether il's broken or not . . I: You lad gone into business down here and you were outfitting up the 29 boats and even somt people who wanted to go out clamming themselves. K: That s right we were only too happy to put this outfit on a man's boat.. he didn't have to pit up any money or anything. We did that. We would take off say, five or 10 cents a biishel . And that's the way we'd pay One night about nine o'clock, I'm sitting on the porch in the summertime and a fellow conies up He had a chart under his arm and anytime I see a fellow with a chart, I want to know what’s on that chart

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