CAPE MAY COUNTY MAGAZINE 13 JUNE '83

23

So he says, "Are you Mr. Kleb?" and I said, "Yes." He said, "I got something I think that you ought to see. "...And he says. "You know, you're digging clams that are ^not the right kind of clams." I: Do you remember his name? K: His name was George Payne. He was an old coldfisherman that fished out of here all his life. ..He used to catch these big clams on these hooks on the baits. How or why, I don’t know, but he told me this and...he said to me, "You know,...you've got to go out to Five Fathoms Banks." I said, "Way out there'’" That was about 16 miles offshore...! says, "Gosh, we never caught clams any further than three, four miles off the beach." "Well,” he said, "That’s what I'm telling you...see here, I’ve got it all marked. Here's where there’s clams.. . " And he had the northeast end marked off. and he had ground enough marked off that we must have fished on for 10 years...And clams like this—six, six and a half, seven inches. And it’s a good thing he led,us to them because when they got around eight inches, and around 18 or 19-years-old, they died.. Well, we got the biggest surprise of our life. We sent that man out in the morning with two men in the boat, and they were il at five o'clock that night with 250 busheft of clams anywheres from five and one-ha(f to seven inches. And from that day on we never took anymore inshore clams, we left everything lay It did a lot for economics in the clam. In handling, you didn't have to handle two clams instead of one. . . We were handling at that time, I would say, six months after we started, when we got into the big clams, I would say we were handling two to three thousand bushels a day. And then everybody started to get interested in this business.. I: Up till that time. Snow didn't have any competition? K: No competition...Now I went to work. I said, "Now we’re gonna find out if there's any more of that big stuff down the beach and up the beach."...So I took my electronic finder and now I had a captain on each boat who I thought I could trust I also put a minister on it. And I told the captains, "All I want you to do is listen to the finder. And when you find clams, make a drag, and I want the minister to write the finding." I: How come? K: ...If you don’t do it yourself, you're

not sure of what you're doing in the business. If you was to go out today and find a little patch of clams, you ain’t gonna tell me. You’re gonna even go out there at night and get 'em to keep me from knowing where you are. These men are all new to me. they're not my brothers So I had to protect a survey that’s costing money So I knew the minister had nothing to gain, nothing to lose, and he should be an honest man. I: Let's discuss the government's interest in the surf clam. K: Well, we had this association formed, the Sea Clam Packers, and we had joined the shell fish organization We thought that the government should know something about our business because it had grown to possibly 25, 30, or 35 million dollars a year business, with all the companies...And I spoke to the head of the shellfish outfit...Mrs. Wallace. She says, "Well, I don’t know why you can't write a thesjs on your industry, and I’m sure they don't know anything. about it. They might be interested to give you a research program " So I sat down and I concentrated for a day or two and I wrote a pretty nice thesis about it. And finally we were called to Washington. She had made an appointment to go before, I can't remember the committee. It was a committee of about 10 senators...So they listened. One of them stopped me. "Mr. Kleb," he says, "Am I to understand from what you’ve written here that every time you run out a bed of clams you want the government to find you a bed?” I said, “No sir, this isn’t the idea. We know where to go for clams. We have lots of clams but we don’t know what we've got...we don’t know anything about it. " I said to him, "Do you know, does the government know anything about this clam that we don’t, that we haven't been able to find out?" He said, "No I understand that the government don’t know a thing about your clams." So I said, "I bet you if I asked you about a flower (I was told to say this) up in Alaska, you would know all about it." He said, "That I can do,"..."So," I said, "That’s the reason we need a research program " . All of a sud- v den I got a telegram one day from a congressman in New York..."Congratulations, your bill is passed, you’ve been granted 1750,000 for a research program Then the Government came down from Woods Hole, they have all the boats and stuff and everything to make the survey They came down and they didn’t know what the heck we were talking about I: These were the scientists. ' K: Biologists and stuff like that so 1 told them all that I told you here about what we found out. and what the shuckers found out... I didn’t quite finish telling you how at age 19 they (the clams) would die The clam would be getting larger and larger and the first thing you would know on the edge of the clam, the outside edge, it would start to get crystally, you know, powdery. And now you could take that clam and rattle it. You could hear the insides rattle, where the meat would shrink. . .and all this we told them And they just stared and laughed and snickered... but every one of those guys came hack and apologized.

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