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Partly to blame for the decline are widespread outbreaks of "red tide," caused by a naturally occurring algae that produces a toxin that makes clam harvesting off limits, Beal said. But the rise of moon snails is the No. 1 reason. On a recent day on a Lubec flat, Beal and some clammers found dozens and dozens of the snails and their small egg cases, which look like small pieces of rubber littered on the mud. Harmless-looking and slow-moving, the creatures can turn deadly when they get hold of a clam under the mud, enveloping it with its slimy, mucous-oozing foot and softening the shell with an enzyme secretion. In just a day, they can drill a hole in the softened shell and eat the clam meat inside. "They just go in and slurp it up," Beal said. On the flats, clammers in their rubber boots have a hard enough time of it without the snail invasion. They work in the wet and cold, sometimes sinking knee-deep into Jello-like mud pockets known as "honey pots" that can suck their legs down in a flash, trapping them until they can wiggle free, sometimes leaving a boot behind. Lately, diggers have been getting less than $1 a pound (prices will probably be double that in August, when demand is highest). In Lubec, a town of 1,500, the value of the harvest has fallen from $566,000 four years ago to just $39,000 last year, according to the state. David Case, 34, said it's barely worth his while to dig clams these days. But there's little else around to make a buck, and he still has to put food on the table. "I always said I wouldn't dig clams for under $1 a pound," he said. "But if you don't have any money, what can you do?" Dennis Huckins, 56, said the moon snail is a crook, taking money out of clam diggers' wallets. "It's a thief," he said. "It steals from you." But many diggers keep at it because there's nowhere else to turn. Back in the day, Lubec was a bustling place with seafood processing plants, a busy downtown
-- even a movie theater. "There's nothing substantial here you can do," Huckins said. "How many Walmarts and McDonald's do you see? There's not a lot of industry here. You make your own." For now, clam diggers have been removing snail egg cases -- more than 90,000 so far
-- from the flats. Beal records their findings and the diggers usually dump the snails on their gardens as fertilizer. Some people think the moon snails could be processed, packaged and sold. "There's a market for moon snails somewhere in the world," Beal said. "Why not market ours?"
[Associated
Press;
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