On a late-spring Saturday, dock manager Stephen Bardsley held a monkfish high overhead at the Point Pleasant Fisherman’s Dock Co-Operative in New Jersey. Its mottled skin mimicked the color of the ocean floor, and a fishing-rod-shaped antenna dangled from its head. Its sharp teeth formed a gaping subaquatic grin as a group of visitors pushed in. “Little fish swim up, and they can’t even see the difference in color,” explains Bardsley to his guests. Then the fishing-rod antenna becomes a […]

Categories: food & drink, on the water

You know you’re in the presence of a bayman by the way he guns his boat through a channel. That would be with confident speed, moderately alarming to a passenger in a landlocked trade. It’s hard to imagine how many times George Mathis has woven through the serpentine curves from Landing Crick out toward his aquaculture leases in Dry Bay, near Galloway in the Edwin B. Forsythe Wildlife Refuge. Thousands? Tens of thousands? Cutting the engine, Mathis pops one of […]

Categories: food & drink, on the water

2019 Eddy Award, Best Feature “Mother Nature, she’s the boss.” Billy Mayer looks at the bay, his eyes taking on the deep blue hue of the waters where Obes Thorofare and Steelmans Bay meet. “You have to look at the moons. You have to look at the tides. All that knowledge? Nobody is going to teach you that. You can’t describe that. It’s just something that you pick up over time.” Mayer speaks to a primal truth with the poetry […]

Categories: food & drink, on the water

Aquaculture is the wave of the future for NJ’s iconic bivalve. We explore the bay in this eight-part series. Writing the Clam’s Next Chapter A Day in the Life of a Bayman New Jersey Clams: Boom and Bust . . . and Boom? New Jersey Clams: Here’s What You Can Do Where to Savor Jersey Clams Hard Clam Aquaculture 101 New Jersey Clamming Memories A Tale of Two States: Hard Clam Aquaculture in Virginia and New Jersey 2015 Published in […]

Categories: food & drink, on the water

“Back in the day, you got up, you went to work, you made your daily bread and you went home and worked in the garden. And you made good money. Now, it’s way more profitable than it was when we first started with the aquaculture. If you’re going to clam, you better get into aquaculture.” —Bobby Wilson, clammer Read more… Published in the Fall 2018 issue

Categories: food & drink, on the water

Especially among outsiders, it’s common to speak of our bay system in the singular. In part, this is because the average person knows little about a secret, watery geography that reads like poetry. West of Holgate, Hither Channel leads to Soldiers Hole, which winds between Story Island and Goodluck Sedge. These hidden maps belong to those in the bay. Yet, estuaries are a varied, subtidal universe, wherein the only constant is change. This includes clams. Read more…   Published in the […]

Categories: food & drink, on the water

Hard clam breeding season is triggered by temperature. As clams awaken from hibernation, they feed vigorously, building stores of sperm or eggs. Aquaculturists manipulate this in the hatchery, replicating nature on an accelerated timeline. The first step is to gather breeders, bring them in, and offer an algae diet. Read more… Published in the Fall 2018 issue

Categories: food & drink, on the water