Why Should Delaware Care?
As Sussex County’s population and homebuilding scene booms, the health of the Inland Bays is in peril. Runoff from local agriculture and development are contributing to higher nitrogen levels up and down the bay, creating harsh conditions for aquatic life.
Community-Powered Journalism
This story was developed following discussions at a Spotlight Delaware Community Listening Tour stop. Find out more about the tour by clicking here.
Lolo is a little different from other boats on Delaware waters, and the embodiment of “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Plucked from a dumpster, its 17-foot hull is built from the remains of a dock in the Lewes and Rehoboth Canal.
It roams the Inland Bays with Dirk Moore, a Lewes resident and longtime clammer, who’s combed the bay since he was 12 years old.
Moore, who’s retired from full-time clamming, raked in the Inland Bays for 30 years before taking a job on a commercial clam boat that dredged the seafloor from Chincoteague, Va., to Nova Scotia, Canada, for another 15 years.
But Moore doesn’t clam like he used to. When he was younger, he’d spend a full six hours on the water. Now, he doesn’t spend more than three hours out at a time.
Something else changed, too, and it’s not the way he guides his bullrake on the bay floor.
What’s changed is that Moore is one of the few clammers left in the Inland Bays, and the waters he’s called home are in peril.
As Sussex County’s population explodes, new development could threaten waters that have struggled to meet quality standards for at least eight years.
State of the bay
The health of the Inland Bays has held steady since 2016, but that health has been poor, according to a report from the Delaware Center for the Inland Bays, a nonprofit that monitors the interconnected coastal lagoons – the Rehoboth Bay, Indian River Bay, and Little Assawoman Bay – that form the freshwater Inland Bays in southeastern Sussex County.
Reports from 2016 and 2021 both raised concerns about the booming population in Sussex County, and the increase in development along the watershed. With this uptick in homebuilding come more impervious surfaces like roads, parking lots and buildings that contribute to runoff and flooding by virtue of their inability to absorb rainwater.
The building boom also puts additional strain on the county’s wastewater infrastructure, which will soon have more homes and commercial systems to treat.
“Densely developed areas without adequate stormwater management can contribute four times as much nitrogen pollution to the Bays as a forest of the same size,” the report said.
Higher levels of nitrogen have contributed to worsening conditions for aquatic life, as well as different bay grasses. While nitrogen and phosphorus facilitate the growth of baygrasses, seaweed and algae, too strong of a concentration leads to low oxygen levels and murky water.
When the water is murky, sunlight can’t reach the bottom, choking the growth of baygrasses. Baygrass fields and clear water are markers of a healthy bay, but when they’re absent, it compounds to create a harsher environment with less oxygen for fish and invertebrates.
Nitrogen inputs in the Inland Bays “far exceed” healthy limits in all of the bays and show no signs of improvement. Much of this nitrogen comes from contaminated stormwater runoff that flushes wastewater, fertilizers and animal waste into the bay.
The Indian River Bay, where the largest areas for seasonal clamming lie, saw nitrogen loads six times above the limit for healthy ecosystems.
Christophe Tulou, the executive director for the Delaware Center for the Inland Bays, said there was a time when water quality was better, but that was a time when there weren’t as many people living around the bays.
Tulou added that water quality in the Indian River Inlet is often better because of the exchange of fresh ocean water with the bays’ freshwater. But that quality gets worse as it approaches the mainland.
“You’re more challenged as you go westward in our bays and into the watershed itself, where the streams and tributaries and rivers come into the bays,” Tulou said.
What’s changed with clamming?
Clam density has been stable since 1976, the Center for the Inland Bays report said, but the amount of clams being harvested in the bay decreased sharply between 2019 and 2020.
In 2000, there were 60 commercial harvesters in the bays. But in 2019, that number dropped to 13. A number that’s likely decreased more, according to Steve Friend, another retired clammer.
While the state Division of Fish and Wildlife used to lease acres of bay floor in the Little Assawoman Bay to farmers who cultivated clam beds for harvests, it hasn’t had a lessee since 2020, according to annual state aquaculture reports.
Once the COVID pandemic set in and restaurants were forced to close for a time, some clammers weren’t able to sell their clams like before. With that revenue stream frozen, they went from working the water to working the trades, Friend said.
Friend is also a retired member of the U.S. Postal Service, and spends his days fighting for a cleaner bay through aquaculture with the Delaware Sea Grant oyster farm at the University of Delaware.
But farming still has a ways to go, he said. Friend believes there needs to be more shellfish farms in the bays, as well as farms in the most polluted areas, to allow for more filtration year-round.
Shellfish are able filter out many of the nutrients coming into the water, according to Tulou, with native eastern oysters being able to filter up to 50 gallons of water a day. With thousands of oysters filtering water at a time, it starts to add up.
Friend has a lifetime of experience on the water. He and his brothers spent their days looking for clams at as early as 10 years old – it was just expected.
Now, Friend said he worries about the future of shellfishing in the Inland Bays. As a kid, he remembers being able to go out and easily catch scallops.
“You can’t find one now,” he said. “It’s sad that things that’ve happened over the years instead of helping it, they’ve just hurt it.”
The same is true for clams, he said. It used to be easy for clammers to go out and catch thousands of clams in a day, but now catching 1,200 in a day is lucky.
A changing bay
Moore also remembers a time when the bay would freeze over and someone could cut a hole in the ice to work.
“You don’t have that now,” Moore said.
Before taking Lolo out on the bay, Moore loads his gallon jug of water and half gallon of grape apple juice onto the boat and secures his bullrake with a bungee cord to the front.
Using bamboo sticks to measure the bay floor depth and feel for differences in its make up, he positions Lolo into his favorite spots for clams. Moore knows he’s found the spot when there’s a healthy mix of mud and sand. Then he turns off his engine and tosses his rake into the murky water to drag them up into the day’s light.
One thing about clamming that’s always been consistent for Moore is it’s a calming place to be. His mind is free to wander while he scrapes his rake in the sand below.
But what Moore notices is that much of that bay floor today is barren, and baygrasses don’t grow like they used to. Moore doesn’t clam full-time anymore, but said he wants to raise awareness about the quality of the bay.
Moore worries the higher nitrogen levels in the water won’t allow clam shells to develop properly. As part of that, he’d like to make sure future clams can grow to maturity.
And more importantly, he wants a healthier environment for the clams he’s caught all his life.
“If we lose clammers, who cares?” Moore said. “I’m like one of the last guys out there clamming going, ‘Oh, my bay is dying.’”