Hot water, bigger storms: What’s the future of Florida’s clam industry?

CEDAR KEY — In the days leading up to Hurricane Debby, Timothy Solano went about his life as usual, cautiously eying the storm forming in the Gulf of Mexico.

A father of three and second-generation clam farmer, he was still busy cleaning up the mess left behind by Hurricane Idalia, a Category 3 storm that pummeled Cedar Key and Florida’s Big Bend region a year earlier and caused devastating losses for local shellfish operations.

Like many other clam farmers in the area, Solano had spent the past year cleaning up tens of thousands of ruined clam bags, replanting millions of new clams, traveling to Tallahassee to talk with lawmakers — and thinking about the future of his industry.

What were the odds Cedar Key would get hit again?

On Aug. 5, Debby made landfall near Steinhatchee, roughly 70 miles northwest of Cedar Key.

Solano woke up at 4:30 a.m. that day to howling wind and lashing rain. He tried driving to Cedar Key’s main island, where his clam operation was, but the roads were flooded with more than 2 feet of water.

Later that day, Solano and a small group headed out on boats to assess the damage. In the storm’s wake, much of what local farmers spent the past year painstakingly replanting had been disrupted and displaced. Bags of clams were bundled into knots. Newly planted clam seed was “tossed up and ripped around,” Solano said. Months of grueling work, upset in an instant.

“If you looked around, there were boats everywhere,” he said. “Everyone I talked to or ran into, it was the same story: They were devastated.”

The area’s most recent blow is a disheartening reminder of the region’s increased vulnerability, as rising water temperatures and intensifying storms threaten wide swaths of the Gulf Coast. It’s forcing many in Cedar Key’s small but robust aquaculture industry to reassess their livelihoods.

Most clam farmers say they’re here to stay. The lucrative industry is easy to get into, and the startup costs are low. But there’s a lot of uncertainty.

A young industry

The small island community of Cedar Key produces more than 90% of Florida’s clams, a good portion of which are sold to restaurants and seafood markets across the state. But the area also has a major stake in the national wholesale market, with local clams landing on shelves from California to New Jersey.

Florida’s warm waters are particularly good for growing the hard-shell clam variety, known as northern quahogs or Mercenaria mercenaria. The region produces about 100 million to 125 million clams per year, in an industry that employs more than 400 people.

Compared to other aquaculture operations around the country, Cedar Key’s clam industry is still quite young, emerging in the 1990s after Florida voters passed a constitutional amendment banning gill nets in state waters. The measure was intended to prevent overfishing and, in its place, many residents of the small waterfront village transitioned from commercial fishing to aquaculture with the help of federally funded job retraining programs.

More than 200 people were introduced to the trade, learning how to farm clams on water parcels acquired through the state’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

In the years since then, the region has become one of the country’s top clam producers. Cedar Key is synonymous with its best-known bivalve, with tourists coming from all over to savor the meaty littleneck clams served at local restaurants. In Tampa Bay, it’s common to see Cedar Key clams on restaurant menus and for sale at seafood markets. Despite the industry’s struggles this past year, there hasn’t been a considerable change in supply or price for consumers here — yet.

The area is home to both shellfish farmers and wholesalers. Some, like Solano’s family business, operate as both. Many local clammers who started in the ’90s have passed their businesses to their children — including Solano, who runs Solano Sea Farms and the family’s wholesale operation, Cedar Key Aquaculture Farms, on roughly 70 acres of sea bottom.

Farming clams involves growing them in various stages.

To start, farmers purchase clam seed, roughly the size of a peppercorn, from local hatcheries. They nurse the minuscule seeds in small bags. Three to six months later, the clams are moved to larger bags that are staked to the ground and eventually become embedded in the seafloor.

Each bag holds roughly 800 to 1,350 clams and, in good conditions, between 70%-80% survive. Fully grown clams can range in size from roughly three-quarters of an inch (”pasta” size) to a little over 1 inch (middleneck size). A crop of littleneck-sized clams, which are about 1 inch wide, can be grown in 12-18 months, depending on water temperatures and the presence of predators.

Once harvested, the clams are washed, tumbled, graded and sorted for size, then tagged and bagged before being sent to stores and restaurants.

Though the profession is labor-intensive, the startup costs for running an aquaculture operation are fairly low, with a two-acre lease costing little more than a yearly administrative fee. Clam seed is generally the biggest cost: One million seeds go for around $9,000. Each 2-acre plot has to contain at least 200,000 planted clams, but on average might have much more, around 2.5 million.

On the wholesale market, clams can sell for 15 to 20 cents each, and higher in a retail space. The potential profits are huge: During a good season, farmers can easily rake in six figures, while wholesalers can net as much as $6 million.

“For the revenue for what you can get, you can’t beat it by any stretch of imagination,” said Rose Cantwell, who has operated a clam farming and wholesale business since 2001.

Clam farming is increasingly attracting a younger generation, including people like Solano, 28, and his brother-in-law John Fradella, 27, who grew up in Cedar Key and returned after college to take over his father’s business.

Though the past year hasn’t been easy, Fradella said he can’t imagine doing anything else.

”Once you start getting through all the dead stuff and you start planting more and start seeing progress, it makes you feel good again, like, maybe this could work.”

“Devastating losses”

Even before hurricane season, 2023 was a tough year for Florida’s shellfish business. Record-high water temperatures were wreaking havoc on the industry, stressing oxygen-deprived clams, sometimes to the point of death.

In July of last year, a water marker in Manatee Bay recorded an all-time high of 101.1 degrees, and the water near Cedar Key registered above 95 degrees for several days in a row, killing roughly 40% of the clams planted.

Then came Hurricane Idalia.

The Big Bend region hadn’t been hit by a major hurricane since 1950 (though Hurricane Hermine in 2016 brought intense flooding and caused significant damage). The area includes Cedar Key and the cluster of islands that make up the Cedar Keys National Wildlife Refuge. Idalia plowed into the region Aug. 30 with winds at 115 mph, making landfall in Keaton Beach as a Category 3 storm and forging a powerful path through the Florida’s Nature Coast. Residents in Cedar Key awoke to massive storm surge, which in some areas had swelled to 7 feet.

The storm caused $3.6 billion in damage, most of which occurred in the Big Bend region’s agricultural sector. Strong winds pummeled buildings, downed trees and irrigation rigs, and tore through peanut and cotton crops, aquaculture and livestock operations.

According to a September 2023 Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services report, aquaculture operations there reported more than $34.1 million in losses, though most clam farmers say the actual number is much higher. Between fuel costs, labor, clam loss, repairs and infrastructure damage, Solano estimates his business alone took a $5 million hit.

Though clam bags are staked to the seafloor, thousands were dislodged and dislocated when Idalia hit at low tide, sending bags miles away. Farmers estimate they lost as much as 90% of their stock. Some lost everything. To this day, farmers said there are thousands of dislodged clam bags that have yet to be retrieved. Most of the clams in those bags are likely dead.

“There were devastating losses,” said Leslie Sturmer, a shellfish aquaculture specialist at the University of Florida/IFAS Shellfish Aquaculture Research and Extension Program. “It was the first really major loss that this young industry has experienced. And growers make their money by harvesting clams — if you’re not harvesting clams, you’re not getting paid.”

Facing an immediate shortage, several wholesalers had to look to clam farms in Georgia to fill large orders for national clients.

After her home and business took on more than five feet of water, Cantwell, who sits on the board of the Cedar Key Association and Florida Shellfish Aquaculture Association, was out of her house for more than eight months and lost the majority of her clams.

Peter Stefani, a local farmer who owns the Cedar Cove resort, said his hotel and restaurant, The Island Room, took on between 7 and 10 feet of water from Idalia and has yet to reopen. His small clam business, which before brought in roughly 300,000 clams a year, yielded nothing this year.

“There’s nothing you can do about it,” said Stefani, 65, who has been farming clams since 1998. “I learned that a long time ago.”

Sturmer said the past year’s events have been discouraging for some.

“It’s a time when businesses have to stop and regroup and think, is this a time to reinvest and replant, or not?”

Reason for hope

The relief from Idalia wasn’t immediate, but some funding has provided a welcome boost.

Earlier this year, workers in the area were able to enroll in an aid program that helps farmers looking to temporarily hire back labor, part of a $6.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor. Certified shellfish lease holders were also awarded roughly $3,000 each, part of a $700,000 grant given to shellfish farmers and processors in the region through the Florida Disaster Fund.

The cleanup was spearheaded by farmers like Solano and Fradella, along with friends and families who gathered to help. Weeks were spent on the water hauling bags filled with dead or diseased clams.

Without assurance that the industry would bounce back quickly, local farmers have been less interested in low-interest loans offered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“I think the last thing a grower wants to do is take on a loan when they’re uncertain what the risk will be in the next crop year,” Sturmer said.

Solano, meanwhile, is hopeful that his frequent conversations with lobbyists and legislators about the state of his industry will bear positive results. Beyond its potential as a strong economic driver for the area, the industry has garnered praise for its sustainability and environmental benefits. Clams are filter feeders (a single littleneck-sized clam can filter roughly 4 1/2 gallons of seawater per day) and can also sequester carbon and remove nitrogen from their environments. There are efforts underway to start selectively breeding a more heat-resistant clam.

It’s still unclear how Hurricane Debby’s aftermath will play out. With aquaculture operations, it can take months to assess damage, sometimes longer. But the storm wasn’t nearly as bad as Idalia, and most farmers are hoping they’ll catch a break.

“It was really just kind of a kick to the stomach because everything was looking up, the seed was looking fine,” said Fradella. “We know there’s going to be some loss, we just don’t know yet how bad it’s going to be.”