Best of all, Gibbons argues, all this would come from "a critter that actually cleans the water" rather than fouling it as ill-planned, over-stocked shrimp and salmon farms have in the Northwest and around the world. "We don't have to feed them, we don't have to medicate them," he notes. "They're at the bottom of the food chain—they only eat up phytoplankton." And such plankton, nourished by fertilizer and septic run-off, is smothering South Puget Sound and countless other water bodies facing rapid development. Indeed, filter-feeding bivalves are net consumers rather than producers of pollution. Of course, even shellfish may leave beds of detritus when they're thickly planted on rafts, as mussels are. But that's not a problem when clams are grown in natural beds.
Of course, too many clams might clean the water too much, as runaway zebra mussels have in the Great Lakes, starving other plankton eaters. Overseeding could also make the crowded ducks vulnerable to parasites. And fishery authorities worry that vast numbers of geoducks grown from a narrow breed stock could corrupt the wild gene pools. Therefore, Taylor Shellfish and University of Washington researchers are developing sterile triploid geoducks (which have triple the usual chromosome set and can only shoot blanks).
JIM WOODRING
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Despite those (apparently surmountable) hurdles, Gant boasts, "I know of no other aquacultural operation in the world as sound as ours." That may not be an ideal boast. David Ellis, director of the Vancouver-based Fish for Life Foundation, is a fierce critic of industrial fishing and aquaculture and author of a harsh report from the Suzuki Foundation on BC's salmon farming. But, he declares, "I am all for shellfish aquaculture and for well-.managed wild shellfish fisheries."
And so the king—or queen, or hermaphroditic combination—of clams might feed the world, leave the waters clean, and provide the masses the amusement once enjoyed only by Pike Place tourists. Jim Gibbons puzzles over one question in the meantime: Why will the Chinese—a people famous for the uses they make of rhino horn, tiger testicles, and other exotic animal parts—pay so much for a weird clam? Is it because of tonic or aphrodisiac qualities associated with its anatomical evocations? I was there when he put the question to Hua Qian Hong, a prospective investor from Shanghai. "Oh, no, no, we just like it because it tastes good," says Hua.
On such matters, however, women may speak more frankly than men. Gibbons recounts, "One of the top brokers came over with his wife. I asked if I could pose a rather blunt question. He said 'Sure,' thinking I meant a business question. I asked if it was true that people over there liked geoduck so much because it looked like a penis. He shook his head, but his wife laughed and waved her hand and said, 'Of course it is!'"
