The wonderful (and profitable) world of geoducs: the bottom line is good for this Southeast shellfish.

• Author: Swagel, Will

Along the ocean floor of Southeast Alaska--or rather under it--lives the world's largest burrowing clam: a behemoth bivalve that can dig itself down into the bottom up to 5 feet. From there, the clam extends a foot-or-longer neck out of the substrate, in order to filter the water for passing bits of phytoplankton and other morsels. These clams average around a kilogram each (2.2 pounds)-although monsters weighing in at 7.5 kilograms have been reported by fishermen.

In the U.S., geoduck clams (pronounced gooey-duck) arouse little interest, but in China the clams are a prized delicacy, fetching the equivalent of $80 to $100 for a 1-kilogram animal in fine restaurants in Hong Kong and on the mainland. The Chinese refer to the geoduck as an "elephant trunk clam."

"Geoduck" is a misspelling of a Native American word meaning "dig deep." The animal's range extends from California to a northern point near Juneau.

With that much Chinese yuan at stake--and with other fisheries fighting against decline-commercial divers in Southeast Alaska have been harvesting more and more of these strange creatures each year. And lately, the state has been flooded with applications for geoduck aquaculture sites up and down Alaska's Panhandle.

SENIOR DIVERS

For more than 35 years, Larry Trani has been diving in the waters around Sitka. In that, he's not unusual: "We have the senior league in Sitka," Trani explains. "Older, very experienced divers who all know and cooperate with another."

Cooperation is called for since divers must share the harvest, not only with other divers, but also with the sea otters whose numbers have been steadily increasing since they were re-introduced into Southeast in the late 1960s. The otter's thick pelts were prized by the Russians, who colonized the area in the 19th Century and then hunted the otter to near-extinction. Trani said he has visited some local geoduck beds only to find the re-planted otters have gotten there first.

Otters are not popular among commercial divers, but Trani, a dedicated conservationist as well as a commercial diver, is more philosophical. "(Otters) deserve a place at the table, too, and we're just going to have to learn to get along with them," he said, admitting, "There's a lot of guys who would like to shoot every one."

The geoduck dive fishery in Southeast was set this year at 400,000 pounds, worth more than $1 million. Geoducks are flown overseas live and are kept alive in tanks in the restaurants and...