EFFORTS TO INCREASE COCKLE CLAMS

[Anchor Lead]

The cockle clam, also called the bird clam in Korea for its beak-like shape, used to be a specialty of Chungcheongnam-do Province’s west coast. But now the tasty clams have all but disappeared. The scarcity and jacked-up prices ended up hurting the local fishermen and tourism industry, prompting efforts to restore the cockle clam.

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This 10,000 square meter fish farm built on land has been raising 800,000 pea-sized baby cockle clams since last month. These larvae will grow up to be bigger than seven centimeters by next June. This is the first attempt in Korea to farm cockle clams on land, hoping to make advantage of low production cost and mass farming.

[Soundbite] Lim Dong-gyu(Chungnam Marine Fisheries Resources Research Center) : "We can manage them better than farms in the sea, so mass production in a limited area is possible."

In the early 2000s, the west coast of Chungcheongnam-do Province was the nation’s greatest producer of cockle clams. After reaching the peak of 1,156 tons in 2003, however, over-fishing and environmental changes caused the production to plunge. This resulted in zero output for eight straight years since 2012. Then last year only 25 tons were produced. Even the cockle clam production in the south sea has declined rapidly in recent years, causing the price of cockle clams to spike to more than 70,000 won per kilogram.

[Soundbite] Seo Heung-gu(Fisherman, Hongseong-gun County, Chungcheongnam-do Prov.) : "There are almost no cockle clams, not enough even to cover fishermen’s wages. We catch cockle clams to clean the sea floor."

A clam larvae release project is underway to restore the cockle clam farms in Chungcheongnam-do Province’s west coast. For a second time since 2019, half a million artificially incubated cockle clam larvae were released in waters off Jukdo Island near Hongseong. Resources Research Center plans to introduce the farming method to fishermen next year and keep releasing clam larvae to restore their numbers.