Seagulls and the setting sun hung low over the Manasquan Inlet as a 125-foot clam trawler motored into a berth at Point Pleasant Beach. The crew set to work unloading the fruits of 58 hours at sea: Enough Atlantic surfclams to fill eight tractor trailers, which hauled the bounty south to a processing plant along Delaware Bay.
The Atlantic surfclam fleet fishes year-round from Virginia to Massachusetts and out to the edge of the continental shelf. The fleet sold $27 million worth of surfclams to processors last year, federal data shows, and the sector is largely based out of New Jersey — three-fifths of last year’s haul was brought ashore in the Garden State.
