Gun Control

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Razor clamming has been central to the local culture and economy since humans first arrived here. (Best current guess: 15,000 years ago. And counting.) We used to be allowed to dig any tide low enough, and the limit was, uh... so many I never had to know what the limit was.

Then when I was in high school, the combination of overdigging and a shellfish epidemic closed all the beaches, as in no more digging, ever. Together with a catastrophic failure of the logging industry, it blasted the whole coast back to the 1930s. We never fully recovered.

But back in the 1990s, fisheries biologists determined that stocks had bounced back enough to open the beaches for a day here and there, with a 15 clam limit. When the populations survived that, they authorised a few more openings. These days, we typically get a weekend per month between October and April. But it's no guarantee, and my suspicion is that what with development, and the Tribe fully exercising its treaty rights, we'll see fewer digs in the future.

But some openings this winter have put July 4 crowds on the beach. Digging that intense is harder and less profitable, especially for an old-schooler like me, who still digs with the traditional clam gun and his own hands. These days I'm often the only guy on the sand with a shovel, surrounded by tube-tuggers like the Seafair Parade.

So that's my solution: open the beach, ban the tube. Guns-only from now on, just like the day.

And if that doesn't work, by God: ban the gun.

We'll see who the real honkers are.

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