GUEST EDITORIAL: Bradenton Beach bets on clams to restore water quality

A small beach town is on the verge of making a major difference.

There’s a lot of talk these days about the environmental challenges we are facing. Our small beach town is doing something about it. Bradenton Beach is located on the south side of Tampa Bay on Anna Maria Island, smack dab in the middle of the only place in the country that has three national estuaries on its border: Tampa Bay, Sarasota Bay and Charlotte Harbor.

The city has been taking some big steps to address environmental issues. It has joined the other two municipalities on Anna Maria Island in developing the most progressive storm water management and capital improvement programs of any barrier island in the country to mitigate runoff into marine waters and address sea level rise.

Bradenton Beach, as well as most of coastal Florida, experienced one of the worst red tide outbreaks in recent history in 2018. It was devastating to our marine environment and our economy. Red tide is a naturally occurring organism, but there is no doubt that nutrient loading from runoff into our inland and marine waters feeds and exacerbates the blooms. During the 2018 bloom Mote Marine Laboratory recorded the highest cell counts of the organism ever measured in south Sarasota Bay. The only marine species that lived through the outbreak in south Sarasota Bay were a few species of crabs and clams.

Clams are filter feeders that promote the benthic environment, which is the sea floor, much like worms improve soil. Harmful algal blooms are a serious problem in coastal waters nationwide. Eighty percent of Florida’s $900 billion economy is on the coast. Unfortunately we don’t get a say in the nutrient loading that flows into our Gulf of Mexico from the farm belt via the Mississippi River.

But that didn’t stop Bradenton Beach from an ambitious effort to make the biggest change in our lifetime to promote bivalve aquaculture. Bradenton Beach understands the history of our area. We have always been about a working waterfront. Our small island city is located just across the bay from Cortez, the oldest continual fishing village in Florida.

Over 90% of seafood consumed in the U.S is imported; 50% is from aquaculture. It’s our second-biggest trade deficit, at $14 billion last year.

We need environmentally friendly biological solutions for clean water, and we need to promote environmentally sound aquaculture. Clams do that. Did you know that one acre of seagrass sequesters as much carbon as 33 acres of forest?

If you want more seagrass, plant clams. Clams dig around and improve the benthic environment. Their waste stream fertilizes seagrass, and because they are filter feeders they clean large quantities of water daily, approximately five gallons a day for a middleneck-sized clam. Cleaner water allows more light through the water column, which promotes photosynthesis, which promotes seagrass growth.

In Bradenton Beach and Anna Maria Island, local restaurants started the Gulf Coast Oyster Restoration and Recycling program. All of their clam and oyster shells are recycled and used for shoreline restoration and to provide substrate on the sea bottom, which is shown to improve bivalve growth by 27 percent. This local restoration and recycling program — in conjunction with the University of Florida IFAS/Sea Grant program, Manatee County Department of Parks and Natural Resources, Solutions to Avoid Red Tide, the Tampa Bay Estuary Program and The Chiles Restaurant Group —is now the largest program of its kind in the state.

In 2018 Bradenton Beach’s Community Redevelopment Agency board initiated the brood stock clam restoration effort by purchasing 100,000 clams from a local clam farmer that had become too big to sell due to extended red tide closures. We have 287,000 acres of shellfish-approved waters in our state, but only 1% are leased. With three national estuaries on our border, we are one of the best places in the country to raise clams. We desperately need to incentivize and encourage bivalve aquaculture. Now Bradenton Beach and its CRA board are leading the effort to create a fund for brood stock clam restoration and to have clams certified for mitigation credits.

This can be a tremendous boon to our marine waters, while speaking to our heritage of working waterfronts. It will promote economic development while furthering the branding of our area as a place that is leading the charge toward sustainability while also promoting the highest-quality sustainable seafood.

Please help us by encouraging your friends to contact their local legislators to support House Bill 3829, and write or call Governor DeSantis and ask him to certify clams for mitigation credits.

Ed Chiles owns three waterfront properties — The Sandbar, Beach House restaurant, and Mar Vista Dockside — and Gamble Farm Organics.