Coronavirus Shutters Southeast Alaska Geoduck Clam Fishery

It’s a weird-looking animal, the geoduck clam. It looks a little like a regular, everyday steamer clam — but much bigger.

“It’s two and a half to three pounds in weight and then the neck on it — it can be up to a three-foot-long neck,” Phil Doherty said. Doherty helps lead the Southeast Alaska Dive Fisheries Association. That’s an organization of fishermen who scour the seabed looking for the giant bivalves along the coast of the Pacific Northwest.

Though geoducks are native to the Western Hemisphere, Doherty said, 95% of the catch gets sent across the Pacific to China.

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