Toxin test gives live market a boost; quota also gets a significant bump

National Fisherman, January, 2005 by Charlie Ess

Alaska's geoduck fishery got off to an promising start in early November. The best news in a while is that the new protocol for pre-testing geoducks for paralytic shellfish poison aligned during last year's season and divers saw 90 percent of their clams shipped live to markets in Asia.

"It went really well," says Julie Decker, the executive director of the Southeast Alaska Regional Dive Fisheries Association. "We had over 90 percent of the product go live with ex-vessel prices around $3 a pound."

That's a vast improvement over the 10 percent that shipped live in the 2000-01 season. Back then, divers dug their daily catch of clams first and kept them in totes while stomach samples were shipped from Ketchikan to a lab near Anchorage, about 700 miles north....