|
For clammer
April 3, 2020 — Jody King’s hands usually dry out from salt water after a day of work on Narragansett Bay, where he rakes quahogs for a living from the sandy bottom around Prudence Island.
Now, King’s hands dry out from using too much Purell.
His last day of steady quahogging was more than a week ago, when his dealer called to say he couldn’t buy any more clams. These days, King sits at home, waiting for a call to return to work.
With restaurants shuttered and fish markets in Boston, New York and other East Coast cities closed because of the spread of coronavirus, quahoggers like King have been left with no demand for their product.
“The bay is open, and I can’t go to work,” said King. “This is an absolute first.”
Andrade’s Catch in Bristol usually buys 4,000 to 6,000 clams a day from quahoggers, but after the wholesale business collapsed the shop could only move 1,000 pieces a day selling retail to locals.
“We could make it another month, a month and a half like this, but the fishermen are really at risk,” said Davy Andrade, a part-time owner of the shop. “It takes about $200 a day to run a boat and pay the bills and feed their family, and these guys are pulling in $100 a day if they’re lucky.”
|
Threaded Mode