MOUNT VERNON — Rock after rock were passed by hand down to the shoreline of the Kukutali Preserve.
A line of tribal and First Nation members, community members, members of environmental organizations and others stretched to the shoreline — a human conveyor belt moving rocks down to the water.
Standing in the waters of Kiket Bay, Joe Williams, the shellfish community liaison for the Swinomish Fisheries Department, set the rocks down at the tide’s edge.
A knee-high rock wall stretched down the length of the shoreline.
The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community put down the foundation for the first modern clam garden in the United States on Aug. 12 — a project six years in the making.
For thousands of years, Coastal First Nations and Native Americans of Washington and Alaska constructed clam gardens to create healthy shellfish habitats for marine farming, according to the Clam Garden Network’s website.
Through the construction of rock walls at low tide, the accumulation of sediment over time levels out rocky or sloping shorelines.
And as sediment, gravel, and broken shells and barnacles build within the wall, the shoreline will flatten out into a terrace-like feature that will be up to three times more productive for shellfish growth.
When completed, the Swinomish clam garden will stretch 200 feet in length, and measure 4 feet wide and no more than 2 feet high.
In addition to providing the tribe with a sustainable source of traditional food for future generations, the Swinomish clam garden will revive an ancient cultural practice and reduce the impacts of climate change on clams and clam habitats.
Clams and culture
In planning the clam garden, the garden’s technical advisory board talked with community members to identify priorities for the garden.
What the board heard was that it should be a gathering place for sharing intergenerational knowledge as well as for harvesting traditional food.
“This clam garden they’re building, it’s going to be a lot more than just feeding them,” said Melissa Poe, an environmental anthropologist on the technical advisory board who conducts research on the cultural relevance of shellfish as a traditional food.
Maintenance of the garden will involve the shared efforts of tribal members across generations. They will turn over sediment, oxygenate and aerate the shoreline, and remove large rocks and predators.
Marcia Julius’s four children and two grandchildren aided in the garden’s construction Aug. 12.
“I wanted them to learn about what we do and what we need to do to help sustain our seafood,” Julius said. “I grew up with my mom down on the beach, waiting for crabs and digging clams and picking oysters and all of that. I wanted to do the same with my kids.”
Julius said one day her children and grandchildren will pass on that knowledge to their children and grandchildren.
“They’re going to be able to tell their part of this history,” Julius said. “And then my kids, (their) kids, and their grandkids — they’re going to be able to know that we were a part of this.”
The return to traditional practices and ancestral technologies will help with the survival of Native American culture, said Anna Cook, community environmental health program associate and outdoor youth program educator for the Swinomish tribe.
“Being able to amplify resilience, especially in our youth is so important,” Cook said. “Whenever we invite community members out here, a lot of them have stories that they didn’t even realize they had to share. A lot of the kids who come, their parents or grandparents harvested clams from this area.”
As Laylianna Julius, daughter of Marcia Julius, walked down to the shoreline, she held a rock in both hands. Reaching over the wall, Williams took the rock from his niece.
“Our culture is passed along right here on the beaches,” Williams said.
Clams and climate change
For decades, Swinomish community members have noticed a decline in local shellfish populations.
According to an article on clam gardens by the Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center, climate change and ocean acidification threaten both clams and clam habitats.
The Swinomish clam garden serves to enhance native clam populations by using a practice proven to sustain shellfish populations through thousands of years of changes in climate, said Courtney Greiner, marine ecologist for the Swinomish tribe.
The clam garden addresses a priority of the tribe’s climate adaptation plan: to restore traditional food practices and support the resiliency of clams.
The rock wall of the clam garden will provide an environment for kelp, algae and aquatic vegetation to grow. This will promote the health of shoreline invertebrates and clams, and increase the biodiversity of the environment, Greiner said.
An increase in biodiversity increases the resiliency of the habitat to changes such as high temperatures that prevent clam reproduction, and to acidic conditions that interfere with clam shell development.
“By increasing biodiversity, you’re also just creating a healthier ecosystem that is more resilient to changes and perturbations and disturbances,” Greiner said. “Just ensuring that (the environment is) a healthy, well functioning system will make it more resilient to climate change.”
Additionally, with concerns of habitat loss due to sea level rise, the garden will increase the habitable space available for clams.
Tribes and First Nations have used clam gardens for thousands of years to adapt to sea level rise, said Marco Hatch, lead of the garden’s technical advisory board.
“From Washington state all the way through coastal (British Columbia) and Southeast Alaska, what we see are clam gardens that are now maybe 10 to 20 feet deeper than they were originally built because of sea level rise,” Hatch said. “In other places, we see a clam garden that’s 3,500 years old, that’s now up on the beach, because of actual sea level fall in that particular region.”
As broken shells, barnacles, sediment and other material build within the wall, the Swinomish will have more space to grow clams and a healthier, more productive environment in which to do so, Hatch said.
Clam and community
Members of the Malahat and Pauquachin First Nations attended the construction of the Swinomish clam garden to gain knowledge and experience as they undertake building clam gardens of their own.
“Swinomish — they’re leading the way with their project,” said Meghan Tomlin, an environmental stewardship technician for the Malahat tribe. “We’re definitely looking to them for inspiration and also learning from them on how to get going with our project.”
In addition to observing clam garden construction techniques, Tomlin said she learned about the process of working together as a community to build a garden.
“We’re realizing that it takes a whole community and a whole group of people that are really passionate about clam gardens, sustainable harvest and cultural practice to all get involved,” she said. “We have so many people here that are coming from different backgrounds, different professions, academia, science, but also different nations.”
During their research and development of the tribe’s clam garden, the Swinomish visited and received the support of First Nations clam garden stewards, Williams said.
“We looked to some tribes in (British Columbia) to get to where we’re at today, and Malahat, in turn, is looking to us,” he said. “This project has reintroduced us to a lot of our relatives that were cut off by the U.S.-Canadian border. Half of my family lives up in (British Columbia), and we hadn’t had those connections until we started working together on this.”
Like the clam gardens of the Swinomish ancestors, Williams said the tribe will gladly accept the responsibility of maintaining the garden for generations to come.
“This is our little piece of land. Our reservation is a small piece of what our ancestors used to occupy, and this is the small area that we get to work in,” Williams said. “We’re going to make it resilient and sustainable throughout time.”
