FREEPORT, Maine — Every day this time of year, Vicki Cisco and Herbert Moon leave home at dawn and take their 14-foot aluminum skiff to a nearby tidal flat. Starting when the tide is lowest, they squat in the mud for six hours, digging for clams with gloved hands and pitchforks adapted to serve as hoes.
In a normal season, the couple bring in $300 to $400 a day, enough to see them through the harsh winter months. But a red tide that is now in its seventh week has put a stop to clamming on two-thirds of Maine's coastline.
Cisco and Moon are two months behind on their mortgage. They have borrowed money from relatives and made fruitless appeals for help to state and local agencies.
"This is killing us," Cisco said. "If we don't lose this house, it will be a miracle."
Maine officials say the influx of toxic algae is taking at least a $2-million bite every week out of the state's shellfish industry, which brings in $20 million per year. Clamming is a year-round enterprise, but demand is heaviest in late spring and summer.
This is the most severe red tide in decades, prompting Gov. John E. Baldacci to declare an economic emergency for the shellfish industry.
Scientists say the huge bloom of an algae species called Alexandrium fundyense has produced some of the highest levels of toxicity in shellfish in more than 30 years.
According to marine experts, the algae could start dissipating as early as next week. But for those whose incomes depend on the four- to five-month-long shellfish season, the losses could be long-term.
"In a coastal economy that doesn't have a lot of other alternatives, this is a very prolonged disaster," said Deirdre Gilbert, assistant to the director of the state Department of Marine Resources.
The red tide is caused by a single-cell phytoplankton that in masses gives the ocean a rosy hue, said David Townsend, chairman of the School of Marine Sciences at the University of Maine.
High concentrations of this algae normally occur off the Maine coast in May and June, Townsend said.
But an unusual sequence of storms in May drove the algae closer to shore, where it multiplied. The organism does not harm the clams, oysters and mussels in which it concentrates. But the toxin can produce numbness, tingling, dizziness and nausea in humans who eat the shellfish. In high doses, the poison can be fatal.
