Today’s the big day.
Jody and Marc Junior are quahoggers
and today they have the chance to bring in ten times their usual haul.
This is what they’re hoping to catch.
“You wanna grab that fish tote, Mark?”
Rhode Island’s clammers are a fierce and independent lot.
“Hey Junior, come get this cricket out here.”
“Come on, Buddy, I’m trying to free ya!”
40 years ago, there were 2,000 full time quahoggers in the Bay.
Now the harbor slips are filled with pleasure boats.
Jody is the last of a dying breed.
“I’ll tell you my mantra.
Good, better, best.
Never let it rest
‘Til good is better and better is best.”
For the first time in over 75 years,
Rhode Island is opening new clamming beds in the Narragansett Bay.
For precisely three hours
the local quahoggers will be allowed to gather as many clams as they can rake in.
It’s not as easy as it sounds.
Jody’s rake is 40 feet long.
And the clams are 16 feet deep.
There’s not a moment to spare.
Once the three-hour window opens, They’ll be digging nonstop.
Jody drills the rake deep into the mud,
then starts to pull.
It’s brutally hard work.
He’s worn the plastic railing down to a nub.
His only concession is a small motor to help reel the rake in
though he still has to shake out the mud by hand.
A full rake can weigh over 100 pounds.
And Jody is 61.
Jody catches more clams than anyone else on the Bay.
How does he do it?
“The most important thing that you learn about quahogging:
if you can’t hear the rake singing, you can’t make money.“
The secret is in the hollow handle.
It lets Jody hear the difference between rocks and clams.
But there’s far more to quahogging than that.
Jody’s boat has to be drifting at exactly .4 miles per hour.
Slow enough so that the rake can bite into the mud
but fast enough that Jody’s covering new ground.
To control the boat, Jody uses not one, but two anchors
and occasionally a sail.
It’s a delicate balance and he’s constantly adjusting
while keeping a wary eye on the hundred other boats drifting nearby.
But most of all, Jody doesn’t waste a single second.
At the end of every pull
Jody has just eight seconds to rest while the rake is drifting back into its starting position.
You’d think he’d take a break
but instead he uses the time to wash clams
or wolf down a sandwich in three bites.
“If you don’t have work ethic in the fishing industry…
That’s cold!
You’re never gonna make it.”
This is clearly no place for amateurs.
That rake is heavy and long
and the ocean can change from calm to chaotic in minutes.
Sorting isn’t easy either.
Mark Junior is a seasoned quahogger in his own right
but he’s still barely keeping up with Jody’s rake.
First, he gets rid of the trash.
He then sorts the clams by size,
tossing back anything that’s less than one inch wide.
He counts every single clam
and washes them, over and over.
All before Jody brings in the next load.
If it isn’t obvious, Jody is highly competitive
though with just one minute left before the window closes
he’s almost done in.
“God!
I am a way overachiever.
I don’t like to lose.”
Possibly because he grew up with three brothers.
Like most fishermen, Jody is a gambler.
“I live, live, for the big haul.
If I get a big haul today it’s gonna drive me back out there tomorrow
and the day after and the day after.”
Today they’ve brought in over 4,000 clams.
But the most important thing in Jody’s life isn’t on the boat.
It’s waiting for him onshore.
Liana.
His wife of 16 years.
She’s made lunch for everyone.
It’s Jody’s third meal of the day, even though it’s not yet noon.
“My wife Liana is my best friend in the world.
She takes care of me.
She feeds me like I need to be fed.
She just brightens my life.
She loves me even though I’m a A-type personality and I have to control everything around me.
She loves all my differences.
And I have a lot.”
Liana is the reason Jody stuck to clamming.
“Quahogging keeps me home,
every single night.
Offshore fishing, offshore lobstering -you’re out a lot of nights.
I’m home every night.”
And then, in a heartbeat, everything changed.
In 2003, a local nightclub caught fire.
“Tracy was my younger brother.
He was a bouncer at the Station Nightclub the night of the fire.
And I lost him in the fire that night.
I got there a half hour too late.”
100 people died that night.
Jody went to work with nothing but his clams.
Handing them out by the hundreds,
raising money for a local memorial
and an education fund for children who lost parents.
The experience changed Jody.
“Letting people know who you are.
You wanna try a little neck?
Giving them a piece of you. It really works.
And as soon as you give that invulnerability up to someone,
they’re willing to give it back to you.”
We’re gonna shuck a little neck.
Knife in hinge.
Cut.
Open.
And done.
It doesn’t hurt that Jody was born right here in Warwick…
“Nothing better than being Rhode Island born.
Rhode Islanders know everybody in the state.
How are you doing, Tula?
Good!
And we love one another.”
You going in the pool?
Yeah!
Good!
It’s a community built on small kindnesses.
Jody takes Mark’s clams to the dealer
when Mark’s short on time,
and Mark leaves fresh eggs on Jody’s doorstep from his farm.
But next to raking in a vast number of clams
there’s nothing Jody loves more
than teaching people about clams.
Today he’s putting on a clamming demonstration for local veterans and their families.
Jody’s enthusiasm is contagious.
He quickly convinces over 50 people to grab a rake and go grub around in the mud.
But where to rake?
The smart money follows Jody.
After thirty years
he’s still as enthusiastic as a child exploring the ocean for the first time.
He may look like he’s working hard
but in fact he’s watching everyone
helping them find their own clams
“Pretty good, huh?”
or giving his away.
“Take it out! That’s yours!”
“Sean got one!”
Once they’re back on shore
he goes into high gear.
“Okay, now who caught a strange critter?”
His goal?
To convince everyone to love the ocean and all the creatures who live in it.
“These are thousands and thousands of years old.
They are used for two things in Rhode Island.”
And then he makes sure everyone gets fed.
“Come on up and enjoy!”
Jody is exactly where he belongs.
“Olive oil, garlic, basil, crushed red pepper.”
Sharing his love for the ocean.
“How far are they going to move the rest of their life once they find a home? Six feet! Exactly!”
Building community – one clam at a time.
And making sure everyone is having fun.
“Sometimes god gives you a gift
and my gift was clamming.
It’s paid my mortgage.
It made me a better man.
It's gave me an independence that I didn’t know I had.
It made me, me.”