By Rei Wolfsohn
Peter’s Clam Bar in Island Park hosted a “Clamboree” March 31 to celebrate joining the Town of Hempstead’s shellfish restoration program.
To mark the special occasion, Town Supervisor Don Clavin competed against Peter’s chef Louie Palaguachi to see who could shuck the most clams in a minute. Palaguachi won the shucking competition by beating Clavin, 24 to 22. Clam shucking is the process of opening the shells of clams to access the edible meat inside
Butch Yamali, owner of Peter’s, is now donating its used clamshells to the hatchery, in a local program that has been a great benefit to the South Shore.
“Last year, water results show that the waters on the South Shore are cleaner than they’ve been in almost two decades,” Clavin said. “And that’s because of, one, the initiatives that everyday residents are doing to better our environment, but also through the good graces of businesses like these … That’s not only what we want for ourselves, but for the next generation.”
Even the process of becoming part of the program was hyper local for Yamali.
“One of the town people from the Department of Conservation and Waterways happens to be a customer here and said, ‘If you’d like to get involved, we’d love to have you.’ We said, ‘That’d be great,’” Yamali said.
Vincent’s Clam Bar in Carle Place has been a part of the program for about four years.
“We always look for ways in our business to give back somewhere, somehow, especially when we do something sustainable,” Vincent’s owner Bobby Marisi said. “And we found that this was a very, very, very easy project to take on.”
In explaining the shellfish restoration process, Marisi said, “You just save all your clamshells, we’ll take them back to the hatchery, put seedling oysters on them, we’ll create more clams, we’ll put them back in the water.”
Shellfish populations have diminished over the years due to a combination of factors, including overfishing, habitat degradation, poor water quality and climate change. With Peter’s joining the shellfish restoration program, many more clams and oysters will be added to the town’s hatchery.
“Peter’s has been here for 85 years,” Yamali said. “We were trying to calculate, with the original owner, we probably sell 500,000 to 600,000 clams a year. You multiply that by 85 years, it’s probably close to 50 million clams. So we definitely have a lot of shells. We definitely want to give them to the town. We want to make sure that the waterways are safe.”
Both Yamali and Marisi received citations for their participation in the restoration program. During the clam-shucking contest against Palaguachi, Clavin was given a handicap to start the event. The Peter’s staff opened 21 clams for the town supervisor before the one-minute timer even began. In that minute, Palaguachi opened 24 clams, while Clavin opened one.
“Sometimes you get to have some fun with good government and good initiatives, and this is one of them,” Clavin said.
Before the competition, Clavin listed some of the recent interest in the program, which the town intends to expand exponentially.
“In fact, just in the last two weeks, we’ve had the Long Beach Oyster Festival want to partake in this, the Lawrence Beach Club, Rockaway Hunting Club and other smaller restaurants that have said, ‘You know what, we want to find a way to give back,’” Clavin said. “I’ve learned that one oyster can filter, up to 50 gallons of water a day.”
Clavin shared his thoughts on environmental conservation “One thing we want to do is we want to win,” he said. “We want to win for the environment.
