Cultivating a sustainable future for basket cockles and tribal communities: restoring access to a preferred traditional First Food

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Elizabeth Unsell (Suquamish Tribe)

CO-INVESTIGATORS: Ryan Crim (Puget Sound Restoration Fund), James Dimond (Puget Sound Restoration Fund)

Basket cockles are a favored traditional food for Suquamish Tribal members. In recent decades, populations on local subsistence beaches have been lower than historically observed, making it challenging for Tribal members to harvest cockles for their families. Recruitment and/or survival is unreliable, and there is therefore a need to identify ways to enhance local cockle populations in a responsible manner.

This project aims to advance sustainable hatchery production techniques by exploring breeding strategies that maximize genetic diversity. Researchers will conduct two rounds of genetic analysis. The first will compare samples from cockles produced in the hatchery in 2019 to existing wild cockle genetic data. The second will compare wild broodstock with their hatchery produced offspring as well as the wild genetic data set. The success of different seeding strategies will be evaluated. This will include collecting juvenile cockles from geoduck tubes and using cockles produced in the hatchery to transfer to experimental plots on Suquamish beaches, and then comparing growth and survival under different treatments. The primary long term goal and motivating factor for this project is to enhance cockle densities on local subsistence beaches without negatively impacting the genetic diversity of wild cockle populations.