Editor's note: Today is the first in a three-part series that will show how a clam goes from the local flats to the fryer, a process that has changed very little over the past century. The series coincides with an audio slide show on the Web, where photographer Bryan Eaton has documented the people and families who are the lifeblood of the industry.



ROWLEY - The life of a clam starts very simply. In its infancy, a clam is just a small thread barely visible to the naked eye, floating on top of the salt water.

When it is about a week old, it is big enough to sink into the mud and it's another week before it starts to form a shell about one-eighth of an inch long.

If the clam avoids the sea gulls and crabs and buries itself in the mud, it still takes another couple of years before a clammer like John Grundstrom can harvest it and send it on its ultimate journey toward a small tub of butter at Savage Seafood in Rowley or any other local eatery to whom he might sell it.

"To me, it's the best thing," Grundstrom said. "This is something that gets in your blood. It's very independent. You can't and don't want to depend on anybody. You're a free spirit. It's all there, it's just how hard you work."

Few could argue there is much harder work than slogging and sifting through the mud, clam by clam, for five hours to harvest the limit of 180 pounds of shellfish, but the Grundstrom family has a sense of symbiosis with their catch. As many as they've harvested, they may have helped replenish even more.

In recent years, the clam population in Rowley has ironically relied on those who end up taking them away.

As the clams started to thin out along the Rowley River, a communitywide effort, which was aided by Salem State College, began about six years ago to repopulate the flats. But because it was such hard work to reseed the flats, that community group eventually whittled down to the Grundstrom and Hazen families, who today manage an aquaculture farm, raising clams from seed to maturity.

Simply put, the families take the small seed clams and rest them in a 30-by-15-foot screened object buried in the sand that helps the small clams settle in the sand, then protects them from predators. About 18 months later, they are ready to reharvest.

The farm started with just four clams from the Rowley River. Grundstrom figures those clams were the forefathers to millions more that now populate the river. As those new clams mature in their man-made incubators, they send even more spawn downriver.

But while technology is helping to keep clams in the Rowley River, very little else about the clamming trade has changed.

For about 100 years, a Grundstrom has harvested the flats of Rowley and the North Shore. Just as John Grundstrom does now, his great-grandfather John did before - hauling a bag and a small pitchfork to the mud to do the painstaking but rewarding work. Grundstrom even goes out in the winter.

"The only thing that's changed is the outboard motor," Grundstrom said. "When my great-grandfather did it, he rowed down."

Grundstrom notes while his family members represent much of clamming's past in the area, they also will be key to its future. His daughter and two nephews now clam, the fifth generation of Grundstroms to do so.

And thanks to the previous generations, they'll be able to farm the Rowley flats.

"Now aquaculture is included in the Department of Agriculture," he said. "I see that as the future, not only for us as a family, but also as far as trying to keep clams in the town of Rowley and parts of the river."