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Dan Ayers was the face of razor clamming for over two decades. Most fishery managers with Washington Dept. of Fish and Wildlife labor in obscurity, but not Ayers. He was a celebrity on the coast, where the razor clams live, and often buttonholed by diggers eager to share the delights of razor clamming, or castigate him about the length of seasons.

I spoke with Ayers about six months after he retired in early 2023. He said he still likes to dig clams. That’s something he had worried about before taking the manager’s job, that being manager would ruin something he loved. He had grown up razor clamming;  his dad taught him how to look for clam sign and how to dig. It was part and parcel of his life. Ultimately he decided it would be okay, and he took the position.

Now in his late 60s, Ayers says razor clamming is still fun. He loves to go, as do his two daughters, who he says are good at it. He’s happy he can pick the weather, and happy not to have to keep an eye out for someone doing something illegal, like taking too many clams or digging on a closed beach.

Since retirement Ayers has been active in his Montesano community, providing food to homeless populations 150 meals at a time, raising beets and vegetables on his several acres and selling them at a summer produce stand, and developing recipes and cooking. But he admits to missing the excitement of being head honcho to a dynamic activity that enthralls so many citizens. He says it was hard leaving a fishery that sometimes attracts 30,0000 people over the course of four hours. “I miss being part of that, but it was time.”

He still digs clams, did I mention?

Ayres was manager 1999 to 2023. Among his signature achievements was introducing the pumped area method for assessing clam populations. The method is now standard procedure in Oregon and California as well as Washington, and even authorities in Alaska, where the method was pioneered, came to the state to relearn the technique.

During Ayres’ tenure there were dramatic challenges. Among the scariest was the emergence of the neurotoxin domoic acid, making the clams harmful or even deadly to eat and forcing closures that lasted a year or more. Domoic acid accumulates as the clams filter feed microscopic organisms that for reasons not fully understood produce the substance from time to time. And on the legal front of sharing natural resources with native tribes, the Rafeedie court decision came down; the revolutionary corollary to the Boldt decision upended razor clamming, giving treaty tribes the right to harvest half the available razor clams and a say in management.

And of course there were ups and down in the razor clam populations, part of the normal vagaries of a living natural resource.

The new manager, Bryce Blumenthal, will face his own challenges, not least the high temperatures reported in the ocean, which likely will have adverse affects on clams, and longer term the Damocles sword of climate change and related changing ocean chemistry.

What sticks out most for Ayres, as he reflects on his tenure and razor clamming, is the recollection of happy people. Razor clamming is such a positive uplifting experience for people and families, from toddlers to senior citizens, he says.

Indeed, it’s hard to come up with anything else quite like it anywhere in the world.

Ayres shared one very personal “happy people memory” as he recalled his long career with razor clams and natural resources (he also oversaw coastal shrimp and crab). Here is the story, lightly edited:

“We’d had a closure of razor clams for like 18 months due to domoic acid. We finally opened in late November. We just put the pedal to the metal and let people dig every day, including Christmas Eve, which was something we’d never done before. I wasn’t married yet. What year would that have been? Like ‘95 or something or earlier, maybe ‘93.

I just couldn’t bring myself to make my staff work on Christmas Eve. The traditional Christmas Eve with my parents in Aberdeen, they were both alive, had been shifted to the following day because my sister had kids; so I could work. So I said, I’ll work; I’m just going to go do it.

My dad was sitting around home and my mom was busy, she wanted him out of the house because she was preparing for the next day. And he said, can I go with you? And I said sure. So I mean, that wasn’t exactly kosher. I wasn’t supposed to allow that, but I thought nobody’s going to care or notice. So he came with me.

We drove out to Mocrocks [near the town of Moclips]. I was just going to monitor the one beach and we could expand from there. It was a beautiful evening. The sun was just setting as people were finishing and it was a pink color in the sky and there weren’t a lot of people. There might have been 500 people on Mocrocks, total— just saying that seems a little ridiculous, because most fishery managers would say, wow, there’s 500 people! But it was just 500 people. And we were driving along, talking to people to see how they did. People had put up battery-operated Christmas lights around the back of their pickups and had big smorgasbords set out with smoked salmon and cold beer and one thing or another. And as we stopped along the way, we were offered all these different bits and bites of food, and my dad had a beer. I couldn’t do that because I was driving a state truck. But it was just a really memorable evening.

Many many years later in 2011, my dad was on his last legs. We were sitting around talking. I asked him if he remembered that night, and he said, “Absolutely. That was one of my favorite nights with you.”

Oh, I’m going to tear up.

And it was one of my favorite nights with him, because he was seeing what I do, and people appreciating the work that we do. And it was just. . . I think there might be a German word for that, gemütlichkeit, you know, that warm, fuzzy feeling of everything coming together and right in the world. You know? Razor clams are back open. I’m with my dad. It’s Christmas tomorrow. People are happy. I just had a great piece of smoked salmon. That’s one of my favorite times. And it just kind of epitomizes the beauty of the coast, where we got to work every day, with a resource that is so abundant; and people are enjoying it. You couldn’t ask for more in a career, I don’t think . . .