The Oregon State Legislature approved use of recreational shellfish license dollars to launch the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife shellfish and estuarine assessment of coastal Oregon (SEACOR) for the 2007-9 biennium. The 18-month program focused on CoosBay, an estuary that has not been comprehensively assessed by ODFW since the 1970s. During this assessment, priorities were to estimate abundance and biomass of 4 commonly targeted clam species in the lower (more saline) reaches of the bay: gapers, butters, cockles and native littlenecks. Another priority was to assess the estuarine habitats, following the state’s ongoing development of the Estuarine Habitat Classification System (currently in Draft 4). Working collaboratively with multiple state, federal, and international agencies, tribal representatives, and universities, this assessment effort resulted in clam biomass estimates (which will be useful in resource management for both recreational and commercial harvest), maps of clam and estuarine resources (which will be used by recreational fishers, resource managers, and researchers), and estimates of changes in abundances over the 1970s-2000s period (which will be useful to university researchers, state agencies concerned with long-term environmental change, including those associated with climate). Major findings of the assessment suggest that there are overall predictive patterns in clam distribution and abundance within the Coos Bay estuary: 1) butter clams are abundant between 0-0.5 meters tidal height and are in non-vegetated areas; 2) gaper clams are increasingly abundant at lower tidal heights and are often associated with eelgrass (Zostera marina); 3) cockles and native littlenecks are less abundant in 2008 than they were in the 1970s, making habitat association less robust. Overall, the assessment was successful and will be replicated in Oregon’s other estuaries in future years, as funding becomes available to do so.
Specifically, this data set includes the original data from additional shellfish projects conducted by the SEACOR group and old aerial photographs. The additional projects include: crab assessment, Gaper damage study, Gaper reproductive studies including glycogen, and clam settlement. Aerial photographs from 1978 and 1995 and a hand drawn chart from 1862 are open access and were compiled by Oregon Coastal Management Program, Oregon Dept. of Land Conservation & Development. The findings from each of these projects are presented in the final SEACOR report.For more information about SEACOR or the final report visit