“What’s a stuffie?” Rows upon rows of open clam shells, sprinkled with paprika and garnished with parsley, looked enticing through the glass case. The young man behind the counter at the seafood market furrowed his brow and offered a quizzical look. After I learned a stuffie was Rhode Island speak for stuffed clams, they soon became a staple at our house.

“Where do they come from” I next wondered, “before they are displayed on ice, or wrapped in cellophane?” Perhaps one I enjoyed as an appetizer was the result of the efforts of Sarah Schumann, in her 20-foot quahog skiff, Wild & Free.

Raised in South County, Sarah spent childhood summers across the bay in Warren at the summer home of her grandmother and great-grandmother. Like many Rhode Islanders, she shellfished for quahogs recreationally as a child. It was her dad who taught her to dig for them with her feet in the Kickemuit River.

Today Sarah harvests quahogs with all the tools of the trade, including bullrakes and quahog guages, aboard Wild & Free, or her smaller 12 foot Wild Child, in a male-dominated industry, where an early morning’s work is dependent upon the tide, the weather and where you are. “I am the only one in my nuclear family who is not a lawyer!” she laughs.

After two years of college, Sarah left for South America where she taught English for two years, immersing herself in the culture. While in the coastal city of Velparasio, Chile, she met some local fishermen. “It’s their livelihood,” she marveled. “They survive, and support their families by fishing.”

With renewed clarity she continued her schooling, and returned home. “I transferred to the University of Rhode Island, the only university with a Marine Affairs undergraduate degree.” The providential meeting with the fishermen led not only to a tailor-made college major, but a classmate at URI who had a lobster boat. “It was a part-time gig on a Gillnet,” a boat the deploys a mesh net, she explained, as the method of capturing the crustaceans.

She then set her sights on advocating for environmental causes, earning her masters degree at the University of Oxford, England, in Nature, Society, and Environmental Policy, during a one-year program. She was so consumed with studying she didn’t do much fishing.

There the wind farms interfere with the fishing industry.

“In the North Sea and the Irish Sea there are wind farms on 10% of the continental shelf,” Sarah said. Her quest was to understand how the fisherman adapted.

Sarah’s venture working in a salmon cannery in Alaska began as a way to earn money for her masters degree program. She explains, “I unexpectedly fell in love with it, and kept on working in the factory for eight more years before transitioning to salmon fishing for four more years, up until last summer.” During her 12 Alaskan summers, she witnessed a stark difference between quahogging and working on the lobster boat, with salmon fishing. “There were a lot of women, and young people.”

“It’s not economically viable for the participants, due to overcapacity,” Sarah explains of the fishing industry. “It is difficult and expensive to buy into a fishery, except for shellfish.” Prospective quahoggers enter a lottery through the Department of Environmental Management, or may purchase a license and boat from an established quahogger.

Once again, a fishing experience was serendipitous for Sarah.

“I first came across razor clams when I was searching for new spots of the quahogs in the salt ponds. I talked a local dealer into buying them. It’s a small-volume fishery, so getting a good price is important. At first, there were a few chefs who were really excited about them, the most potential buyers had never heard of them...Now I can go digging every time there’s a tide, and feel confident that there will be a buyer to take the harvest off my hands when I’m done. It’s nice to feel like a pioneer. Rather spend my time quahogging, where I’d be near the bottom in terms of my catch, I can focus on razor clams and feel good that I am one of the best in the fleet – because almost no one harvests them!” (From Rhode Island’s Shellfish Heritage: An Ecological History.)

Sarah was commissioned by the University of Rhode Island to write her first book, Rhode Island’s Shellfish Heritage: An Ecological Study, published in 2015. Her work was sponsored by the Coastal Resources Center and Rhode Island Sea Grant, located at URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography, and the Coastal Institute at URI.

Her second book, Simmering the Sea: Diversifying Cookery to Sustain Our Fisheries, coauthored with Kate Masury and Marie-Joelle Rochet, begins with “Knowledge is the best hors d’oeuvre...” It’s a cookbook, compatible with sustaining ocean ecosystems, published by the University of Rhode Island in 2018, in conjunction with Eating for the Ecosystem, and Johnson & Wales University College of Culinary Arts.

Sarah leads a field trip for Rhode Island School of Design. In Narragansett Bay, the quahog serves as a muse to inspire the art students, just as it has for hundreds of years for the Native Americans who coveted the deep purple inner shell for creating wampum shell beads for jewelry or currency.

“Some of the students sent me their creations as a thank you,” said Sarah.

During the early morning hours it can be a solitary experience, especially a full-time quahogger, who sometimes brings his dog. For Sarah, however, it is a meditative time, about two hours before or after sunrise. In the winter, her preferred season, she takes the smaller skiff. “No one else is out,” she says. “I fish one week per month, at the new and full moon.”

What about stuffies, or for that matter, clam cakes or chowder—which is this quahogger’s preferred way to enjoy clams?

“I’m allergic to shellfish,” she answers.