Lifting the Ban: After 20 years, Georges Bank clam beds reopen

The National Marine Fisheries Service banned dragging for clams and other molluscan shellfish in Georges Bank in 1990, when state and federal officials found a spike in toxins that cause paralytic shellfish poisoning, which can be lethal. Fifteen years later, the agency barred clamming in an additional 15,000 square miles of seabed between much of the Massachusetts coast and Georges Bank when a massive bloom of single-celled algae that carries the toxins extended from northern Maine to Nantucket. more@bostonglobe  13:15

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