The clams of TikTok

When Marissa Bills began her master’s degree in biology at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, she had never heard of the Pismo clam. But her advisor was looking for a student to take over a research project focused on the species. And Bills quickly realized that, while this may be a niche species, it was a rare invertebrate that had a hardcore following. “In little pockets in California, they are cultural icons,” she says. 

The Pismo clam (Tivela stultorum) can be found from Monterey Bay to Baja California, but its name reflects its central hotspot. In the city of Pismo Beach, visitors can see the evidence of the clam craze: There are clam statues. There are clam murals.

But for decades, there weren’t many actual clams.

Part of the Pismo clam’s appeal — and part of its problem — is that this is a “sandy beach species,” Bills says: They’re right there on the beach. Since they’re large clams, too, they’re easy to find, which is part of how they came to have so many fans. They’re fun and easy to collect. But perhaps too easy. The commercial fishery had to be closed in the 1950s; though the recreational fishery never officially ended, by the 1980s there were nearly no legal clams left to harvest. So the old clamming culture went defunct.

In the early 2010s, the city approached Cal Poly, seeking help bringing back their favorite clam. One challenge, though: as a niche species, not one of the marquee California seafood giants, there had been almost no scientific study of the Pismo clam for almost half a century. “We know shockingly little about them,” Bills says. That’s why in 2015, Benjamin Ruttenberg, the director of Cal Poly’s Center for Coastal Marine Sciences, launched a long-term monitoring project.

Clam-digging CrossFit

Each month, the research team, alongside a flock of undergraduate volunteers, surveys Pismo Beach. Working during low tide, they begin at the upper, landside edge of the sand and dig three trenches that reach into the water, counting and measuring the clams they find. “It’s like doing CrossFit at the beach,” Bills says. (That can be fun when low tide comes at sunset, she notes, but it’s less so when it happens at 3 a.m.)

Bills took over the project in 2020, and two years later her work was supported by a California Sea Grant Graduate Research Fellowship. The fellowship program provides financial support for graduate students tackling California's coastal challenges. Since its inception, the Fellowship has supported hundreds of graduate students who have moved on to careers in academia, government and the private sector. 

She’d also arrived on the project amid some good news: Over the previous five years, on their own, the clams had — slowly, gradually — increased in population. In May 2021, Bills and her undergrads counted a few thousand clams. “We were like, ‘Okay, that’s a good survey,’” she says.

“Then we came back in July — and in a single weekend we counted 30,000 clams,” Bills says, laughing. One of the undergraduates quipped that “we love to see it, we hate to count it.” Bills jokes that she’s glad that no one quit on the spot.

While some of the old data suggests that the Pismo clam has always reproduced sporadically, but sometimes in big numbers, for the time being, we don’t know enough to know what it was about 2021 that led to this jump.

What we do know is that California’s clammers were ready: Clams need to be at least 4.5 inches wide before they can be harvested; now that clams are reaching that benchmark, people are out on the beach collecting them again. That makes the ongoing research all the more essential, Bills says: The current regulations haven’t changed in decades, and given how little science had been conducted until recently, it’s going to be important to learn more so we can set regulations to ensure that populations don’t crash again.

Becoming clam-fluencers

What initially drew Bills to the project was not just the chance to study the clam, but the opportunity to mentor undergraduates and do outreach in the community. “We’ll be out there with all this field gear, and people will wonder, ‘What are you doing?’” says Bills. That gives her a chance to share the fact that, hidden beneath the sand, there is this species of clam and that it’s making a comeback.

Since her research began during COVID, she had to think creatively about other ways to engage the community. Bills had the idea to create an Instagram account for the species; one of her “Gen Z” students suggested the clams should be on TikTok, too.

Bills didn’t know the platform, but was willing to give it a try, so soon in the lab she found herself holding social media meetings, brainstorming with the undergrads how they might play off viral trends to give the clam a boost.

“It was just a hoot,” Bills says. More than that, it was effective: the most popular video — which showcased how the research process worked — reached 1.5 million viewers. “I was floored by how well our little TikTok experiment worked,” Bills says. It became a major takeaway: When it comes to science communication, you have to meet people where they want to be.

Bills has joined California Sea Grant as a Staff Research Associate for the Extension Team and contributes to projects focused on sustainable fisheries and aquaculture. Her time with California’s TikTok-ready clam, though, helped her realize how much research still needs to be done for species that are outside the headlines. “There are really cool opportunities for smaller groups to take on some of these fisheries,” Bills says, “producing science that will have a real impact on the management of species that shouldn’t be overlooked.”