Butter clams, important to many Alaskans’ diets, are notorious for being sources of the toxin that causes sometimes-deadly paralytic shellfish poisoning.

Now a new study is providing information that might help people harvest the clams more safely and monitor the toxin levels more effectively.

The study, led by University of Alaska Southeast researchers, found that the meat in larger butter clams have higher concentrations of the algal toxin that causes PSP, than does the meat in smaller clams.

“If you take 5 grams of tissue from a small clam and then 5 grams of tissue from a larger clam, our study suggested that (in) that larger clam, those 5 grams would actually have more toxins — significantly more toxins — than the 5 grams from that smaller clam,” said lead author John Harley, a research assistant professor at UAS’ Alaska Coastal Rainforest Center.

Partners in the study were the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, which operates one of only two laboratories in the state that test shellfish for algal toxins, and with other organizations.

It is one of the few studies to examine how toxin levels differ between individual clams, Harley said.

The findings came from tests of clams collected from beaches near Juneau on five specific days between mid-June and mid-August of 2022.

The 70 clams collected, which were of varying sizes, yielded a median level of saxitoxins of 83 micrograms per gram, just above the 80-microgram limit. Toxin concentrations differed from clam to clam, ranging from so low that they were at about the threshold for detection to close to 1,100 micrograms per gram.

And there was a decided pattern: Toxin concentrations “were significantly positively correlated with butter clam size,” the study said.

Among the tested clams in the top 25% size, 81% had concentrations above the regulatory threshold, while among the quartile with the smallest size, only 19% came in at above the threshold.

The typical butter clam has a shell that is about 3 inches wide and up to 5 inches in length; clams in the study ranged in shell width from less than 1.5 inches to more than 4 inches. The mass of meat inside the shells of tested clams ranged from 3.87 grams to 110 grams, the study said.

The detections of toxins were in spite of the lack of significant algal blooms in the summer of 2022 – making that year an anomaly in recent years.

In sharp contrast, the summer of 2019 — a record-warm summer for Alaska — was marked by several severe harmful algal blooms. Near Juneau, toxin concentrations in blue mussels, another commonly consumed shellfish, were documented at over 11,000 micrograms per gram, and the toxins killed numerous fish-eating Arctic terns in a nesting colony in the area.

Just why the butter clams tested for the new study showed concentrations of toxins in a low-bloom year is a question for further review.

Butter clams are known to pose special risks because they retain their algal toxins much longer than do other toxin-affected shellfish. Like other species, butter clams do detoxify over time, but they do so much more slowly, Harley said. The clams in the study were all at least a few years old, and there are some possible explanations for why they still retained toxins in the summer of 2022, he said.

“Maybe these larger clams, because they’ve been consistently exposed to harmful algal blooms several years in a row, maybe they just haven’t had a chance to detoxify particularly well,” he said.

The unusual conditions in the summer of 2022 mean that the results of this study may not be the same as those that would happen in a summer with a more normal level of harmful algal blooms, he said. “It still remains to be seen if this relationship between size and toxin is consistent over different time periods and different sample sites and different bloom conditions,” he said.

Research is continuing, currently with clams collected in 2023, he said. That was a more typical year, with several summer algal blooms. 

The algal toxin risks in Alaska are so widespread that experts have coined a slogan that reminds harvesters to send samples off for laboratory testing before eating freshly dug clams and similar shellfish: “Harvest and Hold.”

Harley said the fact that there are toxins in clams even when an active bloom is not present “is a very real concern” for those who have depended on harvest. The Southeast Alaska Tribal Ocean Research Network, known as SEATOR, has been monitoring shellfish in winter and other times beyond the usual months of algal blooms, he noted.

That monitoring has turned up cases of toxin-bearing shellfish well outside of the normal summer seasons. Just Tuesday, SEATOR issued an advisory about butter clams at Hydaburg, collected on Saturday, that tested above the regulatory limit for safe consumption.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – David Honeycutt expected one of his appliances to be repaired — not a complete home renovation.

Members of the Home Depot Foundation’s Operation Surprise campaign have spent days working to improve Honeycutt’s home.

Honeycutt said he sustained a spinal injury during his Army service, resulting in a permanent disability that prevented him from navigating his home safely for years. A friend and fellow veteran reached out and nominated Honeycutt for some outside help.

“I was in getting in a bad place and they realized that,” Honeycutt said. “And they’d given me hope.”

Visiting with the team before they began working in his home, it became clear Honeycutt’s house was inaccessible and inconvenient for its owner.

Eric Rangel, district captain for Team Depot — Home Depot’s volunteer force — said when they first met, they were mostly concerned about difficult-to-use appliances.

“Well, that very quickly grew, and we wanted to give him something a little bit more,” Rangel said.

Initial plans to deal with appliances then turned into a multiple-day project; team members built a 12-by-12 woodshed outside Honeycutt’s back door to give him access to firewood, repaired his deck to keep him safe getting in and out of his vehicle, added doggy doors for Honeycutt’s companion Misty, grab irons throughout the house, and installed new stairs for Honeycutt to exit his sunken living room without hurting himself.

Before the changes, Honeycutt said his life was heading in a dark direction. Even traversing the stairs in his home became impossible, preventing him from sleeping in his own bedroom for two years.

Honeycutt said he ruined his own couch by sleeping on it rather than trying to get to bed.

“It became my pit, kind of hard to get in and out,” he said. “Kind of, ‘Do I bother hurting myself getting out again?’ … The house got worse. I got worse.”

Following the repairs, Rangel believes they’ve turned some things around.

“He can navigate his home, and be the independent veteran that he’s been his whole life.”

The improvements to Honeycutt’s home were made by employees at the Home Depot in Kenai, who said they’re motivated by knowing they’re helping those who served the country.

“Just, like, ‘Wow, I helped this gentleman,’ I feel so happy,” one volunteer said as the large group huddled in the soon-to-be complete kitchen they were working on. “It makes me want to just keep driving forward and help out the community.”

The team installed an entirely new kitchen and accessible cabinets, which Rangel said will give Honeycutt the ability to cook for himself once again — a passion Honeycutt is looking to share once everything is complete.

“I won $1,000 for my chili in a chili cookoff in Oklahoma,” he said. “So I am gonna make them — the Home Depot Store — five gallons of my special chili.”

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The Justice Department has reached a settlement with a former federal prosecutor who filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that she was retaliated against by leaders of the US attorney’s office in Alaska after she reported sexual misconduct by a federal judge.

The whistleblower, who clerked for US District Judge Joshua Kindred in Alaska before joining the US attorney’s office in Anchorage, had alleged in a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel that she was denied a permanent job as a federal prosecutor because she informed supervisors in the fall of 2022 of sexual misconduct by Kindred.

Details of the settlement weren’t made public in an OSC release posted Wednesday. Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger, who leads the agency, in a statement thanked the whistleblower “for her incredible courage in speaking up about sexual misconduct by her former boss.”

Dellinger also said he appreciated the work of the Justice Department to reach a settlement, which was over a separate Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint from the former prosecutor. That agreement led to OSC closing its investigation, according to the release.

“No attorney, indeed no one, should have to deal with sexual misconduct in the workplace,” Dellinger said.

Kevin Owen, an attorney with Gilbert Employment Law representing the whistleblower, said in a statement that his client’s treatment at the US attorney’s office “underscores why survivors of workplace harassment and assault do not come forward.”

“Yet she continued to fight, at great personal risk, and it is thanks to her courage that the federal judiciary is a fairer and safer workplace today,” Owen said. “We are pleased to have reached an agreement with the Office of Special Counsel, and it is our hope that this can be a signal to all survivors that justice and accountability are possible.”

The whistleblower had also alleged that she was initially denied a detail to another office within the Justice Department, despite telling a supervisor she was afraid of Kindred and didn’t want to work in the same building as the judge.

The complaint didn’t seek specific relief, but asked that OSC — an independent federal agency that investigates federal sector whistleblower claims — open an inquiry into the alleged retaliation.

The US attorney’s office in Anchorage has been under scrutiny as part of the fallout from the findings against Kindred. US Attorney S. Lane Tucker, appointed by President Joe Biden, is likely part of Justice Department reviews of that office, according to former DOJ officials.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) said in September that DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which examines potential misconduct by government attorneys, has opened an investigation stemming from the Anchorage office’s conduct.

Dozens of cases have been flagged by prosecutors for potential conflicts with Kindred, spurring motions from defense lawyers to revisit some prosecutions. Alaska federal prosecutors last month asked to throw out a criminal conviction in a case where Kindred didn’t recuse himself, as the judge had received nude photographs from a senior prosecutor on the case.

Kindred resigned from the federal court in Alaska in July, days before a federal judiciary order said that he had subjected the former clerk-turned-prosecutor and others in his chambers to an abusive, sexualized, and hostile work environment. Bloomberg Law hasn’t been able to reach him for comment.

According to that order, Kindred defended his actions to the judiciary panel investigating his conduct, and contended that the sexual encounters with his former law clerk — which he initially denied entirely before admitting to them — were consensual. He hasn’t publicly commented on those findings.

The federal judiciary has certified a referral to the House for Kindred’s potential impeachment, citing the former judge’s “reprehensible conduct, which has no doubt brought disrepute to the judiciary.”

The settlement was announced the same day as the federal judiciary published its first annual report into workplace misconduct issues. US District Judge Robert Conrad, director of the Administrative Office of the US Courts, said at a press briefing Wednesday that the handling of the internal judicial complaint against Kindred “is a pretty robust example” of how the judiciary’s procedures for handling such cases works.

—With assistance from Ben Penn and Suzanne Monyak