Moored boats and the sandy entry to Pamet Harbor

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Roll Up Your Sleeves

Actions

Advocacy matters, but some of this work happens with waders on. These are the hands-on efforts Friends of the Pamet River takes part in — the kind of thing where a Saturday morning and a willingness to get muddy genuinely moves the needle.

Hands On

Clam Relay

A relay is exactly what it sounds like: shellfish are moved from one place to another so they can survive and spawn where they'll do the most good. Undersized or crowded animals get gathered from beds where they won't thrive, then re-laid in dense, shallow spawning sites — or in water clean enough for them to be harvested later.

Our first relay ran on August 3, 2026, out of Pamet Harbor alongside the Truro Harbor Master. It is one of the highest-leverage things a volunteer can do for this watershed. A morning of work puts thousands of animals where they will reproduce, and every one of them spends the rest of its life filtering the Pamet's water. No experience is needed — if you can carry a basket and follow direction from the Shellfish Constable, you can help.

Three Friends of the Pamet River volunteers aboard a boat at Pamet Harbor during the August 2026 clam relay — The crew, Pamet Harbor — August 3, 2026.

A volunteer tipping a tote of shellfish seed over the side of the boat into Pamet Harbor — Tote by tote, over the side.

Close view of shellfish seed pouring from a green tote into the water — Thousands of animals, one basket at a time.

Volunteers waving from the Truro Harbor Master's boat during the August 2026 clam relay — Alongside the Truro Harbor Master — this work is done hand in hand with the Town.

Relays are scheduled by the Town around tides and water-quality conditions, usually on short notice. Get on our list and we'll tell you when the next one is called. Sign up above ↑

Hands On

Green Crab Remediation

The European green crab eats young clams and oysters by the dozen and shreds eelgrass and marsh roots as it digs. Trapping is labour-intensive and has to be repeated — which makes it close to ideal volunteer work: set traps at known hotspots, check them, record what comes up, and dispose of the catch usefully rather than wasting it.

We ran our first trapping session on August 3, 2026. The recording matters as much as the removal. Consistent catch data tells us where the pressure actually is and whether trapping is working — and it is exactly the kind of long-term dataset that no agency has the staff to gather but a committed group of neighbours can.

Just up the shore in Wellfleet Harbor, a shellfisherman working with the Center for Coastal Studies has shown what a local trapping programme looks like in practice, composting the catch instead of discarding it. Read the green crab research →

Two Friends of the Pamet River volunteers working green crab traps aboard a boat in the marsh — Working the traps — August 3, 2026.

A trap hauled up full of invasive European green crabs — One trap, one haul. This is the scale of the problem.

A volunteer in gloves sorting and counting the green crab catch into buckets — Sorting and counting the catch — the data matters as much as the removal.

We're building this programme out now and looking for people willing to commit to a stretch of the season. Tell us you're interested →

More actions will be added as we organise them — beach cleanups, eelgrass monitoring, water sampling, and phragmites work among them.