East Hampton Trustees Crown Largest Clam

Overcast skies did not dampen the enthusiasm on Sunday when the East Hampton Town Trustees held their 33rd annual Largest Clam Contest.

A huge crowd came to the grounds of the Amagansett Life-Saving and Coast Guard Station Museum, which hosted the event for the first time, the restored 1902 structure open for tours during the contest. The station played a small but important role in World War II, when a quick-thinking Coast Guardsman discovered four Nazi saboteurs who had just landed at the ocean beach armed with explosives and plans to terrorize the population in June 1942.

Now featured on the grounds of the museum is a restored telephone station that was originally situated between the Amagansett and Georgica stations and used by the Coast Guard Beach Patrol to report back to the station. “Every few miles there was one of those,” Michael Cinque of the museum’s board told the gathering on Sunday, “just in case there was another incident. They could call directly to New York for reinforcements. There’s a lot of history here besides saving lives off the sea.”

There was plenty of free food for the gathering, including clam pies, clams on the half shell from Bennett Shellfish, chowder from Bostwick’s Chowder House, ice cream from John’s Drive-In, and more from the South Fork Bakery. The town’s shellfish hatchery displayed local marine life, the East End Classic Boat Society sold tickets for its annual raffle boat, which was on display, and the East Hampton Sportsmen’s Alliance exhibited duck decoys and more.

A clam chowder competition saw two winners. For the Manhattan-style variety, the winner was Paul Roman — “the legend, the myth,” David Cataletto of the Trustees said of the oft-winning chef — and for his New England-style concoction, Jim Sullivan’s was deemed the best.

Max Steckowski was the winner of a competition to guess the number of seed clams in a jar. John “Barley” Dunne, director of the hatchery, announced Steckowski’s estimate of 700 as closest to the actual number, 732.

The largest clams of 2024 were then announced. Like the aforementioned winners, clammers who had dug their contestants from town waterways and taken them to local seafood shops until the competition, were awarded prizes.

In the youth division, Wes Aldred’s 8-ounce entry, harvested from Three Mile Harbor, was the largest. Among adults, Dan Mongan’s 12.1-ounce clam was the winner for Accabonac Harbor. For Three Mile Harbor, Frank Ganley’s 1-pound, 5.3-ounce contestant was the largest. Vicki Lundyn’s 2.4-ounce clam harvested from Lake Montauk was the winner for that water body.

Finally, the largest clam in town, which was also the largest taken from Napeague Harbor, was Mike Fromm’s 2-pound, 0.6-ounce behemoth. The clam crowned largest measured 5 and 7/16 inches long and 4 and 7/16 inches wide.

The Trustees are an ancient governing body, predating the Town Board and even the United States of America. They own and manage many of the town’s beaches, waterways and bottomlands on behalf of the public. They also operate pump-out boats in Lake Montauk and Three Mile Harbor, and issue permits to residents for shellfishing and other outdoor activities.

“This was an epic event!” Cataletto said. “The East Hampton Trustees want to give our thanks for being a part of this community.”