Mike Brown remembers when soft-shell clams were abundant in the mudflats of Cumberland in the 1990s, ready to be dug up in time for a seafood dinner of “steamers.”

“In an hour, I could harvest a peck of clams,” said Brown, who chairs Cumberland’s Shellfish Conservation Commission.

Over time, the pickings have become significantly more slim. He recalled going clamming with his daughter two decades later and finding a sole clam as they dug for an hour.

“We watched our shellfish populations plummet,” said Brown. “It really is a changing ecology.”

Clamming was once a popular activity in Cumberland, as in many coastal Maine communities. Residents would camp out at the Cumberland Town Hall on Jan. 2 of each year to purchase shellfish harvesting licenses, said Brown. In the peak of clamming in Cumberland, circa the early 2000s, more than 220 licenses were sold for Cumberland’s few miles of coastline.

Yet even in its heyday in Cumberland, the soft-shell clam population was already declining. Since the 1980s, landings of soft-shell clams have decreased by 75% across Maine in what is considered a population crash. Research has found that an increase in predators, such as the invasive green crab and milky ribbon worm, are primarily responsible for the decimation of the soft-shell clam population — two species that benefited from the ocean’s rising temperatures driven by climate change.

As the soft-shell population in Cumberland’s flats has become practically nonexistent, the community practice of clamming has dwindled. Today, there are about two dozen recreational shellfish licenses issued in Cumberland for $20 annually, most of which belong to harvesters who remember when the clamming brought excitement, not disappointment.

But that could change. This year, the town is making an active attempt to bring the clams — and clamming — back to Cumberland.

Last fall, Cumberland’s Shellfish Conservation Commission decided to move forward with a seeding project, in which juvenile clams, or “seed clams,” are dispersed in the mud with the hope they will both reach maturity to be harvested and repopulate the flats in the long term. They ordered the clam seed from the Downeast Institute in Beals, a marine research laboratory, education center and shellfish hatchery.

Originating as a shellfish hatchery in 1987, Downeast Institute is the only soft-shell clam hatchery in the world, as the clams are not as profitable as other products like oysters, which the institute also raises. The organization sees soft-shell clams as culturally and ecologically valuable to numerous New England communities, and sells the seeds at-value or at a loss.

“If we were trying to make money off soft-shell clams, it would be much higher, and municipalities couldn’t afford it,” said Kyle Pepperman, associate director of the Downeast Institute.

The hatchery sells soft-shell clam seeds to be spread on beaches in Maine, Massachusetts and Connecticut. Raising 4 million juvenile clams annually, this year they sent seed to 14 municipalities in those states, all but three of which were in Maine.

Cumberland purchased approximately 120,000 soft-shell clam seeds for $3,600. Currently between a grain of rice and a fingernail in size, the seeds will reach market size in about two years if they settle and develop in the mud.

Members of the Shellfish Conservation Commission and Cumberland harbormaster and Police Department spread the seeds in three sections of mudflats this spring, roughing up the mud with garden tools and spreading the thousands of juvenile clams before a high tide. The two commercially licensed shellfish harvesters in Cumberland, who primarily catch quahogs, also assisted the town.

The seeded areas will be closed to all shellfish harvesting until July 2026 to allow for the clams to settle and mature. The Wildwood Association Beach, a plot near the Town Landing to the southwest and near the Town Landing drainage are marked with orange stakes to indicate they are closed to the harvesting of all species.

While some seeding projects add netting and fencing to deter predators from eating the juvenile clams, Cumberland opted to leave the flats open and let the clams fend for themselves as in nature.

“We’re treating this as propping up the ecological system, and not like a garden,” said Brown.

In the spring, Cumberland will partner with the Department of Marine Resources to survey the three locations and scientifically estimate the number of clams in the flat, determining whether the seeding produced adult clams. Whether they invest in reseeding the mudflats next spring around the same time is still being determined by the Shellfish Conservation Commission.

As the experiment begins, Cumberland residents believe the return of clams to Cumberland’s mudflats would benefit the area in numerous ways. Clams improve the quality of water through filter feeding, removing suspended particles from the water they draw through themselves. An increase in these organisms in Cumberland’s mud is also seen as increasing the well-being of Cumberland residents.

“There are a number of folks that live here where that is a time-honored tradition to get some clams and cook them for dinner,” said Cumberland Police Chief Charles Rumsey, whose department assisted in the project.

“It adds to the quality of life to have that tradition to partake in,” he said.