‘Things their ancestors passed to me’: Clam digging in Arizona runs deep for Cambodian families

Summer means clam digging for some Khmer families in Arizona. They share stories of cooking clams, sun-dried or stir-fried in Cambodian food dishes.

The morning sun dances off the Verde River on a hot July morning.

Nostalgia drove Sray Campanile to travel more than an hour and half from her home in Buckeye to this spot in Tonto National Forest. She sits in the shallow middle of the river at Needle Rock Recreation Site, reclines and stretches her legs in the water. This feeling — the gentle current tickling her spine, slivers of cool water slipping between her toes — takes her back to her childhood in California, where she and her parents would collect Asian clams and snails as food from freshwater ponds and streams around Stockton.

Now, decades later and hundreds of miles away in Arizona, she’s trying to recreate her  memories.

Asian clams, an invasive species found in the Verde River and other Arizona waterways, thrive in abundance in Cambodia. Campanile’s California clamming adventures reminded her parents of their own childhoods in Cambodia where they enjoyed sultry summer days catching swamp eels and snacking on sun-dried clams.

On this particular morning, Campanile is waiting for another woman, Jenneen Sambour, who’s on the way. The Arizona Khmer Facebook group brought the two women together. Like Campanile, Sambour’s parents are Cambodian refugees and she too grew up clamming with her siblings. Sambour was born in Rhode Island where she and her family used to go digging for quahogs and littlenecks at Narragansett, using their toes to feel around for clams in the sand. Later they’d grill the clams until their mouths opened, then season them with lime juice and pepper.

Sambour’s mother comes from Battambang in northwest Cambodia, the same province as Campanile’s family. Many fish andmollusks live in Tonlé Sap, a freshwater lake located partially in Battambang and fed by the Mekong River, a lifeline for Southeast Asia. The lake has fed Cambodians for centuries, though climate change and human development are threatening its ecosystem.

Sambour was first inspired to rekindle her family’s clamming tradition by the Arizona Khmer Facebook group, where members recently started chiming in with suggestions on where to find clams, called ‘leah’ in Khmer. Several people also shared childhood memories of family clamming trips in Arizona.

Recently, there’s been an increased interest in clam digging in the group, said Staphany Pich, one of the group administrators, who recommended clamming at Needle Rock Recreation Site, a river beach and picnic area northeast of Scottsdale.

“It’s in our culture in Cambodia,” said Jack Ngan, another member of the group who moved to Maricopa four years ago from Long Beach. He comes from generations of fishermen.

“That’s where my family comes from, fishing. Ask, who’s a fisherman in your family? Who catches crab? Who catches crawfish? They’ll tell you who,” he said. “Even my wife’s side. Her dad fishes every week. That’s what we do.”

How Asian clams ended up in Arizona

Corbicula fluminea, better known as the Asian or Asiatic clams, came to Arizona as stowaways.

Asian clams are a freshwater species native to eastern Asia and Africa. Over the years they spread to other parts of the world through human activities, such as the shellfish trade and recreational boating. They are alsobelieved to have traveled to the U.S. with immigrants who brought them along as a food source.

Asian clams were first recorded in Arizona in 1956 when they were found in the Phoenix canal system, according to former Arizona State University researcher John Rinne’s 1974 report, “The Introduced Asiatic Clam, Corbicula, in Central Arizona Reservoirs.”

The report suggests that it was most likely a tourist, fisherperson or aquarium hobbyist, possibly from California, who introduced them to Arizona. They have since made themselves at home in most of Arizona’s major river systems, reservoirs, canals and urban lakes, said Jeff Sorensen, invertebrate wildlife program manager for Arizona Game and Fish Department.

“They are very invasive, and once they invade our waters they are pretty much here to stay,” Sorensen noted.

Asian clams are usually less than an inch long, but can grow up to 2½ inches, according to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service summary. They have an average lifespan of two to four years, but can live up to seven years.

In Arizona, the invasive bivalves likely compete with native pea clams and other filter-feeding macroinvertebrates for food and habitat, Sorensen said. They live on the surface or slightly buried in sand, silt and gravel, and feed on plankton. Asian clams don’t have the ability to attach themselves to hard surfaces, unlike quagga mussels, an invasive species that can clog pipes, colonize boats and starve fishing holes.