It's harvested fairly extensively for local consumption.  As a largely
intertidal species, it's probably easily vulnerable to overharvest if
demand goes up too much through export or increasing local human
populations, but I don't remember specific statistics on it offhand.

PS-If you travel a few states southeast, Food World is not an
international supermarket but merely one of the plainer members of the
BiLo supermarket chain.

--
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections
University of Alabama
"I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"

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