KEYPORT, Wash.—Kyle Purser climbed out of the frigid waters of Puget Sound, peeled off his latex diving gear and quickly calculated what the day's shellfish catch would put in his wallet.
"Oh, $1,000, maybe $2,000," said the 26-year-old, who is a member of the Suquamish tribe of Native Americans. "Not bad for 90 minutes' work."
Mr. Purser is one of 25 divers of the Suquamish tribe enjoying a midwinter shellfish bounty. The 700-member tribe on Washington's Bainbridge Island is blessed with one of the world's largest colonies of geoducks—nature's largest clam and a prized delicacy in Asian cuisine. Dock prices in the run-up to Chinese New Year on Thursday have jumped to almost $15 a pound from $8 a pound in early January.
Even as the U.S. as a whole may be having trouble exporting to China and overcoming a $252 billion trade deficit, the Native American tribes of Washington's Puget Sound are enjoying a boom in exports to China. Along with the Suquamish, the Skokomish, Lummi, Quileute, Tulalip, Puyallup and four more tribes have formed an archipelago of sovereign nations tapping the flourishing trans-Pacific trade that spikes during Chinese New Year.
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