In Fall 2007, New York Sea Grant's Barbara A. Branca visited the Marine Animal Disease Laboratory at Stony Brook University to talk with researchers about their extensive QPX monitoring program in Raritan Bay, Peconic Bay and other areas of the marine district to determine the extent and distribution of QPX disease.

QPX disease had caused mortalities in both cultured and wild populations of Mercenaria mercenaria, or hard clams, in the northeast in the 1990s. As its moniker suggests, little was known about this pathogen, a protistan parasite. A recent New York Sea Grant-funded study partially supported by NYSDEC, which has provided insight into the pathobiology of this parasite, may lay the groundwork for restoring the hard clam to health, as well as the industry itself.