It's not a sign of softness that you take a (minimal) effort to save a lifeform (that was useful to you). It's basic humanity, for lack of a better term (animality?).
They gotta feed those clams with something valuable in return to their service to really restore the balance.
I'd love to see what that leads to on an evolutionary timescale. Water departments of the future just go from clam bed to clam bed delivering treats and collecting water quality reports.
Interesting it is that our civilization is becoming more sensitive to smaller perturbations the larger it gets and the better information flow it achieves
Maybe "animal husbandry" is the term you're looking for?