Clamming on the Pacific Coast

Digging for clams and trying to identify them so that we do not accidentally kill ourselves

Elo and I (...and Dave) set out to do the difficult task of clamming. We read up on the literature,

Elo studying

checked the closures online and planned out our attack. Our research indicated that we should go to the beach at low tide, dig a trench, then sort threw the dug sand.

First shovel of dirt

Yeah, it turns out that clamming is not that hard. Or maybe we lucked out with our beach. Every shovel full of sand held a minimum of 5 clams and 3 different species. Some we could eat, but many were not in season. We collected manila and little neck clams. To us these two species looked identical. Luckily we were able to find a 12 year old boy to set us straight and school us on clam identification.

penis clam... okay maybe that is not the technical Latin name

Soaking Clams for cooking

Pretty much is was a grand success. We made a delicious chowder. It was the best chowder I had ever had. Then sat around thinking we were dying for the rest of the night. We were perfectly fine, but had an irrational fear of PSP (paralytic shellfish poisoning).  It only sort of spoiled the lovely day we had.