Clam digging
Clam digging is a North American term for a common way to harvest clams from below the surface of the tidal sand flats or mud flats where they live. It is done both commercially. Commercial digging in the U. S. and Canada is colloquially referred to as clamming, is done by a clammer. Amateur clam digging is done using a straight long-handled spading fork, or a spading shovel. Commercial clamming for quahog clams, the larger surf clams is done offshore, via mechanical dredging. To harvest cultivated clam beds, aquaculturalists use a much smaller version from the offshore dredge. Another form of commercial clamming is done from a flat-decked boat using a clamrake with a telescopic handle; the head of these rakes have long tines attached to a "basket-like" cage in which the clams are collected. In the Minas Basin area of Nova Scotia, digging for soft-shelled clams is done with a clam hack, a spading fork with its short handle bent perpendicularly away from the fork's head. A digger uses the hack by grasping the spine of the prongs in one hand and the handle of the fork in the other to push the hack down into the mud, clay, or sand and pull it up and towards him/herself.
This digging action opens up the substrate to expose the clams. Those clams long enough are taken by hand and put into a peck-size bucket, used to measure the volume of clams collected. Clam digging on the New England coast is done using a "clam hoe" and a "hod" or "roller" and hip waders; the use of other tools is prohibited in some areas. Another popular method for bay clamming is the use of specialized tongs from a boat. Operators use the long tongs to probe the sand for clams. Clam tongs appear much like two clamrakes with teeth hinged like scissors. Digging for razor clams using a clam shovel or tube is a family and recreational activity in Oregon and Washington State. Clamdigger, a sculpture by Willem de Kooning Clamdigger, a daily passenger train which ran along the Northeast Corridor during the 1970s Media related to Clam digging at Wikimedia Commons
Cockle (bivalve)
A cockle is an edible, marine bivalve mollusc. Although many small edible bivalves are loosely called cockles, true cockles are species in the family Cardiidae. True cockles live in sheltered beaches throughout the world; the distinctive rounded shells are bilaterally symmetrical, are heart-shaped when viewed from the end. Numerous radial, evenly spaced ribs are a feature of the shell in most but not all genera; the shell of a cockle is able to close completely. Though the shell of a cockle may superficially resemble that of a scallop because of the ribs, cockles can be distinguished from scallops morphologically in that cockle shells lack "auricles" and scallop shells lack a pallial sinus. Behaviorally, cockles live buried in sediment, whereas scallops either are free-living and will swim in the sea water to avoid a predator, or in some cases live attached by a byssus to a substrate; the mantle has three apertures for the foot to protrude. Cockles burrow using the foot, feed by filtering plankton from the surrounding water.
Cockles are capable of "jumping" by straightening the foot. As is the case in many bivalves, cockles display gonochorism, some species reach maturity rapidly; the common name "cockle" is given by seafood sellers to a number of other small, edible marine bivalves which have a somewhat similar shape and sculpture, but are in other families such as the Veneridae and the ark clams. Cockles in the family Cardiidae are sometimes referred to as "true cockles" to distinguish them from these other species. There are more than 205 living species with many more fossil forms; the common cockle, Cerastoderma edule, is distributed around the coastlines of Northern Europe, with a range extending west to Ireland, the Barents Sea in the north, Norway in the east, as far south as Senegal. The dog cockle, Glycymeris glycymeris, has a similar range and habitat to the common cockle, but is not at all related, being in the family Glycymerididae; the dog cockle is edible, but due to its toughness when cooked it is not eaten, although a process is being developed to solve this problem.
The blood cockle, Tegillarca granosa is extensively cultured from southern Korea to Malaysia. Genera within the family Cardiidae include: Cockles are a popular type of edible shellfish in both Eastern and Western cooking, they are collected by raking them from the sands at low tide. However, collecting cockles is hard work and, as seen from the Morecambe Bay disaster, in which 23 people died, can be dangerous if local tidal conditions are not watched. In England and Wales, people are permitted to collect 5 kg of cockles for personal use. However, pickers wishing to collect more than this are deemed to be engaging in commercial fishing and are required to obtain a permit from the Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority. Cockles are a street food in Cambodia. Cockles are sold freshly cooked as a snack in the United Kingdom in those parts of the British coastline where cockles are abundant. Boiled seasoned with malt vinegar and white pepper, they can be bought from seafood stalls, which often have for sale mussels, jellied eels and shrimp.
Cockles are available pickled in jars, more have been sold in sealed packets containing a plastic two-pronged fork. A meal of cockles fried with bacon, served with laver bread, is known as a traditional Welsh breakfast. Boiled cockles are sold at many hawker centers in Southeast Asia, are used in laksa, char kway teow and steamboat, they see hum in Cantonese. In Japan, the Japanese egg cockle. A study conducted in England in the early 1980s showed a correlation between the consumption of cockles, presumed to be incorrectly processed, an elevated local occurrence of hepatitis. Cockles are an effective bait for a wide variety of sea fishes; the folk song "Molly Malone" is known as "Cockles and Mussels" because the title character's sale of the two foods is referred to in the song's refrain. The shells of cockles are mentioned in the English nursery rhyme "Mary, Quite Contrary". Cockles are eaten by the indigenous peoples of North America; the common English phrase "it warms the cockles of my heart", is used to mean that a feeling of deep-seated contentment has been generated.
Differing derivations of this phrase have been proposed, either directly from the perceived heart-shape of a cockleshell, or indirectly, or from the Latin diminutive of the word heart, corculum. Another proposed derivation is from the Latin for the ventricles of the heart, cochleae cordis, where the second word is an inflected form of cor, while cochlea is the Latin for snail. Cunningham, Joseph Thomas. "Cockle". Encyclopædia Britannica. 6. P. 627. Cockles Nutrition Facts for Cockles
Siphon (mollusc)
A siphon is an anatomical structure, part of the body of aquatic molluscs in three classes: Gastropoda and Cephalopoda. Siphons in molluscs are tube-like structures; the water flow is used for one or more purposes such as locomotion, feeding and reproduction. The siphon is part of the mantle of the mollusc, the water flow is directed to the mantle cavity. A single siphon occurs in some gastropods. In those bivalves which have siphons, the siphons are paired. In cephalopods, there is a single siphon or funnel, known as a hyponome. In some sea snails, marine gastropod molluscs, the animal has an anterior extension of the mantle called a siphon, or inhalant siphon, through which water is drawn into the mantle cavity and over the gill for respiration; this siphon is a soft fleshy tube-like structure equipped with chemoreceptors which "smell" or "taste" the water, in order to hunt for food. Marine gastropods that have a siphon are either scavengers. Although in gastropods the siphon functions well as a tube, it is not in fact a hollow organ, it is a flap of the mantle, rolled into the shape of a tube.
In many marine gastropods where the siphon is long, the structure of the shell has been modified in order to house and protect the soft tissue of the siphon. This shell modification is known as the siphonal canal. For a gastropod whose shell has an exceptionally long siphonal canal, see Venus comb murex. In the case of some other marine gastropod shells, such as the volute and the Nassarius pictured to the right, the shell has a simple "siphonal notch" at the anterior edge of the aperture instead of a long siphonal canal; the Aplysia gill and siphon withdrawal reflex is a defensive reflex, found in sea hares of the genus Aplysia. Freshwater apple snails in the genera Pomacea and Pila have an extensible siphon made from a flap of the left mantle cavity, they use this siphon in order to breathe air while they are submerged in water which has a low oxygen content so they cannot use their gill. Apple snails use the siphon in a way, reminiscent of a human swimmer using a snorkel, except that the apple snail's siphon can be retracted or extended to various lengths as needed.
For these freshwater snails, the siphon is an anti-predator adaptation. It reduces their vulnerability to being attacked and eaten by birds because it enables the apple snails to breathe without having to come all the way up to the surface, where they are visible to predators; the shells of these freshwater snails have simple round apertures. Those bivalves that have siphons, have two of them. Not all bivalves have siphons however: those that live on or above the substrate, as is the case in scallops, etc. do not need them. Only those bivalves that burrow in sediment, live buried in the sediment, need to use these tube-like structures; the function of these siphons is to reach up to the surface of the sediment, so that the animal is able to respire and excrete, to reproduce. The deeper a bivalve species lives in the sediment, the longer its siphons are. Bivalves which have long siphons, like the geoducks pictured here, live deeply buried, are hard to dig up when clamming. Many bivalves that have siphons can withdraw them into the shell when needed, but this is not true of all species.
Bivalves that can withdraw the siphons into the shell have a "pallial sinus", a sort of pocket, into which the siphons can fit when they are withdrawn, so that the two shell valves can close properly. The existence of this pocket shows in an empty shell, as a visible indentation in the pallial line, a line which runs along parallel to the ventral margin of the shell; the bivalve's two siphons are situated at the posterior edge of the mantle cavity. There is an inhalant or incurrent siphon, an exhalant or excurrent siphon; the water is circulated by the action of the gills. Water enters the mantle cavity through the inhalant siphon, moves over the gills, leaves through the exhalant siphon; the water current is utilized for respiration, but for filter feeding and reproduction. Depending on the species and family concerned, some bivalves utilize their inhalant siphon like the hose of a vacuum cleaner, suck up food particles from the marine substrate. Most other bivalves ingest microscopic phytoplankton as food from the general water supply, which enters via the inhalant siphon and reaches the mouth after passing over the gill.
Please see pseudofeces. The hyponome or siphon is the organ used by cephalopods to expel water, a function that produces a locomotive force; the hyponome developed from the foot of the molluscan ancestor. Water enters the mantle cavity around the sides of the funnel, subsequent contraction of the hyponome expands and contracts, expelling a jet of water. In most cephalopods, such as octopus and cuttlefish, the hyponome is a muscular tube; the hyponome of the nautilus differs however, in that it is a one-piece flap, folded over. Whether ammonites possessed a hyponome and if so what form it may have taken, is as yet not known. Glossary Bivalve anatomy More bivalve anatomy
Fried clams
Fried clams are clam dipped in milk and flour and deep-fried. Fried clams are an iconic food, "to New England, what barbecue is to the South", they tend to be served at seaside clam shacks. Clam rolls are fried clams served in a hot dog bun. Tartar sauce is the usual condiment; the clams are dipped in evaporated milk, coated with a combination of regular, and/or pastry flour. The coated clams are fried in canola oil or soybean oil, or lard; the usual variant in New England is made from whole soft-shell clams, known as "Whole-Bellies". Some restaurants remove the clam's chewy siphon called the neck. Outside New England, "clam strips", made of sliced parts of Atlantic surf clams, are more common. Fried clams are mentioned as early as 1840, are listed on an 1865 menu from the Parker House hotel. How they were prepared is unclear. Nineteenth-century American cookbooks describe several different dishes of fried clams: Seasoned clams sautéed in butter. Clams sautéed in butter or fat. Clams in a beaten egg batter, fried in butter, called "clam fritters".
The modern deep-fried, breaded version is credited to Lawrence Henry "Chubby" Woodman from Essex, Massachusetts. He is said to have created the first batch on July 3, 1916, in his small roadside restaurant, now Woodman's of Essex. One of his specialties was potato chips, so he had large vats for deep-frying, he used the clams, which he had collected himself from the mud flats of the Essex River located close to his home. Thomas Soffron, of Soffron Brothers Clam Co. based in Ipswich, created clam strips, which are made from the "foot" of hard-shelled sea clams. He sold these to Howard Johnson's in an exclusive deal, as the chain expanded, they became popular throughout the country. Clams in themselves are low in cholesterol and fat. Clam cake Clams casino Clam chowder Clams oreganata List of clam dishes List of deep fried foods List of seafood dishes New England clam bake Oyster omelette Rocky Mountain oysters Steamed clams
Grooved carpet shell
The grooved carpet shell, or Palourde clam, Ruditapes decussatus, or Venerupis decussatus, is a clam or bivalve mollusc in the family Veneridae. It is distributed worldwide and due to its ecological and economic interest has been proposed as a bioindicator; this species is one of the most popular and profitable mollusc of lagoonal and coastal sites in the Mediterranean, where it was collected for a long time as food. It is canned; the shell is broadly oval to quadrate with the umbones distinctly anterior. The posterior hinge line is straight, the posterior margin truncate, the anterior hinge line grades into the down-sloping anterior margin, it is prominent posteriorly. The surface has a sculpture of fine concentric striae and bolder radiating lines. Growth stages are clear; the lunule and escutcheon are poorly defined. Each valve has three cardinal teeth: the centre one in the left valve, centre and posterior in right are bifid; the pallial line and adductor scars are distinct. The pallial sinus is U-shaped, not extending beyond the midline of the shell, but reaching a point below the posterior part of the ligament.
The lower limb of the sinus is distinct from the pallial line for the whole of its length. The inner surfaces of the shell are glossy white with yellow or orange tints, with a bluish tinge along the dorsal edge; the overall color is cream, yellowish, or light brown with darker markings. Despite improper management, some regions in the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula, of the Mediterranean basin, as well as Ireland have solid populations of Ruditapes decussatus. Ruditapes decussatus is cultured from the Atlantic coast of France, Portugal and in the Mediterranean basin, it is grown with other bivalves. Their main predators are shore crabs. An individual Carcinus maenas can consume 6 clams per day. Marine aquaculture production of grooved carpet shell in 2003 was 3,007 t in Portugal, which excludes non-aquaculture harvesting of the species. Between 1997 and 2001 total aquaculture production varied between 3,700 and 4,900 tonnes, from five countries. Most was produced by Portugal but France and Spain have been significant producers.
Global production seems to be declining. In 1985 the price for live Ruditapes decussatus was about €0.60/kg. In 2005, the price was about €15/kg, it is canned. Garcia, F. – 1993. Interprétation des stries valvaires pour l'évaluation de la croissance de Ruditapes decussatus L. Oceanologica Acta. 16: 199–203.. Poppe, G. T. & Goto, Y. – 1991. European seashells. Vol 1. Verlag Christa Hemmen. Rodriguez-Moscoso, E & Arnaiz, R – 1998. Gametogenesis and energy storage in a population of the grooved carpet-shell clam, Tapes decussatus, in northwest Spain. Aquaculture.. Vol. 162, no. 1–2, pp. 125–139.. Xie, Qiushi & Burnell, GM – 1994. A comparative study of the gametogenic cycles of the clams Tapes philippinarum and Tapes decussatus on the south coast of Ireland. Journal of Shellfish Research.. Vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 467–472
Hard clam
The hard clam known as a quahog, round clam or hard-shell clam, is an edible marine bivalve mollusc, native to the eastern shores of North America and Central America from Prince Edward Island to the Yucatán Peninsula. It is one of many unrelated edible bivalves that in the United States are referred to as clams, as in the expression "clam digging". Older literature sources may use the systematic name Venus mercenaria. Confusingly, the "ocean quahog" is a different species, Arctica islandica, although superficially similar in shape, is in a different family of bivalves: it is rounder than the hard clam has black periostracum, there is no pallial sinus in the interior of the shell; the hard clam has many alternative common names. It is known as the Northern quahog, round clam, or chowder clam. In fish markets, there are specialist names for different sizes of this species of clam; the smallest harvestable clams are called countnecks or peanuts, next size up are littlenecks topnecks. Above that are the cherrystones, the largest are called quahogs or chowder clams.
The most distinctive of these names is quahog. The word comes from the Narragansett word "poquauhock", similar in Wampanoag and some other Algonquian languages. New England tribes made valuable beads called wampum from the shells those colored purple. Today people living in coastal New England still use the Native American word for the clam as they have done for hundreds of years. In many areas where aquaculture is important, clam farmers have bred specialized versions of these clams with distinctions needed for them to be distinguished in the marketplace; these are quite similar to common "wild type" Mercenaria clams, except that their shells bear distinctive markings. These are known as the notata strain of quahogs, which occur in low numbers wherever quahogs are found. Hard clams are quite common throughout New England, north into Canada, all down the Eastern seaboard of the United States to Florida. For example, the species is an important member of the suspension-feeding, benthic fauna of the lower Chesapeake Bay.
Rhode Island is situated right in the middle of "quahog country" and has supplied a quarter of the U. S.'s total annual commercial quahog catch. The quahog is the official shellfish of the U. S. state of Rhode Island. The species has been introduced and is farmed on the Pacific coast of North America and in Great Britain and continental Europe, it reproduces sexually by males shedding gametes into the water. Quahog Parasite Unknown is a parasite that affects Mercenaria mercenaria. While little is known about the disease, research is under way in several laboratories; this research is fueled by the need to inform aquaculturists, who suffer financially because of the mortality rates in clams that QPX inflicts and the ensuing years in which runs must be left fallow to clear the disease. It was discovered along the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts in 1995. In coastal areas of New England, New York, New Jersey, restaurants known as raw bars or clam bars specialize in serving littlenecks and topnecks raw on an opened half-shell with a cocktail sauce with horseradish, with lemon.
Sometimes littlenecks are steamed and dipped in butter, though not as as their soft-shelled clam cousin the "steamer". Littlenecks are found in-the-shell in sauces, soups and clams casino, or substituted for European varieties such as the cockle in southern European seafood dishes; the largest clams are chowders and cherrystones. American Indians used the quahog as a component in wampum, the shell beads exchanged in the North American fur trade; the Narragansetts used the hard clam for food and ornaments. A population of hard clams exists in Southampton Water in England. Bred in the warm water outflows at Southampton Power Station for use as eel bait, the population became self-sustaining and can now be found in Southampton Water and has spread to Portsmouth Harbour and Langstone Harbour; the term "red tide" refers to an accumulation of a toxin produced by marine algae. Filter-feeding shellfish are affected, such as clams and mussels; the toxin affects the human central nervous system. Eating contaminated shellfish, raw or cooked, can be fatal.
Some other kinds of algal blooms make the seawater appear red, but red tide blooms do not always discolor the water, nor are they related to tides. Clams bought from a market should be safe, as commercial harvesters are careful about red tides, they close beds that are remotely threatened and keep them closed for up to three or four weeks after they are clean of any red tide. Commercial clam fishers who are known to break these rules will receive a major fine in the first instance and will most have their license to harvest or sell clams revoked. Clam harvesters who violate the sanitary laws in New York face potential jail terms. Kraeuter, J. N. and M. Castagna. 2001. The Biology of the Hard Clam. Elsevier Science, Amsterdam. 772 pp. ISBN 0-444-81908-8 Google Books Perrigault M. Tanguy A. & Allam
Chumash people
The Chumash are a Native American people who inhabited the central and southern coastal regions of California, in portions of what is now San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles counties, extending from Morro Bay in the north to Malibu in the south. They occupied three of the Channel Islands: Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel. Modern place names with Chumash origins include Cayucos, Nipomo, Ojai, Pismo Beach, Point Mugu, Port Hueneme, Lake Castaic, Simi Valley and Somis. Archaeological research demonstrates that the Chumash have deep roots in the Santa Barbara Channel area and lived along the southern California coast for millennia, they inhabited the Antelope Valley in Palmdale and traded with the Kitanemuk tribe in the Mojave desert. The Chumash resided between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the California coasts where rivers and tributaries abound. Inside and around the modern-day Santa Barbara region, the Chumash lived with a bounty of resources; the tribe lived in an area of three environments: the interior, the coast, the Northern Channel Islands.
These provided a diverse array of materials to support the Chumash lifestyle. The interior is composed of the land outside the coast and spanning the wide plains and mountains; the coast covers the cliffs and land close to the ocean and, in reference to resources, the areas of the ocean from which the Chumash harvested. The Northern Channel Islands lie off the coast of the Chumash territory. All of the California coastal-interior has a Mediterranean climate due to the incoming ocean winds; the mild temperatures, save for winter, made gathering easy. What villagers gathered and traded during the seasons changed depending on where they resided. With coasts populated by masses of species of fish and land densely covered by trees and animals, the Chumash had a diverse array of food. Abundant resources and a winter harsh enough to cause concern meant the tribe lived a sedentary lifestyle in addition to a subsistence existence. Villages in the three aforementioned areas contained remains of sea mammals, indicating that trade networks existed for moving materials throughout the Chumash territory.
Such connections spread out the land’s wealth, allowing the Chumash to live comfortably without agriculture. The closer a village was to the ocean, the greater its reliance on maritime resources. Due to advanced canoe designs and island people could procure fish and aquatic mammals from farther out. Shellfish were a good source of nutrition: easy to find and abundant. Many of the favored varieties grew in tidal zones. Shellfish grew in abundance during winter to early spring; some of the consumed species included mussels, a wide array of clams. Haliotis rufescens was harvested along the Central California coast in the pre-contact era; the Chumash and other California Indians used red abalone shells to make a variety of fishhooks, beads and other artifacts. Ocean animals such as otters and seals were thought to be the primary meal of coastal tribes people, but recent evidence shows the aforementioned trade networks exchanged oceanic animals for terrestrial foods from the interior. Any village could acquire fish, but the coastal and island communities specialized in catching not just smaller fish, but the massive catches such as swordfish.
This feat, difficult for today’s technology, was made possible by the tomol plank canoe. Its design allowed for the capture of deepwater fish, it facilitated trade routes between villages. Before contact with Europeans, coastal Chumash relied less on terrestrial resources than they did on maritime. Regardless, they consumed similar land resources. Like many other tribes, deer were the most important land mammal. Interior Chumash placed greater value on the deer, to the extent that they had unique hunting practices for them, they dressed as deer and grazed alongside the animals until the hunters were in range to use their arrows. Chumash close to the ocean pursued deer, though in understandably fewer numbers, what more meat the villages needed they acquired from smaller animals such as rabbits and birds. Plant foods composed the rest of Chumash diet acorns, which were the staple food despite the work needed to remove their inherent toxins, they could be ground into a paste, easy to eat and store for years.
Coast live. Native Americans have lived along the California coast for at least 13,000 years; the first settlement started over 13,000 years ago near the Santa Barbara coast. The name Chumash means “bead maker” or “seashell people” being that they originated near the Santa Barbara coast; the Chumash tribes near the coast benefited most with the “close juxtaposition of a variety or marine and terrestrial habitats, intensive upwelling in coastal waters, intentional burning of the landscape made the Santa Barbara Channel region one of the most resource abundant places on the planet”. Before the mission period, the Chumash lived in over 150 independent villages, speaking variations of the same language. Much of their culture consisted of basketry, bead manufacturing and trading, cuisine of local abalone and clam, herbalism which consisted of using local herbs to produce teas and medical rel
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