#CLAM TO HORSE CLAM TO GEO DUCK FULL#

The butter clam, Saxidomus gigantea, the Pacific razor clam, Siliqua patula, gaper clams Tresus capax, the geoduck clam, Panopea generosa and the Pismo clam, Tivela stultorum are all eaten as delicacies.Ĭlams can be eaten raw, steamed, boiled, baked or fried.

#CLAM TO HORSE CLAM TO GEO DUCK FULL#

West Coast, there are several species that have been consumed for thousands of years, evidenced by middens full of clamshells near the shore and their consumption by nations including the Chumash of California, the Nisqually of Washington state and the Tsawwassen of British Columbia. The bamboo clam is also notorious for having a very sharp edge of its shell, and when harvested by hand must be handled with great care. Up and down the coast of the Eastern U.S., the bamboo clam, Ensis directus, is prized by Americans for making clam strips, although because of its nature of burrowing into the sand very close to the beach, it cannot be harvested by mechanical means without damaging the beaches. Historically, they were caught on a small scale on the Outer Banks, barrier islands off North Carolina, and put in soups, steamed or pickled. There are several edible species in the Eastern United States: Americardia media, also known as the strawberry cockle, is found from Cape Hatteras down into the Caribbean Sea and all of Florida Trachycardium muricatum has a similar range to the strawberry cockle and Dinocardium robustum, which grows to be many times the size of the European cockle. Scallops are also used for food nationwide, but not cockles: they are more difficult to get than in Europe because of their habit of being farther out in the tide than European species on the West Coast, and on the East Coast they are often found in salt marshes and mudflats where mosquitoes are abundant. Another species commercially exploited on the Atlantic Coast of the United States is the surf clam, Spisula solidissima. It may also refer to a few other common edible species, such as the soft-shell clam, Mya arenaria, and the ocean quahog, Arctica islandica. In culinary use, within the eastern coast of the United States and large swathes of the Maritimes of Canada, the term 'clam' most often refers to the hard clam, Mercenaria mercenaria. Most species of octopus have clams as a staple of their diet, up to and including the giants like the Giant Pacific octopus.Ĭultures around the world eat clams along with many other types of shellfish. Birds of all kinds will also eat clams if they can catch them in the littoral zone: roseate spoonbills of North and South America, the Eurasian oystercatcher, whooping crane and common crane, the American flamingo of Florida and the Caribbean Sea, and the common sandpiper are just a handful of the numerous birds that feast on clams all over the world. Extant mammals that eat clams would include both the Pacific and Atlantic species of walrus, all known subspecies of harbour seals in both the Atlantic and Pacific, most species of sea lions, including the California sea lion, bearded seals and even species of river otters that will consume the freshwater species found in Asia and North America.

All clams have two calcareous shells or valves joined near a hinge with a flexible ligament and all are filter feeders.Ĭlams are shellfish that make up an important part of the web of life that keeps the seas functioning, both as filter feeders and as a food source for many different animals. Some clams have life cycles of only one year, while at least one may be over 500 years old. Many edible clams such as palourde clams are ovoid or triangular however, razor clams have an elongated parallel-sided shell, suggesting an old-fashioned straight razor. In culinary usage, clams are commonly eaten marine bivalves, as in clam digging and the resulting soup, clam chowder. Ĭlams in the culinary sense do not live attached to a substrate (whereas oysters and mussels do) and do not live near the bottom (whereas scallops do). They live in both freshwater and marine environments in salt water they prefer to burrow down into the mud and the turbidity of the water required varies with species and location the greatest diversity of these is in North America. Clams have two shells of equal size connected by two adductor muscles and have a powerful burrowing foot.

The word is often applied only to those that are edible and live as infauna, spending most of their lives halfway buried in the sand of the seafloor or riverbeds. A clam shell (species Spisula solidissima) at Sandy Hook, New JerseyĬlam is a common name for several kinds of bivalve molluscs.

Clam to horse clam to geo duck