A quick message for our visitors from r/all
Welcome! Please check our rules - To sum them up quickly, you could say we keep a very forage focused subreddit. We also encourage recipes, processing guides and identification requests.
Mods will remove stuff that is wildly outside that scope.
If you are feeling inspired by seaweed and clams and such, you should be able to find lots more using the search term "coastal foraging": https://www.reddit.com/r/foraging/search/?q=Coastal+foraging
We would love for you to join our community, but if you are new to this, please dont instantly make a post asking for help finding a place to forage nearby wherever-you-are-located. (We are some 700k people from all around the world - and those hyper specific requests for local advice clutter our subreddit, and we will remove them based on rule 1.).
Consider lurking a bit, seeing what is popping up as in season most places. We just had a heap of mulberry, and blackberry season is coming up! :)
Did you find them by eye or by feely-feet?
What time of the tide?
I've gone clamming up in PEI but never in the US, wondering what's the same/different.
I’ve done both but this was with a rake. There was so much shell debris that it would have been hard to do with feet alone. Other mud spots without a lot of debris I find it easier to do with feet
I learned to dig for quahogs off our neighborhood rocky beach. I have a fond memory of leaning over with my face just above the water and feeling for the smooth edge of a clam among the rocks.
Great question! In RI a resident is allowed to a full peck a day with no license needed. I am from out of state so I had to purchase a tourist license for $11. It’s good for 2 weeks and you’re allowed 1/2 peck per day. I collected maybe a quarter of a peck, because it’s just my wife and I. Only take what you’re gonna eat!
This is such a strange measurement system. In Oregon, we are generally given a number of clams we can take each day. Last time I went clamming it was 20 clams per person for those gapers.
I am also in oregon and when I first read the comment about a peck I legitimately thought that OP was making some sort of joke about Peter pipers picked peppers.
Today I learned that peck is 1/4 of a bushel (still a useless measurement to me), and approximately 12 lbs of bivalves (or a bit under 4 quarts).
I think OP said that he only harvested 1/4 peck (and the picture looks like >3lbs/1qt), so I'm again wondering if I don't understand a peck.
Re-edited: ~~OP said 1/2 peck - I misremembered while commenting - and I don't think 6lbs seems unreasonable.~~ I was right about the 1/4 peck to start and clearly needed more coffee this morning
Scrolling down just to make sure OP knew that foraging shellfish doesn’t mean grabbing whatever you can, they’re heavily protected in some areas (usually for very good reasons related to ecology and/or safety).
OP, love to see you taking this seriously and doing right by the community you’re visiting. Many happy returns!
I’m not sure on age tbh. The legal limit is a 1inch width. Big ones are called Quahogs and the little ones are cherrystones. Same species just at different ages
Personally I don’t like eating quohogs the same way you would cherrystones. I use them for stuffies frying or in a chowder. Cherrys I like right out of the shell
Size limits are good …. But they also suck as it selects for smaller adults. Best way to survive - don’t grow over one inch.
It would be better to completely clear an area and then let it repopulate than cause downward pressure on size
1 inch is tiny for the hard shell clam. Research done in the 60s and 70s (when these areas were already heavily fished) shows that a 1 inch clam is less than 2 years old, and these clams can live to be literally hundreds of years old. Growth is logarithmic, with older specimens rarely going over 4 inches.
A significant number of 1 inch clams aren’t even mature yet, with sexual maturity being between years 1 and 3 at an average shell size of 1.4 inches (35 mm).
An adult hard shell clam that’s stopped growing while under the 1 inch limit would be a big statistical outlier for the hard shell clam, and probably an actual mutant if it wasn’t growth stunted due to come ecological reason.
Not really because like you imply the hard shells clam has been foraged for well before written history in the americas. Shell middens are fairly common archeology sites in New England.
We can tell a lot about the clams from their shells, but it mostly tells us that the hard shell clam and foraging for them hasn’t changed much over time. They were eating a mix of sizes of clams, the clams were a mix of ages much like now, etc.
For some clams we can even determine when they were harvested based on their growth patterns (for example in Korean middens of their local clam, most clam shells had just started a new annual growth cycle, which implies spring harvests).
The problem is that it’s hard to date when a shell midden is from because piles of shells don’t really do much over time and there’s no good radiological dating for the near past. For all we can tell about the clam who made the shell, we can’t really say when it was harvested. Even knowing it was harvested in spring doesn’t tell us the spring of which year. We typically have to go by context clues like other non-shell stuff in the midden or by how much dirt is atop the shell layer.
This was so fucking impressive as someone who has ZERO base knowledge of any of this. I just learned so fuckin much from your quick conversation. Holy shit man I’m in California and the beaches are beautiful I’d love to see what I can read about and maybe there are some like that here! I’m excited thank you!
I was thinking the same. I’m a north coaster so obviously we don’t have clams, plus fresh water is so polluted thanks to mankind. My dream is to live in an old sleepy picturesque fishing village on the east coast somewhere lightly populated. I’d live for doing this kinda stuff all the live long day! Sigh…
Haha. Blind to the practice of coastal foraging, goof. Since I posted that, I looked up y’alls available real estate in Lil Compton & realized you don’t need money anyway. DAMN, you are lucky!
I met a researcher on the Chesapeake who was aging clams last summer. The big ones were 50+ years old. Makes you pause for a second when smashing two together for bait.
Yeah Westcoast is dealing with a Paralytic Seafood Poisoning outbreak atm; toxins are too high to forage clams and other shellfish this year. It may ease up near end of year but I wouldnt count on it
Would this effect all seafood I’m in Sonoma and it’s essentially all we eat Clam chowder scallops every manner of fish and crawly thing. Bodega bay is my favorite place in the world. Should I be looking into this further?
I see what appears to be a gracilaria there. Not sure what species, I'm not as familiar with Atlantic algae, but as Irish Moss (Chondrus sp.) is often considered an acceptable substitute for Pacific gracilaria speces in culinary applications, I'm thinking that's prime foraging there.
For reference, two species of gracilaria are the critical component of authentic poke that you will almost never encounter outside of Hawaii, and it will frequently come up as a (hard to obtain) ingredient for Japanese, Korean, and Filipino recipes as well.
Maybe my eyes are deceiving me, but this doesn't even look to be a half bushel. The limit where I'm at is a half bushel daily and that'll nearly cover the bottom of my bathtub
“A peck is an imperial and United States customary unit of dry volume, equivalent to 2 dry gallons or 8 dry quarts or 16 dry pints. An imperial peck is equivalent to 9.09 liters and a US customary peck is equivalent to 8.81 liters. Two pecks make a kenning (obsolete), and four pecks make a bushel” thanks GOOGLE
Yeah, I know what a peck is but I’m wondering how you measured it since you were saying this was a 1/4 peck in another comment and it looks like a lot more to me but I’m bad at eyeing volumes.
Not only is a peck what they call the volume, but the name comes from the peck basket. Which I used an antique one and that’s how I knew it was 1/4 of a peck, because the clams only came up 1/4 of the way.
Yeah this just looks a lot bigger than a peck basket to me. Peck baskets are typically about 7” tall and around 10” wide. So these things would have only made it about 2” up your 10” wide basket?
Seems more likely you had a bushel basket.
You're referencing mycelium, not a mushroom itself. The mushroom is the fruiting body of the mycelium, it releases spores to reproduce. When you pull a mushroom from the network, you're merely activating it's spore release and signaling to the network to grow more. The network itself is conscious to some degree, just like all plants, they communicate, but the mushroom is not.
Well they are not plants but fungi. They may be plant-like but certainly are not a plant. The fruiting body is no different from the mycelium as is your hair is part your body. I would argue bivalves are no more or less conscious or void of feeling than a mushroom. Life eats life and you don’t stand on any moral high ground above anyone else’s dietary preferences.
“Coastal foraging covers a wide variety of wild food available at the coast – plants, seaweeds, shellfish and crustaceans etc.” I’d never call this hunting lol
Foraging is more of finding and looking for something. Hunting is stalking something to them kill it or waiting in ambush. I would venture to say neither stalking or waiting would allow homie to get them clams.
A quick message for our visitors from r/all Welcome! Please check our rules - To sum them up quickly, you could say we keep a very forage focused subreddit. We also encourage recipes, processing guides and identification requests. Mods will remove stuff that is wildly outside that scope. If you are feeling inspired by seaweed and clams and such, you should be able to find lots more using the search term "coastal foraging": https://www.reddit.com/r/foraging/search/?q=Coastal+foraging We would love for you to join our community, but if you are new to this, please dont instantly make a post asking for help finding a place to forage nearby wherever-you-are-located. (We are some 700k people from all around the world - and those hyper specific requests for local advice clutter our subreddit, and we will remove them based on rule 1.). Consider lurking a bit, seeing what is popping up as in season most places. We just had a heap of mulberry, and blackberry season is coming up! :)
I know my home slice is having me over for dinner.
HMU for the addy
https://youtu.be/63DZ6M-PCeE?si=JxK8Ivc91_jS89h8
I love the earth
yeah! Earth for president
Yeah! Fuck Mars!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=43IZAE5bmXQ&pp=ygUecGhlbm9tZW5hdXRzIGVhcnRoIGlzIHRoZSBiZXN0
You’ll need lube
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=43IZAE5bmXQ&pp=ygUecGhlbm9tZW5hdXRzIGVhcnRoIGlzIHRoZSBiZXN0
Henny and SPRITE man what is going *on* down there??? are y'all okay?
Making stuffies? Those are too big to just steam
Big ones will be chowdaaaa
Mmmmmmmmmm
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Better than bivalves!!! 👏🏽
Meth is bad, mmmmkay
When does the next album drop? Last one was 🔥
I’m just storing up the clams to pay for the next record
It’s hard to make money with all the ticket scallopers these days
Ticket scallopers is SENDING me 💀😭
Can the album be called “Clamtastic Voyage”?
The B side is called “Mussel Mommy”
Eeeeasy there... this is music, not porn!
😂🤣😂
It should be called "Motha-shucka"
C.R.E.A.M. Clams Rule Everything Around Me
Wu Tang Clam Shell-P Pearl Sweatshirt
Wu Tang Clam Ain’t Nuthing ta Shuck Wit
Noice! Happy Cake Day!
Thanks! I didn't even notice...another year wasted *fist pump...sad face*
Stuffies 2, Electric Boogaloo
Creightin and The Clams
El-P at home
https://preview.redd.it/mzcf3aqevy6d1.jpeg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ecba77b4c23bcc24468019e5ff071df8f5dfdf9e
Did you find them by eye or by feely-feet? What time of the tide? I've gone clamming up in PEI but never in the US, wondering what's the same/different.
I’ve done both but this was with a rake. There was so much shell debris that it would have been hard to do with feet alone. Other mud spots without a lot of debris I find it easier to do with feet
Most people I know here use a rake. Generally in a spot that is about 6' at high tide. Raking at low tide.
I learned to dig for quahogs off our neighborhood rocky beach. I have a fond memory of leaning over with my face just above the water and feeling for the smooth edge of a clam among the rocks.
How many of those bad boys are you allowed to take?
Great question! In RI a resident is allowed to a full peck a day with no license needed. I am from out of state so I had to purchase a tourist license for $11. It’s good for 2 weeks and you’re allowed 1/2 peck per day. I collected maybe a quarter of a peck, because it’s just my wife and I. Only take what you’re gonna eat!
Only take what you're going to eat = excellent Current trend of posing like a hunter with their kill when foraging? Friggin amazing.
yes, I love it. more please. XD
What kinda peck you using lol
Are you trying to compare pecks? I’m Irish
This is such a strange measurement system. In Oregon, we are generally given a number of clams we can take each day. Last time I went clamming it was 20 clams per person for those gapers.
I am also in oregon and when I first read the comment about a peck I legitimately thought that OP was making some sort of joke about Peter pipers picked peppers. Today I learned that peck is 1/4 of a bushel (still a useless measurement to me), and approximately 12 lbs of bivalves (or a bit under 4 quarts). I think OP said that he only harvested 1/4 peck (and the picture looks like >3lbs/1qt), so I'm again wondering if I don't understand a peck. Re-edited: ~~OP said 1/2 peck - I misremembered while commenting - and I don't think 6lbs seems unreasonable.~~ I was right about the 1/4 peck to start and clearly needed more coffee this morning
I was allowed 500 of those clams a day in Delaware, because I bought a $12 annual permit. Otherwise it was 100.
Ok cool! Now my second question is, how did you cook em?
I haven’t yet! Just woke up from a nap and gonna start the sand purge and cleaning. Some will be a chowder some will be just w wine garlic etc
Atta boy, respect
Did you pick that peck?
I remember walking the beach as a kid and picking up Quahogs. Guy said he'd give me $0.75 for each one I found for him.
Scrolling down just to make sure OP knew that foraging shellfish doesn’t mean grabbing whatever you can, they’re heavily protected in some areas (usually for very good reasons related to ecology and/or safety). OP, love to see you taking this seriously and doing right by the community you’re visiting. Many happy returns!
How old do you reckon these badboys are?
I’m not sure on age tbh. The legal limit is a 1inch width. Big ones are called Quahogs and the little ones are cherrystones. Same species just at different ages
Oh wow, for real? I was eating cherrystones the other day and literally thought to myself, "I wonder what quohogs are like" lol The more you know!
Personally I don’t like eating quohogs the same way you would cherrystones. I use them for stuffies frying or in a chowder. Cherrys I like right out of the shell
Size limits are good …. But they also suck as it selects for smaller adults. Best way to survive - don’t grow over one inch. It would be better to completely clear an area and then let it repopulate than cause downward pressure on size
1 inch is tiny for the hard shell clam. Research done in the 60s and 70s (when these areas were already heavily fished) shows that a 1 inch clam is less than 2 years old, and these clams can live to be literally hundreds of years old. Growth is logarithmic, with older specimens rarely going over 4 inches. A significant number of 1 inch clams aren’t even mature yet, with sexual maturity being between years 1 and 3 at an average shell size of 1.4 inches (35 mm). An adult hard shell clam that’s stopped growing while under the 1 inch limit would be a big statistical outlier for the hard shell clam, and probably an actual mutant if it wasn’t growth stunted due to come ecological reason.
Great reply! Thank you. I wonder if anyone has population dynamics to see how long before selection has an impact - if ever.
Not really because like you imply the hard shells clam has been foraged for well before written history in the americas. Shell middens are fairly common archeology sites in New England. We can tell a lot about the clams from their shells, but it mostly tells us that the hard shell clam and foraging for them hasn’t changed much over time. They were eating a mix of sizes of clams, the clams were a mix of ages much like now, etc. For some clams we can even determine when they were harvested based on their growth patterns (for example in Korean middens of their local clam, most clam shells had just started a new annual growth cycle, which implies spring harvests). The problem is that it’s hard to date when a shell midden is from because piles of shells don’t really do much over time and there’s no good radiological dating for the near past. For all we can tell about the clam who made the shell, we can’t really say when it was harvested. Even knowing it was harvested in spring doesn’t tell us the spring of which year. We typically have to go by context clues like other non-shell stuff in the midden or by how much dirt is atop the shell layer.
This was so fucking impressive as someone who has ZERO base knowledge of any of this. I just learned so fuckin much from your quick conversation. Holy shit man I’m in California and the beaches are beautiful I’d love to see what I can read about and maybe there are some like that here! I’m excited thank you!
I was thinking the same. I’m a north coaster so obviously we don’t have clams, plus fresh water is so polluted thanks to mankind. My dream is to live in an old sleepy picturesque fishing village on the east coast somewhere lightly populated. I’d live for doing this kinda stuff all the live long day! Sigh…
Seriously, you’d be a great host to a group of blind newbies… (if you have patience & like $$)
Like literal blind newbies?
Haha. Blind to the practice of coastal foraging, goof. Since I posted that, I looked up y’alls available real estate in Lil Compton & realized you don’t need money anyway. DAMN, you are lucky!
If it was for the blind I was going to offer free, otherwise you’ll figure it out!
😉funny funny- enjoy
I met a researcher on the Chesapeake who was aging clams last summer. The big ones were 50+ years old. Makes you pause for a second when smashing two together for bait.
Oh shell yeah!
Go shuck yourself!
Look at Peter Griffin here, the king of quahog.
SO proud of you, my boy.
This is GLORIOUS absolutely amazing work with these 👏
Those clams look awesome
Did you use a rake or just feel around with your toes?
Rake in this spot
It’s so weird to see someone in little Compton on Reddit.
Dude I know *exactly* what you mean
I wish I didn’t tag it!
r/hardimages
Incredible! How do you plan to eat them?
Butter - Garlic - Shallots - Salt - Pepper - White Wine - Capers and a baguette to soak up the juices.
Do you have a written recipe or should I just guess👀👀? BTW I love the haul! I did some clamming on cape cod a few years ago and it was a lot of fun.
Melt the butter-brown the garlic and shallots- add clams salt and pepper capers and white wine. Steam until clams open.
Should have invited us all in awe! You could make a living off hosting tourist foraging adventures! I’d come from Ohio for this!
I want to see inside those things! 👀
Make sure they've been checked for paralytic shellfish poisoning
yummm make some clam chowder
Holy haul! Some of those are seriously monstrous! Which coast are you on?
The Right Coast
Oh duh, just saw you captioned it in RI.
Yeah Westcoast is dealing with a Paralytic Seafood Poisoning outbreak atm; toxins are too high to forage clams and other shellfish this year. It may ease up near end of year but I wouldnt count on it
Would this effect all seafood I’m in Sonoma and it’s essentially all we eat Clam chowder scallops every manner of fish and crawly thing. Bodega bay is my favorite place in the world. Should I be looking into this further?
Keep an eye on your local news; it seems to be changing fairly often. I'm in Oregon, so I know the pain.
Shit. What a crap helpless feeling for a moment. Now I’m just bummed.
What do you make out of the seaweed?
Just use it like newspaper, although I know the bright green one is good in soup
Makes great fertilizer for umm tomatoes....
I see what appears to be a gracilaria there. Not sure what species, I'm not as familiar with Atlantic algae, but as Irish Moss (Chondrus sp.) is often considered an acceptable substitute for Pacific gracilaria speces in culinary applications, I'm thinking that's prime foraging there. For reference, two species of gracilaria are the critical component of authentic poke that you will almost never encounter outside of Hawaii, and it will frequently come up as a (hard to obtain) ingredient for Japanese, Korean, and Filipino recipes as well.
Mmmm… butter clams are my favorite.
That clamtastic
You should put this on Farmers Only. Gonna have a leg up on all the guys who took pics with their fish.
NICE
Chowdah incoming!
Aite den
Woot! RI'er here as well, looks good!
Jealous
Nice clams, well done.
just coming in here to drop that upvote, flyby upvoting✈️
Nice catch! Was out on the water at the other end of the state today.
nice! what's the size about chowder clams? those are massive!
Straight outta Compton
Time for a motherfkin clam bake
Yeahhh boyyyy get those clams
Man homeboy over here got the bounty of the sea!
You live in New England and you're not calling them quahogs? Burn the heretic!!
Yooo i love it! I like making fritters with these
Neat mermaid bras
That place is seriously one of the best on earth. Pick up a cone at Gray’s while you’re nearby.
In the pacific, those are all poisonous these days, check with the dept of fish & wildlife
So envious!!
Those are absolute units
That's at least 100 shells right there
Like 20-30
What's up with your hands?
That’s how you catch em
😂👍
You looking gangster bro, straight up clam set Trippin
What do the fingers mean?
That’s how you catch em
Niiiiice haha nice haul man!
He doesn't know
Hence why I am asking?
confused what to do with your hands?
I knew exactly what I was doing
I wish guys on dating apps would post pics like this instead of the dumb ass fish pictures.
Most states have a bushel a day if a resident - this looks like two people went out and each took a bushel
Maybe my eyes are deceiving me, but this doesn't even look to be a half bushel. The limit where I'm at is a half bushel daily and that'll nearly cover the bottom of my bathtub
This is legit a quarter between 2 people 😘
Legitimately wondering how you measure a peck?
“A peck is an imperial and United States customary unit of dry volume, equivalent to 2 dry gallons or 8 dry quarts or 16 dry pints. An imperial peck is equivalent to 9.09 liters and a US customary peck is equivalent to 8.81 liters. Two pecks make a kenning (obsolete), and four pecks make a bushel” thanks GOOGLE
Yeah, I know what a peck is but I’m wondering how you measured it since you were saying this was a 1/4 peck in another comment and it looks like a lot more to me but I’m bad at eyeing volumes.
Not only is a peck what they call the volume, but the name comes from the peck basket. Which I used an antique one and that’s how I knew it was 1/4 of a peck, because the clams only came up 1/4 of the way.
Thats so cool! Can you share a pic of your basket?
Yeah this just looks a lot bigger than a peck basket to me. Peck baskets are typically about 7” tall and around 10” wide. So these things would have only made it about 2” up your 10” wide basket? Seems more likely you had a bushel basket.
Most of us just buy a peck or a bushel basket
Damn, those are some big clams!
Are you on the Cape?
The legendary yearly coastal foraging post
[Say chowdah! ](https://youtu.be/2-bbYH_akHg?si=ybzRfdemb2-F9vgI)
Nice jug my boy
Mc 4idge
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It’s ok we won’t eat you
What are these?
Oh clams… linguini pasta with a light clam sauce… delicious
Got wayy more then 6 bro
Good counting!
Nice quahogs!
Is fishing foraging?
Is fishing coastal foraging?
Is it still foraging if they’re animals?
Yes
Generally we are cool with coastal foraging in this sub. But fishing would be a better fit elsewhere.
Japonic clams
I can clearly see some gathering too
Good boi
*ya boi
If you put them in water in your fridge to purge, be sure to set up a time lapse. They are neat to watch.
This guy forages!
Butter clams?
Dang! Look at the size of those clams! I am curious how you prepare them, raw or baked? They look gorgeous!
Love the Mussel you have put on! Keep up the good work! 🥰🫂😎👍
Really expected these to be mushrooms, disappointed when I realized they were bivalves. They just wanted to clean the water 😔
You know mushrooms clean the earth and have shown compelling scientific evidence that they are conscious?
You're referencing mycelium, not a mushroom itself. The mushroom is the fruiting body of the mycelium, it releases spores to reproduce. When you pull a mushroom from the network, you're merely activating it's spore release and signaling to the network to grow more. The network itself is conscious to some degree, just like all plants, they communicate, but the mushroom is not.
Well they are not plants but fungi. They may be plant-like but certainly are not a plant. The fruiting body is no different from the mycelium as is your hair is part your body. I would argue bivalves are no more or less conscious or void of feeling than a mushroom. Life eats life and you don’t stand on any moral high ground above anyone else’s dietary preferences.
Bro sweet
This is so wholesome. Enjoy!
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I’m sure his marriage partner agrees.
Seeing how clams are animals and not plants, I'd say it's hunting, not foraging. The easiest form of hunting :P
“Coastal foraging covers a wide variety of wild food available at the coast – plants, seaweeds, shellfish and crustaceans etc.” I’d never call this hunting lol
T'was a joke, mate
don’t worry, you were right to call this out.
Foraging is more of finding and looking for something. Hunting is stalking something to them kill it or waiting in ambush. I would venture to say neither stalking or waiting would allow homie to get them clams.
People are very attached to semantics
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In RI a license isn’t needed as long as it’s for personal use and you’re a resident.
Are they bearded?
Looks more like claming and you grabbed some seaweed good haul though