The summer equinox doesn't just bring 19 hours of fishable, insomnia inducing daylight to Seattle, it also provides the only glimmer of hope to get after some geoducks. For this year's attempt I assembled the digging crew and headed to Salsbury Point County Park.
I wouldn't recommend this particular beach for geoducks or even steamers but it is packed with butter and horse clams. If you can get past the 1-3 parasitic crabs that will waddle out of each horse clam, either species is an excellent choice for chowder. Also hiding down in the mud is one critter I will not be throwing in the chowder - a moon snail. Beyond the slime factor, they are a clam carnivore and can concentrate the toxins from their prey. As one of the symptoms is paralysis, I'll hide behind that as a solid excuse for not trying one.
Turns out moon snails are also responsible for the odd looking beach litter that I would have guessed was some sort of advanced polymer part washing up from the Bangor sub base. The rings are actually egg sacks know as sand collars. Essentially the eggs are guarded between two layers of sand/mucous until the collar starts to break down and the larvae can head out to sea. While my head says I should believe fellow Puget Sound blogger Buzz (thanks for the picture), my heart is convinced the government must be involved somehow...
Well... I have procrastinated as long as I could. The tragedy that is the geoduck failure must be disclosed. Right as the tide started to turn, I spotted an incredibly large clam neck peeking out of the sand. We started digging down while the clam neck kept retracting further and further. I am never very confident in identifying mollusks by a snozz but after getting down a couple feet, it was clear that we had found a geoduck! As this picture was taken we could just start to feel the top of the shell but he was still anchored firmly in the muck. And that is when we found out that we and about 20 other people were unwittingly trespassing on a private beach. It was unmarked and the gentleman was friendly enough about it but ouch... double ouch... I was depressed for the rest of the weekend and it took a whole month before I could summon the strength to talk about it. Took a big hit to my guide point balance too. Moral of the story - dig faster?