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| William Lackner, photographed by the OCT's Emily Leiper, on the sand at Siletz Bay. |
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Keeping rising food costs at bay
Clamming & Mussel Harvesting: A recession-ready
way to get out, have fun and eat for free!
By Niki Price
Oregon Coast Today
When times are hard, people often must forego the exotic and expensive, and rely instead upon simple pleasures. Right now, across the country, Americans are trading brand names for generics, café lattes for Folgers, and nights on the town for a potluck and Monopoly.
Here on the Oregon coast, however, our simple pleasure is also an international luxury. Because we’re so close to the source, we can enjoy fresh seafood at prices that make the rest of the penny-pinching country drool. Oysters for $7 a dozen? Dungeness crab for $7 a pound?
With a little extra work, however, seafood lovers can get an even better price: a mussel beard’s shy of free. Once you purchase your annual shellfish license from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife ($6.50 a year for residents, $16.50 for non-residents) you can harvest bay clams and mussels to your heart’s content or the daily limit, whichever comes first.
You’ll need a few simple tools, a low tide and a phone number: the ODFW’s shellfish safety hotline (800-448-2474). Real pros would add a pair of good boots and waterproof gloves, but as the photos here demonstrate, neither are strictly required. When they go digging for purple varnish clams on Siletz Bay, sisters Louis and Jaders Summerton-Roe carry net bags, skinny shovels and a little confidence. Taught by their grandfather, Walt Summerton, these 15-year-old twins are often dig their limit (36) in less than 15 minutes.
Even in the wintertime, they often dig in shorts and T-shirts, sometimes without shoes or gloves. That’s not an outfit that their grandfather, or their clam-digging friend Bill Lackner, would suggest for the general public.
As in most outdoor activities on the coast, layering is the key. To stay warm on the flats, Bill wears waterproof socks underneath extra-large tennis shoes, and surgical gloves underneath his regular gloves. But no matter what you’re wearing, digging clams is messy, sandy work.
“You can use a pump or a shovel, but it just doesn’t work as well as your hands,” said Jaders. “You just have to be willing to get dirty and cold. But it’s worth it.”
Once they get their clams home, Walt will place the 2 to 3 inch clams in a pot with about 2 inches of boiling water. This technique, called blanching, opens the shells within a few minutes without cooking the clams through. He removes the clam bodies to a colander and uses cold water to remove as much sand as he can.
While the oil is heating in the Presto Fry Daddy, Walt dips the clam meat in beaten eggs, then in seasoned flour. He fries them up, dries them on a paper towel and places them by his easy chair.
“I eat them like popcorn while I’m watching TV,” Walt said with a dreamy smile. “You get a little sand once in a while, but they’re the next best thing to steamer clams, and you can get them anytime.”
If it’s so easy, why doesn’t everybody do it? In a word, hassle. You must be prepared to properly store, wash, clean and prepare these highly perishable critters, within 24 hours of harvest. You’ll need to be tolerant of a little grit in your sink, and ghostly fish odors in your trunk. When you buy it from the market, someone else does the digging and cleaning for you. Harvest your own dinner, and you can save more than money.
“It’s a great sport that can really build confidence, especially for kids. They can dig the clams and bring them home, and when you sit down with the family to eat, they can enjoy the fruits of their own labor,” Bill said.
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| Louis Summerton-Roe shows off her catch at Siletz Bay on Feb. 28, 2009. |
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Mussels
Perhaps you prefer steamed mussels to fried clams? You’re in luck, because the basalt outcroppings off the Oregon coast are home to the tasty California mussel. With a small hand tool or even just a pair of heavy gloves, you can harvest your fill of these intertidal bivalves within a few minutes.
Thrown into a pasta sauce, sautéed with a bit of butter and white wine, or steamed plain, the mussel can be every bit as good as its more popular shellfish cousins, with a great deal less effort.
Here’s how to do it:
1. Get legal
Purchase a shellfish license from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, available at most sporting goods and grocery stores on the coast. The cost for an annual license is $6.50 for residents, $16.50 for non-residents. Non-residents can also get a three-day license for $9. The limit is 72 mussels of any size per person, per day. [Learn more about licenses.]
2. Find your hunting grounds
Oregon’s edible mussels, mostly Mytilus edulis and some Mytilus Californianus, adhere themselves to rocky outcroppings of basalt, which dot the beaches through the central coast, and become more common as you head southward toward California. Designated marine garden areas at Cape Kiwanda, Boiler Bay, Otter Rock, Yaquina Head and Yachats are off limits, but rocks to the north and south of these areas are usually productive. In Lincoln City, intertidal zones in the Nelscott neighborhood and north Roads End have good reputations; further south, try Seal Rock or the beach south of the Yachats Marine Garden.
3. Call the hotline
From time to time, the mussels’ watery food source carries bacteria that can be paralytic or even fatal to humans who ingest these toxins along with shellfish. The state tests regularly for these elements and closes areas where the levels are too high. Curious about the safety of your intended beach? Call the shellfish hotline, 800-448-2474 or 503-986-4728.
4. Find a low tide
Consult a tide table that has been adjusted for the central coast (you can find these wherever you buy your license, at restaurants and hotels, or right here. Fortunately, the tide doesn’t have to be extremely low for the mussel beds to be exposed. Plan to head out at least an hour before the official low, and always be wary of the ocean and the time.
5. Assemble your tools
Mussel hunters have been known to use knives, crowbars, old scissors or gardening hand tools. Look for something that is 4 to 5 inches long and somewhat sharp at the end, which can be wedged between mussels to sever the strong threads that attach them to the rock. Heavy gloves are recommended, because the mussel shells (and the barnacles that live alongside them) are sharp. You’ll also need a container to keep them in, but it doesn’t need to hold water. For best results, wear old, weather-appropriate clothing and shoes that completely cover and protect your feet. Old tennis shoes good, sandals and flip flops bad.
6. Start picking
There are no state restrictions on the legal size for harvestable mussels. Most chefs believe that adult mussels, between 2 and 4 inches long, are the tastiest.
7. Homeward bound
Like other shellfish, fresh mussels are a perishable product that should be eaten right away. When you get them to the kitchen, clean them with cold running water and a stiff brush, removing as much sand and grit as you can. Discard any with open shells or excessive sand. The byssus, a clump of black, threadlike material that held the shell to the rock, can be removed before cooking, or more easily, afterwards.
8. On the plate
Mussels are cultivated and prized all over the world, so the recipe possibilities are endless, from baked to bisque, chowder to salad. They can be steamed and served with garlic butter, or tossed with pasta and sauce.
Bay clams
The bays of the central coast are home to several types of clam, including cockles, littleneck, butter and soft-shell. Tillamook and Yaquina bays are famous for their beds, but locals swear by Netarts and Alsea, too.
Those native clams inhabit muddy zones exposed in daylight minus tides, which arrive at the end of March and occur every two to three weeks through the summer. Until then, diggers like Bill Lackner often pursue the purple varnish clam, a non-native species that inhabits the sand substrate far above the native clams. Productive beds are exposed in any low tide that’s is +3 feet or less, in areas like Sand Lake, Netarts and Siletz.
Bill has tried every clam variety and dig method there is, in every location he can find on Oregon’s coast. The author of two books on the subject, “Oregon’s Razor Clams” and “Oregon’s Bay Clams,” he conducts clinics, workshops and field trips throughout the year. He discovered the joys of purple varnish clams about 10 years ago.
“They’re so easy to dig and they’re easy to clean. And they’re delicious when they’re fried,” he said. “They’re a wonderful way to introduce people to our bay clams. Then you can graduate to cockles, razor clams, whatever you like.”
Ready to dig? Here are the basics.
1. Find the beds
Using a book or a personal recommendation (ask at sporting goods stores, or at local marinas), find the basic location of the purple varnish clam beds. Head out at any low tide that is +3 feet or less.
2. Look for shows
Scan the sand for a cluster of small, keyhole-shaped “shows” in the sand, each hole about 1/8 of an inch across. If you find five or more, that’s a likely spot. Another good sign is the presence of small flakes of shell near the shows.
3. Start digging
Dig a hole between 6 inches and 10 inches deep. Carefully dig away layers of sand until you encounter clams, then enlarge the hole. It’s common to find more than 10 from a single hole (the limit per person is the first 36 taken). Clams 2 inches in diameter, or wider, offer the best meat yield.
4. Clean’em up
Purge the clams of sand and other particles by placing them in a solution of 1½ cups of rock salt to every four gallons of fresh water. Adding two crushed cloves of garlic, Bill said, will also help the clams purge themselves of unwanted grit. Let them filter in the bucket for 24 hours, turning occasionally. Or, use Walt Summerton’s method outlined above: blanch, remove, then gently massage the meats.
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