How Do Geoducks Work?

small compared to its soft body. Its body length can be up to three feet or a meter long, and its shell is usually only about six to eight inches long or about fifteen to twenty centimeters, which means that its shell only covers about a fifth of the Gui duck's body. That body is composed of a meaty mantle that fits mostly inside the shell, and a long, thick

neck or siphon that protrudes out for one end. It has two openings at the tip of the siphon, so it looks sort of like an elephant's trunk or a worm with spouts. And look, I'm not trying to be rude or edgy here, I'm just being accurate. It looks really phallic. They're found in the northern part of North America's Pacific Coast, from Puget Sound up along British Columbia and into Alaska. Natural beds of them exist on many public beaches, but they're rarely visible except at very low tides.

I say beds because these clams make a home by burying themselves two to three feet down up to about a meter in the mud, sand or gravel at the ocean's floor. Oh once they're in, they're in for life. They use their siphon to poke up above the sea bed into the water. Again. The end has two openings. They're a filter feeder, so one is for drawing in gulps of water from which they glean oxygen and food a phytoplankton, and then they push out excess water and

inedible stuff through the other opening. They can retract into the sea floor to avoid predators, but again cannot fully retract into their shells. Gooby ducks reproduce through what's called broadcast spawning. Male clams release sperm into the ocean water, a prompting female clams to release eggs a couple million that ago if and or when they meet and fertilize in the water larvae form and begin swimming around, eating

algae and growing their shells. Over a few weeks, they'll get heavy enough that they sink to the seafloor and burrow down. As they get older and bigger, they burrow further down, and then they just eat and breathe and hang out for oh say a century or so. They grow pretty fast during their first few years of life, reaching about one and a half pounds in five years and their full size by fifteen years, though yes, they can live much longer than that, over one hundred and

fifty years. Every year they build a new layer of their shell from the inside, so you can see the size that the shell was in previous years by looking at the rings formed on the outside as each progressively larger layer has been added from underneath. The scientists count and measure the rings of their shells to assess climate

change over the decades. The oldest known Gui duck was one hundred and sixty eight years old, and the largest found in Discovery Bay, Washington, was eight point two pounds that's three point seven kilos. And guy ducks aren't just curious specimens, they're local delicacies. Indigenous peoples in the Pacific Northwest have harvested guy ducks for hundreds or perhaps thousands

of years and ate them fresh or smoked. Their harvest continues to this day, with Native American tribes holding treaty rights to half of the shellfish harvest in Washington State's Puget Sound to prevent commercial overfishing. The harvest of guy ducks is tightly monitored and regulated, and has been in various ways since the nineteen twenties. These shellfish are popular outside of the Pacific Northwest too. Most of the clams are shipped to China. They're a popular ingredient around the

lunar New Year. They typically go for about twenty to thirty dollars a pound wherever they're sold, though prices as high as three hundred dollars per clam are not unheard of in upscale restaurants around Hong Kong. The limited harvest and high prices that guy ducks fetch have led to the unlikely sounding crime of clam rustling and shellfish smuggling. In the early two thousands, wildlife authorities put away the head of a smuggling ring on the conviction of illegally

harvesting a million bucks worth of guy ducks. People are also giving gui duck farming a try, which is approximately one hundred percent less likely to end and arrest, but the technical and environmental details of which haven't entirely been ironed out yet. I have never tried guy duck myself, but from what I understand, they can be tender to crunchy, to chewy to meaty, depending on how they're prepared, with a delicate sweet, a fresh to slightly oceany flavor. I

get the idea that's like squid, but more flavorful. The siphon is the edible part of any clam, and you get a lot of it with a guy duck. They're eaten in all the ways that other molluscs are eaten, Simmered in soups and hot pots, sliced raw into sushi or sushimi or savice or crudo, a baked or stir fried or barbecued or breaded and deep fried or ground and deep fried in fretters, and beyond all of that. There is a school that has adopted the guy duck

as its mascot. Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington is known for its quirky curriculum structure, and focus on freedom of speech and the exchange of ideas. Like the Guy Duck. Evergreen says that they are quote accessible to all who are willing to dig deep. I'll leave you today with their college chant Go guy Ducks, go through the mud and the sand. Let's go siphon Hi, squirt it out,

swivel all about, let it all hang out. Today's episode is based on the article The Gooby Duck is the World's most not Safe for work mollusk on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Kristen Hall Geisler. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com, and it is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.