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January 27, 2005 - Finding frigid treasureThe Suffolk Times • January 27, 2005 fr Taping a winter WA on the beach IT SEEMS ODD TO BE talking abod beachcombing when it's 10 degrees outside with a biting wind out of the northwest. Nevertheless, I have a tale to tell about an unusual clam found on one of our beaches here on the East End. F'OC U S Benja called and said that O N he and his girl- friend had been NATURE beachcombing by Paul and found this Stoutenburgh odd but beauti- ful clam, which he proceeded to describe to me. Like so many de- scriptions over the telephone, it was pretty hard to decipher just what Benja had seen. So I asked him to photograph it and e-mail the photo to us so we could take a better look at it. Before I could get back to him, Benja had looked it up in a shell guide and thought that what he had found was a Pandora clam. This was quite a find, for it's considered by many to be rare. The remarkable thing about this clam is how unbelievably thin it is. Both halves appear almost as one thin piece. It's hard to imagine how anything can live inside a shell so thin. The clam itself is not big, maybe an inch to an inch- and -a -half in length. Its color is whitish -gray. Once it's dis- lodged from its natural habitat and tumbled in the surf of a beach, the outer coating of whitish -gray is erod- a F indin igid treasure mmm� r,• � ypr ri1�'S' Qom,. • + • � "���''�� ++ ' +� _ f ti �t shell eneah The inside of the she the same pearly color. That's why it's so unusually beautiful. It's a most at- tractive and pleasing find. There ate three species of this Pan- dora clam. The one we find on our beaches is the Goulds Pandora. You can't appreciate how thin the shell of this clam is until you have it in your hand. It's just amazing to think any- thing can function in there. Our books say it's found in bays and never on ocean beaches. It's quite common up 1 Times/Revi— photo by Benja in the Cape Cod area. In all the time I've roamed our beaches, I've never come across one. So, to me, it's a rar find. The first time I heard of anyone finding even a single Pandora shell was years ago when one of the stu- dents in my daughter's science class picked one up on a field trip. At that time no one knew much about this unusual clam. Interestingly, it was in the very same area that Benja and his girlfriend found their specimen incredibly thin c am. o 00 or this last week. curious little clam the next time you What was so go beachcombing, whether it's in the special about winter or summer. Keep your eye ou Benja's find was for Pandora. that it was a live You know a beach walk now is not specimen and such a bad idea if you can find a spot you were able to out of the wind. Knowing our win - see just how the ter winds are from the north — that upper and lower means they're coming off the Sound parts of the shell — we won't do our beachcombing made u that there. Let's find a more protected beach along the bays between River- head and Orient where we can walk .._ _. low T' _'.�a��! —_ art'-- i^��.++ _ i As L Times/Review photo by Barbaraellen Koch There's still plenty to see on our local beaches when temperatures are below freezing. Below left: a close -up view of shells in the sand. Below right: a Goulds Pandora, which some would call a mystery clam. The most characteristic feature of this small, thin clam is its beautiful pearly coloring. _ - -- m comfort, out of the wma. Let's see what shells we can find on your favorite beach. One of the most common is the boat shell, or what some call the slipper shell. We usually find them attached to stones — not one, but two or three or four or five, one on top of the other. They call them boat shells because when they're empty, if you're very care- ful and lay one on the water ever so gently, it will float like a little boat. But the best part about the boat shell, also known as "quarter- deck," is that the creature that live! in it is edible. If you're interested in tasting some of nature's best, try these, fresh at the water's edge. Pry its shell open with your a and slurp it down as you would a clam on the half shell. I think you'll find it quite tasty. Another common shell you'll find on our beaches is the colorful jingle shell. Remember, this is the one that, when you were a kid, you'd poke a hole in the thin shell with a nail and collect the colorful yellow and orange shells on a piece of string to take home as one of your trophies of the day.'Uhey. make great mobiles as well. trmg a few lines of them and let the wind play at will on their crisp, colorful shapes. We hardly ever see the delicate bottom half of a jingle shell. It's noth- ing but a very thin, flat, white disk, so fragile that it's easily eroded. Like the boat shell and all bivalves, they're filter feeders, which means they suck the water in, take the nutrients out and pass the clean water on. They're the good guys, cleaning our water 24 hours a day. You'll also occasionally find mussel shells. These are the ribbed mussels usually found on our creek banks. The} usually aren't considered edible; never. theless, I know people who have eaten them and they claim they're very good The ones we get served in restaurants are the blue mussels. You'll find them out toward the ends of Orient and Montauk points. They're truly edible and delicious. Serve me a plate of mus- sels and I'll ask for nothing more. If you're fortunate you might come across the beautiful ribbed angel -wing shell. These angel wings are found where there's bog for them to bore into, and occasionally they get washed out. As time passes, they find their way to our beaches. The angel wing is a lovely white shell. With a little imagina- tion, they do look like an angel's wing. And then there's the razor clam. Its name comes from the long, narrow shape of the shell, which resembles an old straight razor, the one your grand- father used to use. They, too, are good j eating. There are so many wonderful things around us. It's a shame more people don't take advantage of them. Then, of course, there's the soft clan shell. Sorry to say, the soft clam today is hard to find. Years ago you could get a mess in no time in any of our creeks. I remember as a kid going to one of the sandbars in our creeks with my dad. He had a special soft -clam rake. First he'd dig a hole about a foot wide with his rake. Then he let the sides cave in, all the time bailing out the water and sand. Then all he had to do was pick the clams off the sides as the banks caved in. Back home, Mom would steam them and we'd pick out the meat and dip it in butter. Man, was that good eating.! Of all the clams there are, people are probably most familiar with the quahog or the hard clam. The little ones are eaten raw on the half shell or steamed and dipped in butter; the bigger ones go into making chowder, fritters or baked clams. The oysters that once lined our creek edges are long gone from our bays and creeks. The oyster shells you might find are just shadows of what used to be. Once in a while you'll find one or two, but since they're so scarce, it's best to leave them in hopes they might just help to bring them back. Besides the hard clam, scallops rank next in recognition, but they, too, are hard to come by. Luckily, our town, along with Cornell Marine Center at Cedar Beach, has a seed program that in the future will help bring back one of our most cherished resources.