Hunt for Geoduck

We went to the beach for the extremely low tide last Wednesday. It was a -4.3 tide in the South Sound near Gig Harbor and was plently low to hunt the desired geo-duck.

For those of you unfamiliar with what a geoduck is here is the description:

The geoduck (pronounced "gooey duck"), Panopea abrupta, is a species of large saltwater clam, a marine bivalve mollusk. The shell of this clam is large, about 15 to over 20 cm in length (about 7 to 9 inches), but the long siphons make the clam itself much longer; the "neck" or siphons alone can be one meter in length. Native to the Pacific Coast of the United States and Canada (primarily Washington, British Columbia, and Southeast Alaska), it is the largest burrowing clam in the world, weighing in at an average of one to three pounds (0.5 - 1.5 kg) at maturity, but specimens weighing over 15 pounds (7.5 kg) and as much as 2 meters (6 ft) in length are not unheard of. It has a life expectancy of about 146 years, with the oldest recorded at over 160 years.

Well - Lance dug about 7 of them. We are only keeping one for ourselves, the rest go to Lance's Mom.

We sure had fun on the beach. It was actually nice that day (not raining and not bitterly cold for June!) and Alex was all set in his beach shoes, swim shorts, UV shirt, hat and jacket. As you can see below - he was having quite fun in the water and playing with the sand.

He loved picking up the sand and throwing it or giving it to me in my hand. Taking it back and throwing it!

He sure looks cute walking around the beach, too.

And then the finale' - Alex and his geoduck! What a duck it is! Actually, he wasn't as thrilled as we were about his first goeduck hunt (as you can tell!), but we did have to snap a few photos just to be able to show him when he's all grown up.

Not long after this picture was taken - he was done.

DONE.

I think he was frozen in one place becuase he was so cold - he didn't even cry or get fussy - he just was still and for those of you who know him - you know how odd this is. I had to take him back up to the car and change all his clothes and it took about 1 hour to get him back to his normal moving self again. We sat on the beach on the warm rocks and played there while Daddy dug the other 6 ducks.