In Search of the ‘Happy Bivalve’

It took two trips to haul everything down to the beach: buckets, burlap sacks, a rake, a gas lantern and – of course – a couple cold beers. This happened in the middle of the night, the perfect stillness interrupted by the sound of my jangling equipment.

Checking my watch, snow gently fell on the beach as I raised my lantern overhead to gauge the shoreline. If the tide was just starting to recede, I had six hours to work. This is when I’d pause to savor the moment. Always so serene.

I’m alone, bundled up against the cold weather, and the lantern illuminates snowflakes falling around me. There’s a full moon over Sequim Bay as I listen to the unhurried cadence of gently lapping waves, the sound mixing with the hiss of my lantern.

As a college student I worked a variety of summer jobs, but I also took advantage of the extended winter break to make money as a commercial clam digger. It was convenient for me because my parents lived on Sequim Bay. When I was a kid my dad – a master clam digger – taught me the necessary skills. He referred to clams as “the happy bivalve,” because he loved cooking steamer clams and was known for his clam chowder recipe.

During winter, the best clam digging tides are at night – typically late at night. And when you dig commercially, you want to get every clam you possibly can, digging down the beach as the tide goes out, and moving back up the beach as it rolls back in.

Commercial clamming is worlds apart from recreational digging. Recreational digging is fun. Summer clamming tides are during the day; you dig when it’s warm and sunny out. With a shovel in one hand and a bucket in the other (and your shellfish license in your back pocket), you hit the beach searching for clam holes – little dimples in the sand – and start digging. You dig in different spots on the beach, depending on where you see clam holes, until you’ve dug your 15-pound limit.

As a property owner, however, you can dig as many clams as you want: It’s your beach. And you don’t need a license, either. If you intend to sell the clams, you dig as long as the tide is out and cover as much of the beach as possible. The tool you use is a rake, and it’s hard work.

Commercial clammers don’t use shovels because they can easily break the clam’s shell and are too cumbersome to use quickly. Pitchforks are used as clamming rakes because of their slender, pointy tines. When the tines are bent into a 45-degree angle, and the wooden handle is sawed off to a three-foot length, you have a proper tool for commercial clam digging.

Professional clam diggers straddle the area they are clamming, bent at the waist and legs wide apart. Digging is done in furrows. Clams are four to six inches deep in the sand, so a clammer will begin by pushing the rake’s tines into the sand and uncover it with a pulling motion, dragging the sand into a furrow between their legs and behind them. Any clams that are uncovered are tossed into a bucket. If the beach is rich enough, a good handful of clams can be harvested with each pull of the rake. Then the clammer takes a step forward, moves the bucket, and sinks the rake into the next section of sand, pulling it back and uncovering more clams, at the same time filling in the previously dug space. This action is repeated over and over, until the clammer has created a long furrow running up the beach. Then they return to the water’s edge and begin another parallel furrow. Since the goal is to totally harvest the beach, furrows are dug parallel to one another and run from one side of the beach to the other, just like furrows in a farmer’s field.

When I begin digging, I “mark my territory” by pounding a stake at my starting point. I pound another at the top of the furrow. Over the course of a few days digging, with the tide rolling in and out, the furrows of sand flatten out, so the stakes are necessary to mark which part of the beach has already been dug.

The search for ‘the happy bivalve’ is backbreaking work as you dig – “grub” by definition – in a bent-over posture for six hours. Your back will remind you about it the next day.

On any given night, I dug as long as the tide allowed, and with the clock ticking, I had to work efficiently. Knowing the different types of clams, I would identify and sort them while digging.

I sold the clams to a distributor in Discovery Bay, who paid for them by the pound and freighted them to restaurants. The distributor bought steamer clams (also known as “little necks”), as well as manila clams. While digging, I would sort out the varnish clams, horse clams, and butter clams from the “keepers” he was willing to buy. The other clams I pushed back into the sand.

It was solitary work, but every now and then I’d look up from my digging and see a light gradually making its way down to the beach. I’d stop, slowly stand and straighten my back, then smile knowing I got to take a break and have a cold beer with my dad.

He would get a driftwood fire going and we’d sip our beer sitting on a log. He was good company. I don’t remember us saying a whole lot, but I felt close to him and knew he understood the hard work involved. I got the impression my dad enjoyed the solitude of the nighttime winter beach as much as I did.

Back to work, I’d continue digging until my bucket was full. I’d dump the clams into a burlap sack and start filling the bucket again. At the end of the night, I tied up the sacks with rope that had a float attached, and leave them on the beach for the incoming tide to cover. Once a week, I’d row our little dinghy out to the float in the daytime, haul up the sacks and load them into my dad’s pick-up, then drive them to the distributor.

Digging clams commercially during wintertime is silent work, tiring work, lonely work. But there’s also a beauty connected with physical labor when a job is done well. The work might be unknown and unappreciated, but even manual labor can engender a sense of self-respect, especially when unloading burlap sack after burlap sack – hundreds of pounds of clams – onto the distributor’s scale and calculating your pay.

The working environment is uniquely beautiful. That’s the part that stayed with me after my back returned to normal and the clams were being served in a restaurant somewhere.

Clam digging on a snowy beach in the middle of the night and a beer with my dad: That’s my cherished winter memory.   X