REPRODUCTIONS

SEVERAL MONTHS AGO, A LADY E-MAILED ME a very odd request, even for a fish taxidermist. She was dying to know if I could make a trophy for her out of a clam. Attached to the e-mail was a photo of the particular one she had in mind. While I was thinking of chowder, a scan of something very alien began filling my computer screen. I am not certain if I gasped, giggled, or said something unprintable upon first seeing this "thing." Nobody could be presented with one of these mollusks without some type of jaw-dropping response, ranging from abject revulsion to almost devout reverence.

Members of the Nisqually tribe named this impressive clam "gwe-duk," which means something like "deep digger." The correct spelling "geoduck" is pronounced "gooey-duck." In the Washington state area near Puget sound, this creature represents the largest biomass of all creatures larger than plankton. In other words, if you took all the salmon, seals, whales, etc., geoduck clams would outweigh the entire bunch. Estimates of the population in Washington run as high as 400 million, and these represent just the adults over two pounds in weight. Perhaps I should say teenagers. Really big bruisers can tip the scales at close to 20 pounds!

Like most clams, geoducks feed by filtering microscopic plankton and algae from the water. Their potential to reproduce is staggering. A female can produce 50 million eggs per year, and remains fertile for up to 100 years. That is 5 billion eggs in a lifetime! Some of the oldest have been judged to be close to 150 years in age, based on ring growth in their shells.

At four years of age, the two-pound clams can be...

...Continued in the Winter 2002 Issue of Breakthrough.

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