A Day With Derek

What a day. Clear. Warm. And complete with a chance to spend some time with Derek and to spend some of that time out on the oyster beds and clam flats doing what we like to do- harvest the sea. It was a family-hunter-gatherer kind of day.

We started by gathering and shucking some oysters on the outgoing tide, giving the clams a chance to run, ....make that DIG and hide.

Once we had the oysters shucked and on ice we headed back out after the clams. We found little necks, manilas, and cockles for the most part, although we found a few eastern soft shell clams as well. The tide was not enough of a drain to find any geoducks, so we put that on the target list for next year, and I'm already looking forward to that.

 

While we were picking clams, Derek came across a Northern Kelp Crab (the first I have ever seen other than on my ID chart) who had captured and was in the process of wolfing down a sand worm.

The area we were working adjacent to today is one of the coastal shellfish farming areas belonging to the Taylor Shellfish Farm we had visited the day before. Here, oyster shells are washed and "sterilized" before being seeded and returned to the beds where the oysters begin a next generation.

After our outing on the flats we stopped into a local cafe and grabbed a bite before heading back to our respective home bases. On the way home, Marilyn and I stopped along the roadside by Hood Canal and picked a mess of berries. What a day!