On Saturday, Nate and I headed to the coast with 4 other guys in Nate's lab to try our luck at some west-coast clamming. The extra-low tide created good conditions to go for razor clams on the beach. When we reached the parking lot, at 5:40am, we were surprised to find it already full of cars and people donning their boots and waders. We got ready and headed down to the beach with our shovels, where the veteran razor-clammer among us, Jason, told us his tips on finding these fast-moving bivalves in the sand flats and surf. You're basically looking for either a sand squirt or slight water movement, to indicate that a clam below the surface is pumping its siphon. Then you have to dig quickly into the sand, on the surf-side of where you saw the movement, then drop down to your knees and start digging even deeper with your hands. Razor clams are fast and they can scurry deeper and out of reach if you're not quick enough. Plus, their name is indicative of their razor-sharp shells, which can cut your fingers up pretty badly if you're not careful.
After Jason got one or two, we all spread out and started looking for our own clams. I was successful on my first digging attempt and was foolish enough to figure that I'd have my limit in no time. The daily limit for razor clams is 15/person and we all had hopes of reaching our limit that morning, but it ended up being a fairly slow day. Jason got 10, I got 2, a couple of other guys found 1 apiece, and we all decided that Nate must have used up his fishing mo-jo on steelhead, because he didn't get any....But, it was apparently a fairly slow morning for most folks out there (we were among hundreds on the beach). 
Next, we headed over to the estuarine mudflats behind the Hatfield Marine Lab to try our luck at 'gapers' (horseneck clams) and cockles, and had better luck with those. Horseneck clams have a neck that can extend nearly a meter long from where they're situated down in the muck, up to the surface of the substrate. To find them, you have to stick your finger in a hole and see if you can feel the neck retreating down, then dig down to the clam. But luckily, these guys don't move much at all, so it's mostly just a game of patience and determination to dig down to them. I kept getting stuck in the muck and nearly toppling over in my boots, so I quickly abandoned the gaper-search for the easier hunt for cockles, which can be found right on the surface of the mudflat, though your odds of finding one that is alive and tight-shelled are about 1 in 100. Still, Nate got a few gapers and we both found some cockles and a few other clam species, too, to take home. The photo above shows the post-docs (Nate and our friend Valerio, Nate's office-mate, an Italian who is over here for a short-term post doc in Lorenzo's lab).
We ended our trip to the coast with a tasty fish 'n chips lunch at a funky/ramshackle looking place that ended up being a great mom-and-pop type eatery, savoring our deep fried sea bass (rockfish) and french fries after a cold and mucky morning on the flats. And for dinner that night, Nate and I made a simple dish of clams, sauteed in olive oil, garlic, red pepper flakes over spaghetti, with our first-of-the year garden-grown salad greens.
