Keep clam and carry on...

Hiding in the sand, clams make a tasty reward for the forager but extracting them often requires some effort, 

- John Wright

This, the last of three articles that deal with the edible creatures caught on the seashore, is about those bivalves that live in the sand and the mud — the clams. The part of the seabed that is accessible on foot, the intertidal zone, is a difficult place for creatures to live due to the trials of wave action, so the calmer waters of estuary and bay are where most clams will be found. Collect them on an ebb tide from an exposed seabed or, on a calm day, in up to 1ft of water. Check permissions and landing sizes with the local authorities.

With a life spent in hiding, clams are not always easy to find, but the distinctive marks they make in the sand or mud will often give away their precise location. These marks are caused by the sucking and squirting of the siphons by which they feed. Clams are generally oriented like clasped hands in prayer, the siphon or siphons at the top.

The commonest clam — and certainly the best known — is the humble cockle. I first went cockling as a child living in Portsmouth. My father was the son of a Lowestoft herring skipper and had similarly learned the art of cockling in his youth. We found our cockles by randomly plunging our hands into the black and highly aromatic mud of Langstone Harbour to the east of Portsmouth.

Simple though it was, this strategy invariably resulted in a bucket full of cockles, all destined to spend a peaceful night cleaning themselves in bowls of salted water. My father’s method only works in mud or fine sand, so on coarser seabeds you must look closely for those markers.