April 12, 2013 — Pacific razor clams are sweet and meaty, a seasonal delicacy that finds its place in high-end restaurants in Seattle and Portland, Ore., each two and a half to three hours away. They are also on the dinner plates of any recreational digger willing to buy a license and do some physical work in conditions that are sometimes cold and invariably wet. The season runs from October to May, with dates selected by the state based on clam stocks and when the low tides are right.
When the first clammers hit the beach here on Friday around 6 a.m., two and a half hours before low tide — the key moment to strike — the temperature was in the mid-30s. Pretty nice, all in all. Not raining.
“I’ve been out here when it’s rain and sleet mixed,” said Mary Wyman, who came down from Whidbey Island, north of Seattle. Like most diggers, Ms. Wyman was using a clam gun — essentially a metal tube that, when shoved into the beach, pulls up a column of sand with a clam enclosed, if it has been aimed right.
The relationship of humans and razor clams goes back thousands of years around here. The Indian tribes that dominated this part of the coast lived well, and also traded well with inland Indians who knew a good thing when they tasted it.
European settlement in the 1800s took clamming to an industrial scale (though with a brief turn back to subsistence during the Great Depression of the 1930s when squatters lived on the beach in driftwood shacks, clamming to get by.)
Read the full story at the New York Times