Quahog clam found off Florida coast believed to be 214 years old

www.upi.com...

This surprised me as I never thought a clam could live anywhere near this long. Turns out the oldest we have found is over 500 frakking years old! Who knew? I think there's a typo, as the clam was born the same year as Abraham Lincoln it should be Abra Clam Lincoln.

A 2.6-pound quahog claim that made a rare visit to the Florida coast is believed by researchers to be 214 years old. Blaine Parker said he was collecting shellfish to make chowder at Alligator Point, on St. James Island in Franklin County when he found the gigantic quahog clam, an Atlantic species found most often north of North Carolina.

"We were just going to eat it, but we thought about it a while and figured it was probably pretty special. So, we didn't want to kill it," Parker told the Tallahassee Democrat.

Parker took the clam to the Gulf Specimen Marine Lab in Panacea, where researchers confirmed it was much larger than the average quahog, which typically weigh up to half a pound and measure up to 4.3 inches in length. Parker's clam was measured at 6 inches long.

Researchers said the alternating bands of light on the clam's shell indicate it was born in 1809, the same year Abraham Lincoln was born. Parker dubbed his find Aber-Clam Lincoln.

Lab officials said Lincoln is believed to be the fourth-oldest clam on record. The oldest, a quahog named Ming, was discovered off the coast of Iceland in 2007 and was determined to be 507 years old.

a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

That's a whole world in a shell. Glad it was returned to carry on doing it's thing.

Thanks for sharing.

Interesting. I did not know that.

Ming the Clam

However, the 507-year-old ocean quahog (Arctica islandica) met his untimely death when the scientists who studied him accidentally killed him.

all of the clams were killed shortly after they were removed from the ocean. The clams were frozen on board the ship and taken back to the U.K.

 

The Discovery Of Ming The Clam

Ming the clam was first discovered in Iceland in 2006 by a group of researchers from Bangor University in the United Kingdom. Ming, along with 200 other ocean quahogs, were dredged up from the bottom of an Icelandic shelf and taken back to the Bangor labs for study as part of a larger research project on climate change.

According to National Geographic, all of the clams were killed shortly after they were removed from the ocean. The clams were frozen on board the ship and taken back to the U.K.

 

Ocean quahogs add a new ring to their shell each year.

507 years and someone comes along from the UK and kills them.

No amount of simmering is gonna make that clam chowda be anything but pencil eraser potato soup

a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

That's such a big clam!! I wish they put something like a quarter next to it to get a better idea of its size.

when I was 5 my family drove to Florida for vacation. It was a wonderful place of beautiful colors, alligator and snake farms, and exotica. When we were in Miami I found this gigantic clam. I wanted to take it home as a pet which I wasn't allowed to do. I threw a fit which my father recorded. Whenever we watched family movies they would laugh hysterically at that part.
I mourn its passing.

Not to be confused with The Drunken Clam in Quohog.

Giggity!



....ill see myself out.

double post.

a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

Hmmm....I thought that that chowder tasted like past its' best before date....

Yeah…….No

This is, well, BS.
All of it.

Do carry on…..



PS. Not SpanishArcher.
Just the so-called, facts……
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

a reply to: PiratesCut

I'm confused. What is BS? The clams? The age of the clams? That the clam was found off of Florida? The age of the oldest clam found? All of the above and the whole story is fabricated by United Press International ?

I'll not be able to sleep tonight if I don't know

a reply to: Blaine91555

Hey Blaine.

The article is hyped.
First of all you can see the shell of the so-called Florida Quahog has a deformation.
In this case it’s clear it’s not impact damage.
The Quahog had some external weight pressing on the shell that caused irregular growth, (very, very common!), which also slowed it’s growth.
Because of the damage there is no real way of knowing it’s true age.
All bets are off.

BTW, I dug Quahogs for some time as a kid from an 18 foot flat bottom skiff, an anchor with 200 feet of line, a 24 inch Bull Rake, with up to 40 feet of pole depending on water depth.
Ok, “Quahog”, the word.
Quahog is a local Indian name for this hard shell clam.
It is pronounced KWA HOG, using a long O in hog so it sounds similar to the word, hold. Remove the L and replace the D with a G.
………”kwa hOg”………

Hard shell clams, of which there are many varieties are believed by many to be one of the longest known lived of animals on Earth. NOAA says 40 years, fishermen however, say different.
Long before this so-called NEWS came out it was well known many Clams possibly live hundreds of years given the right conditions.
Research Giant Clams. To me these look like massive Scallops but they don’t swim (as far as I know).
They do open and close their massive shells quickly to cycle water so I imagine the abductor muscle, the part of the Scallop we eat, must be huge….. Ponder that. 😳

When I dug Quahogs years ago we were allowed to harvest 3 bushel baskets a day.
1 1/2 bushel of Little Necks. (small)
1/2 bushel of mixed Cherry Stones. (medium)
1 bushel of soup stones. (large)

They would be found in different types of bottom the best having clay layers.
The Little Necks would be closer to the surface and size and age would increase the deeper I dug.
I assure you, I, and every other Quahog digger in towne dug clams a hundred years (at least) old on a regular basis.

There are many areas here, everywhere with heavy pollution so digging them is off limits.
The State contracts boats that tow dredges that pump high pressure sea water to nozzles on the cutting bar to loosen the mud making it easy to scoop them up.
Then they are weighed, sorted, bagged, tagged and transplanted to other “clean” areas where they are given time to flush out pollutants etc.
To me there is one problem with this, The Forever Heavy Metals.
These kind of clams are pretty much known to live in cooler temperate to cold, (arctic) waters.
As far as being found as far South as Florida?
For me the jury is out on that.
Florida may have a different species of Hard Shell Clam, or as The Wampanoag Indians here call them “Quahogs”.

Well, I hope this, off the top of my head, info may answer a few of your questions. The rest of the info is out there, somewhere.



Cheers

da pirate 😎



PS. Ocean Quahogs are known locally as Sea Clams, a different species and it’s BIG bussiness!

www.nationalfisherman.com...

Huge ocean storm blows Sea Clams ashore.

www.seacoastonline.com...

General info

en.m.wikipedia.org...

Fun Stuff

capecodfishermen.org...








.

a reply to: TheSpanishArcher


The Florida Quahog story is just pure hype of already known facts, click bait type stuff.
Why was the shells deformity not mentioned?
LOL, IMO, because they had no clue….

Maybe, because it’s such a well known constant here in these parts I re-acted, perhaps, too strongly.

Why hype it? The story is fascinating without it!


Great OP though….

Thanks Archer!!!

a reply to: PiratesCut

OK, thanks.

More than I thought I'd ever need to know about them, but interesting all the same.

When it comes down to telling how old a clam is, I would tend to believe a scientist at the Gulf Specimen Marine Lab in Panacea, before a fisherman story.

These people did the right thing by consulting professionals.

Growth rings on quahogs cannot be altered in number, due to the shell being damaged during its life. Any damage taking out the hinge area would kill the creature instantly.

a reply to: charlyv

Try counting as many rings as you can on that deformed shell.
Can you count over 200 rings without counting both dark and light rings?
It does not work that way.
And, who said anything about the hinge?
Not me.

Here’s a fun fact though… Quahogs invented a Super Ball type of natural rubber Eons before humans did.
The black spring material they have that holds the two shells together bounces around like ricochet rabbit (remember him) while it’s still wet. After it dries out
(very quickly) it turns into a glass like substance that easily shatters.

I have mad respect for marine research divisions such as the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute!
You’d probably be surprised how often they come to fishermen for info on the ocean life along our coasts.
I’ve had them aboard many times. Most of us have.
It’s fun to watch “the kids” or students measuring and counting shellfish by the tens of thousands.
Shellfish and every other type of sea life the gear brings aboard.
Old Man Trip who lived next door to me was a scientist at Woods Hole. I brought him a lot of Quahogs, Oysters, and Bay Scallops back then.
We spent many hours talking on his front porch about things like, well, Quahogs for one.
I’ll make it simple. The science, or knowledge about clams and where exactly different species exist or how long they live is far from settled. Too many variables in nature.
Simply put….That. Was. My. Point
Fishermen, MYSELF included, know far, far from everything about any sea life.
The fact that the researchers come to us on a regular basis is telling though.
Some years I brought Woods Hole some diseased Sea Scallops from the Sou’east part of Georges Banks.
They had red and yellow growths or tumors in the abductor muscles and the meats were grey and smelled terrible. Something we’d not seen before.
Per request we brought bushels beyond count to them over a couple of years.
The same thing happened with Ocean Quahogs from the same area.
Anyway, perhaps I could have worded things better to start with.
Hey, I’m just a lowly fisherman after all.

Let me say this, I sincerely thank you for the reply and your honest opinion!
What more could one hope for after all…..
If I upset anyone it was not my intention, I try to educate as well as entertain folks about the sea.
Seems I have been failing as of late. 🤔
Life huh……

Cheers charlyv!

I’m out.
Time for a break me-thinks…..








.

a reply to: Blaine91555

My pleasure!
I do try to please….
Making $70.00 a day digging Quahogs was big money for a young teen back in 1972, 73 and 74. I actually paid the house bills for Mom over the course of two years doing it.
Everything about the sea captivated me and I read and devoured any and all information I could find about ocean life in general.

Thanks for replying.
I enjoyed the sense of curiosity and interest in you while reading your replies!

Cheers Blaine!

Bloody hell. Start a seemingly random thread and now have learned more about clams in the last few minutes than I ever thought I would.

Kudos, PirateCut. Seems obvious you aren't blowing smoke so now I do wonder if.....but i don't know squat in reality of what goes on in the ocean. I live in Las Vegas, FFS. Your contributions have enlightened me but I'm still in the dark so if you dispute the article, then I defer.

We barely have Lake Mead anymore so the ocean is a far cry from any area of expertise I have.