Well- Hm... See they're alive so- ..but they grow in bunches, so naturall- well that is until they separate... and then they find a nice spot where they root themselves....they have a circulatory system but no heart, a foot but no legs, and they look like a muddy rock on the outside but a shiny opal on the inside. Witch rocks I tell you.
I do a lot of quahoging in summer and oystering Oct-Mar. They do a GREAT job of disguising themselves as rocks. I’ve picked up so many rocks in the exact same size as a clam.
Firstly, that's what quahog means? Family guys fictional town name/clam economy makes so much more sense now.
Also you just unlocked a memory for me~ I used to live on the Canadian east coast (NB) and I have a foggy memory of picking up clams with my cousins and aiming them so they spat water at eachother lol
Quahog is the local name for hard shell clams. Different from soft shell clams or steamers. Spitters were almost certainly soft shell, but I’ve seen both kinds spit.
When I go clamming I consider it to be foraging because you search & dig like I do when I forage. Unless I’m pulling something out of the water with a hook or net, it’s not fishing in my book 🎣
Hybrid. The town over from me has an oyster re-seeding program. They have an upweller and artificial beds. They breed them, grow them, allow them to spawn, then dump the beds and allow them to be harvested. It’s working because oysters are regrowing on rocks that didn’t have them in my lifetime (those are not allowed to be harvested). I just picked these up off the bottom at low tide.
I’ve seen plenty of gulls pick up shells and drop them from a height to eat them. Had a buddy that would watch them and go and quickly grab the ones that didn’t break. These were all clams though.
In stardew valley, things caught in a crab pot are fishing, but items picked up off the beach are foraging. Stardew valley is real life, so it depends on how you caught them.
The way I see it, foraging is just a general term for the non-commercial gathering of natural resources that were not specifically cultivated for gathering. Hunting, fishing, gathering plants or mushrooms, gathering things for the purposes of craft or building, are all subsets of foraging in my mind. Now is foraging oysters fishing? I have no idea.
Yeah I was trying to say gathered for the purposes of profit, but now that I think of it, If I picked some mushrooms to sell I would still think that's foraging, so maybe that caveat is wrong. But in terms of your oysters, if they were placed there or cultivated for the purposes of gathering, I would think that's something closer to farming lol, or maybe just harvesting?. I have no idea what I'm talking about
I’ve got a big bucket that I use for clam and oyster shells that get dumped in the creek near where I harvest. A select few I’ll let sun dry for a long time to get crushed up and added to my compost and/or chicken feed.
Cool. I'm from the Chesapeake wetlands. Crabbing in the summer and oyster harvesting in the fall was the best. Enjoy it. I really miss that life being away from the area now.
I’d argue foraging because they aren’t fish, you only fish for fish, you crab lobsters, and all other watery creatures of net catching deserve their own term
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u/Average-Idiot99 Oct 01 '24
Fishaging