Clam Shell

The hard clam (Mercenaria mercenaria), also known as a quahog (or quahaug), round clam, or hard-shell (or hard-shelled) clam, is an edible marine bivalve mollusk which is native to the eastern shores of North America, from Prince Edward Island to the Yucatán Peninsula. It is one of many unrelated edible bivalves which in the United States are frequently referred to simply as clams, as in the expression "clam digging". Older literature sources may use the systematic name Venus mercenaria; this species is indeed in the family Veneridae, the venus clams.

 

Confusingly, the "ocean quahog" is a different species, Arctica islandica, which, although superficially similar in shape, is in a different family of bivalves: it is rounder than the hard clam, usually has black periostracum, and there is no pallial sinus in the interior of the shell.

 

Hard clams are quite common throughout New England, north into Canada, and all down the Eastern seaboard of the United States to Florida, but are particularly abundant between Cape Cod and New Jersey, where seeding and harvesting them is an important commercial form of aquaculture; for example, the species is an important member of the suspension-feeding, benthic fauna of the lower Chesapeake Bay, while Rhode Island, situated right in the middle of "quahog country," has supplied a quarter of the U.S.'s total annual commercial quahog catch. The quahog is the official shellfish of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. The species has also been introduced and is farmed on the Pacific coast of North America and in Great Britain and continental Europe. It reproduces sexually by females and males shedding gametes into the water.

 

Long Beach Smithtown Long Island NY

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