Shellfish / Bay Clam
Shellfish: Bay Clam
Clinocardium nuttallii
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Open
Year-round
No pronounced peak. Shallow bay clam essentially flat through the year, at most a mild cold-months firming and slight softening around summer spawn.
signal · Bay water temp, salinity. (assumed)
Plate No. 037 · Finley & Bohlman
Abundant, low impact
Shallow and plentiful, one of the lowest-impact digs there is. Rake gently and refill.
The read
Heart-shaped, ridged; shallow in the flats. Often the easiest bay dig.
The event: A minus tide; cockles sit shallow, an easy rake.
Field notes
The easy one: barely under the surface, often just a dimple or the shell edge showing. Rake or hand-dig the top few inches of the flat on a minus tide; a good bar gives up a limit fast.
Fat, round, ridged heart of a shell, shut tight and heavy for its size. Cockles sit shallow in sand, so they carry grit. A long purge in clean seawater matters more here than for most. Meat is firm and a little chewy, sweetest in the cold months. Light, gaping shells are dead.
Unmistakable: the fat heart shape and strong radiating ribs. No other bay clam is so round and ridged.
Shellfish license (12+). Part of the 20-clam daily bay aggregate.
Confirm the bay is open before you dig.
Purge overnight in salt water to shed grit, then steam open and eat from the shell, or chop for chowder.
Where to find it
What we watch: live feeds
What informs Cockle Clam in particular. The shared feeds it reads (tides, weather, water temp) are the live feeds above.
ODA shellfish closures: ArcGIS FeatureServer · Machine-readable open/closed status for clams & mussels by coast zone, as polygons with a coded Status field.
Event (~2×/mo) · JSON, no key. ESRI IDs rotate; anchor on dashboard item metadata, not raw URL.
NOAA CO-OPS Tides & Currents API · Tides, minus-tide clamming windows, Yaquina water temp. Stations: Yaquina 9435380, Garibaldi 9437540, Netarts 9437262, Nehalem 9437908.
6-min obs; preds years ahead · No key. Filter lows < 0.0 ft for minus tides. Water-temp product discontinued after 2024 at many stations.