Archive for the 'Mollusks' Category
These days – Absolutely! In past decades it was not uncommon to substitute succulent scallops with shark or the wings of a sting ray. The scallop industry has been thriving since 1970’s and this has not been the norm. How can you tell? Real scallops will break apart very easily when separated, also, the meat [...]
Well, it is important to mention that not all mussels are found on pilings. Mussels attach themselves to any type of hard substrate in the intertidal regions, including pilings. On pilings the top most mussels indicate the high tide line.
To go off on a random tangent, here is a yummy mussel recipe: http://allrecipes.com/HowTo/Cooking-Mussels/Detail.aspx
Do you have [...]
Great question since they both look alike for the most part…both grow in a coiled shaped shell and both have one main muscle that is used as a foot.
Here it is…Whelks are carnivores and conchs (properly pronounced – conk) are herbivores.
That doesn’t help though when you aren’t watching it eat…but, typically…whelks live in cooler temperate [...]
What I think you are referring to is the trail of a moon snail, or sometimes called a sand snail. This univalve animal has a cinnamon bun swirled shell. The shell is extremely thick to protect itself from the ocean and other animals that may try to eat it.
If you try to pick it up [...]
The strand of half dollar sized pods is an egg case. Actually each pod has about twenty tiny animals in each pod.
The tiny animal that will grow up from this egg case is the knobbed whelk. This is basically a northeast version of a conch (pronounced conk). If you hold the tiny discs up to [...]
Truly, by accident.
Oysters are a bivalve animal, and therefore, live among a sandwich of two oyster shells. The part of the animal that creates the outer shell is called the mantle. The substance that the mantle creates is called narce and lines the inside of the shell. It is what creates that smooth, pretty surface [...]
The shell with a hole through it, actually, used to be hinged to another shell of equal size – with the animal living inside (think, clam or oyster). These animals with two shells hinged together are called bivalves. Often, in restaurants they are shucked apart and served “on-the-half-shell.”
However, animals in the ocean do [...]
These tiny colorful clams are juvenile versions of the clams that will eventually grow up to live in the big shells you might paint or use as a digging tool.
Did you see them wriggle under the sand? They use a muscled foot to dig a burrow and hide from their enemies: crabs, sea stars, [...]
