A recent photo on a Facebook shellfish page tweaked my interest.
Cameron Elliott of Cathlemet, Wash., near Oysterville, on the Long Beach Peninsula, was cleaning a razor clam recently when he was surprised to find a tiny crab inside the clam’s body, not clinging to the shell outside.
I know the crab season has been off the charts right now, but so good that baby Dungies are, like, everywhere?
“You mean a pea crab?” asked Matt Hunter, shellfish project manager for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. “They’re pretty common. We find them all the time.”
After a bit of a giggle, I googled up “pea crab” and, well, learned something new – even after five decades of paying attention to news, including giggle-worthy anecdotes.
Turns out pea crabs aren’t just common, they’re…wait for it…
Edible!
Yup, even considered a delicacy.
One professional oyster-shucking Facebook poster said he and his fellow workers saved the little suckers (they’re often referred to as “oyster ticks”) and prepared them somehow to garnish their salads.
Yeah, right…well-worth another giggle google too, until I checked it out myself; yes, in many parts of the world, even those not rhyming with Asia, these tiny suckers are on the delicacy menu.
(Giggle-google it yourself and find photos of pea crabs in mussels on a British clamming Facebook page. They’re everywhere!)
“Really?” Hunter said skeptically, “huh!” (news to him, too, and he’s a biologist all right, just not nearly as decade-experienced and google-dependent as me).
The tiny crabs aren’t larval forms of Dungeness or any other crab, but rather small internal foragers, called appropriately enough, “kleptoparasites.”
Unlike other insidiously ominous freeloaders however, pea crabs don’t feast on their host, but rather on what the clam siphons into its digestive system. That doesn’t cause any real problems unless the pea crab won’t share when plankton is scarce.
Hunter said the more common find in razor clams are small nematode worms, which do feed on their host instead of siphoned plankton and form football-shaped cysts and pearl-like nacre in the shell (but not oyster-quality gems).
Pea crabs prefer large gaper clams, three subspecies of which are found in Oregon; two in estuaries and one at sea, including a population at the south end of Clatsop beaches, from about Gearhart to Tillamook Head; probably how the little freeloaders get into razors.
Their presence in a clam has nothing to do with either its size or rich flavor (and anyway, they’re edible, right?), as long as the clam is siphoning in plankton-rich waters.
And, by the way, there’s no quid pro quo. Clams of any size don’t live inside crabs, however often their remains end up there (razors are even better than chicken legs for crab bait).
So there you go!
More fodder for a few-or-more decades’ worth of trivia games.
photo by Bill Monroe
Razormania? Hunter said razor clam reproduction, or seeding called the “set,” this past spring was the second best in his past two decades as a shellfish shepherd.
“People were used to seeing giants in the past few years, but we’re back to normal,” he said.
Numbers are far more robust, with most clams in the 3-4 inch range. By spring, they’ll average four-plus inches, which is supremely edible.
It seems both clams and pea crabs are eating well.
Meanwhile, on Long Beach: Washington has approved seven days of digging on ocean beaches, beginning Monday (Dec. 2-8).
Details are on the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife website.
Now, about those crabs: All giggling aside, Hunter acknowledged exceptional sport-crabbing success on the Oregon coast, top to bottom.
So good, in fact, many are high-grading for larger males. Unlike razor clam digging, which requires retention of the first 15 dug, crabs may be high-graded and often are, especially during the soft-shelled molt.
Even better news is the delay of commercial crabbing until at least Dec. 16, giving sport crabbers more time to add to their catches.
“The rain is coming though and estuaries will get blown out,” Hunter said. “Crabs don’t like freshwater.”
Only the lower Columbia, Netarts Bay and maybe the lower portions of Coos and Winchester bays offer decent crabbing in the winter. In addition to rain and freshets, commercial seasons also make a difference in many bays, given the penchant for crabs to move quickly from estuary to ocean in search of food.
Free to clam or crab (or fish): Free-fishing weekend is set for Oregon (not Washington) on Friday and Saturday.
No license or tag is required for fishing or shell fishing.
Just obey all current closures and bag limits, rules, etc.
Happy Thanksgiving! Turn up the volume for this one and feel free to share it.
The video was taken on Tuesday from the porch of refuge headquarters at William L. Finley National Wildlife Refuge by Damien Miller, project leader for the Willamette Valley refuge system.