Lurks in Sand.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 884, 4 October 1933, Page 6

Lurks in Sand.

Nature Notes.

By James Drummond. F.L.S.. F.Z.S.

R. LATTER, Christchurch, has sent the following account of observations at New Brighton: “ In July last year, after a storm, I found a peculiar clam on South Brighton Beach. I intended to photograph it, but was out of films. In the ‘National Geographic Magazine,’ February, 1933, there is an illustration of the same sort of shell-fish. It is there called geoduck. “It is stated that it is seldom found anywhere except in Puget Sound, Washington State, that it burrows in the sand with amazing rapidity to a depth of two feet six inches or three* feet, that it obtains food by thrusting its long neck to the surface and snaring crabs, which mistake r he geoduck’s mouth for a hole to hide in, that, if caught by the feeders, it decapitates itself and dies, and that the Washington State Government restricts the catch to three a day and prohibits the use of tubes. “ The neck is longer than the body and is very wrinkled, and brownish in colour. The shell resembles a giant pipi, from which the body protrudes in layers. I found about six, all different sizes, none more than lib in weight.”

This mollusc’s habits have been been recorded, apparently, but Mr W. R. B. Oliver, director of the Dominion Museum, Wellington, has supplied its official title, Panopaea zealandica. Its relative, the geoduck, called gapes in some countries, is My a truncata.