Facts about the hard clam

[fleabay]

The hard clam, Mercenaria mercenaria, is a bivalve found in greatest abundance in the more saline areas of the Chesapeake Bay and near-shore ocean waters. It is an important member of the suspension-feeding, benthic fauna of the lower Chesapeake Bay, where it exists in salinities above 12 parts per thousand. Unlike the oyster, which tolerates a fairly wide range of salinity levels, the hard clam does well only in the saltier waters of the open Bay and ocean.

The hard clam is known by many names: round clam, quahog, littleneck, cherrystone and chowder clam. In most stages the hard clam has thick hard shells that contrast with the thin, easily broken shells of the soft-shell. "Littleneck" refers to the two barely visible siphons that can be seen in freshly shucked clams just below one of the cut muscles. They are separate from each other and short, so the hard clam does not burrow deeply.

The hard clam has a thick tan shell, usually egg- or heart-shaped, with concentric growth lines on its exterior. Its white interior has a deep purple stain surrounding its muscle scar, and its hinge has three white cardinal teeth. This species may grow to a width of four inches.

[j_diltz]

****, I miss that goofy banter...

[fleabay]

****, I miss that goofy banter...

hee-yuk, aw garsh

Happy now? :)

[T'krau]

Quahog: The hard-shelled clam called a quahog is the largest eastern type, ranging from about 1 1/2" to 6" across. The clams called cherrystones and littlenecks are not different species, but just smaller-sized quahogs: Cherrystones measure less than 3" across, littlenecks about 2" to 2 1/2" (there is also a West Coast clam called a littleneck, though it's a different species). Full-sized quahogs are sometimes called chowder clams, as they can be tough and are best cut up and cooked. (Depending on size, cooked quahogs are used in chowder or baked with a crumb stuffing.)

[spyware]

Finally some clam news! thanks.

[T'krau]

Help further our cause! Read our manifesto! The lowly clam will RISE UP, be oppressed NO LONGER! The Time Of The Clam is coming!!!

[T'krau]

Will YOU be ready???

[fleabay]

Will YOU be ready???

I'm still prepared from the 1999-2000 millenium scare. :)

[spyware]

Omg What about y3k!!!

[Grinder1989]

Omg What about y3k!!!

I'll be dead for that one.

Grinder

[spyware]

I'll be dead for that one.

Grinder

Sorry to hear that, Are you sick or something?

[Grinder1989]

Sorry to hear that, Are you sick or something?

Yea old age, lol.

Grinder

[Emultra]

We could freeze ourselves with liquid nitrogen and hope for the best?

Or we could just display our rotten, putrid corpses first in line, just to be there.

Yuck.

[T'krau]

Fear not! The Grace Of The Clam will protect us! All praises to The Clam!!!

[Grinder1989]

Fear not! The Grace Of The Clam will protect us! All praises to The Clam!!!

The Passion of The Clam...hehe

Grinder

[Emultra]

...The Clammening...

[Killerpain]

1-2-3-4!
Hey, hey!
Ooh!

Jimmy’s outside but you can’t take him back for the drama of design
They hit him in the back and see the long arm dropped over the school cuisines
They say now back and hands facing the sidewalk as they slowly click on

What are we gonna do now?
Taking off his turban, they said, is this man a ***?
’Cos working for the clampdown
They put up a poster saying we earn more than you!
When we're working for the clampdown
We will teach our twisted speech
To the young believers
We will train our blue-eyed men
To be young believers

The judge said five to ten but I say double that again
I'm not working for the clampdown
No man born with a living soul
Can be working for the clampdown
Kick over the wall 'cause government's to fall
How can you refuse it?
Let fury have the hour, anger can be power
D'you know that you can use it?

The voices in your head are calling
Stop wasting your time, there's nothing coming
Only a fool would think someone could save you
The men at the factory are old and cunning
You don't owe nothing, so boy get runnin'
It's the best years of your life they want to steal

You grow up and you calm down and
You're working for the clampdown
You start wearing the blue and brown and
You're working for the clampdown
So you got someone to boss around
It makes you feel big now
You drift until you brutalize
You made your first kill now

In these days of evil presidentes
Working for the clampdown
But lately one or two has fully paid their due
For working for the clampdown
Ha! Gitalong! Gitalong!
Working for the clampdown
Ha! Gitalong! Gitalong!
Working for the clampdown

Yeah I’m working hard in Harrisburg
Working hard in Petersburg
Working for the clampdown
Working for the clampdown
Ha! Gitalong! Gitalong
Begging to be melted down
Gitalong, gitalong
Work
Work
And I give away no secrets – ha!
Work
More work
Work
Work

[Grinder1989]

1-2-3-4!
Hey, hey!
Ooh!

Jimmy’s outside but you can’t take him back for the drama of design
They hit him in the back and see the long arm dropped over the school cuisines
They say now back and hands facing the sidewalk as they slowly click on

What are we gonna do now?
Taking off his turban, they said, is this man a ***?
’Cos working for the clampdown
They put up a poster saying we earn more than you!
When we're working for the clampdown
We will teach our twisted speech
To the young believers
We will train our blue-eyed men
To be young believers

The judge said five to ten but I say double that again
I'm not working for the clampdown
No man born with a living soul
Can be working for the clampdown
Kick over the wall 'cause government's to fall
How can you refuse it?
Let fury have the hour, anger can be power
D'you know that you can use it?

The voices in your head are calling
Stop wasting your time, there's nothing coming
Only a fool would think someone could save you
The men at the factory are old and cunning
You don't owe nothing, so boy get runnin'
It's the best years of your life they want to steal

You grow up and you calm down and
You're working for the clampdown
You start wearing the blue and brown and
You're working for the clampdown
So you got someone to boss around
It makes you feel big now
You drift until you brutalize
You made your first kill now

In these days of evil presidentes
Working for the clampdown
But lately one or two has fully paid their due
For working for the clampdown
Ha! Gitalong! Gitalong!
Working for the clampdown
Ha! Gitalong! Gitalong!
Working for the clampdown

Yeah I’m working hard in Harrisburg
Working hard in Petersburg
Working for the clampdown
Working for the clampdown
Ha! Gitalong! Gitalong
Begging to be melted down
Gitalong, gitalong
Work
Work
And I give away no secrets – ha!
Work
More work
Work
Work

WTF dude? lol

Grinder

[Killerpain]

Obviously you're not a big fan of The Clash. :)

[Grinder1989]

Obviously you're not a big fan of The Clash. :)

I guess so.

Grinder

[spyware]

The silence of the clams
Scientists look for clues to bivalves' disappearance

BY JENNIFER SMITH
STAFF WRITER

July 17, 2005

The wind was up, dark skies threatened rain and whitecaps churned in the shallow waters of the Great South Bay. But the 10,000 clams stacked in net bags on the West Sayville dock last month couldn't wait for calmer weather. So Nature Conservancy marine biologist Carl LoBue readied a 21-foot boat for his weekly salt-splattered mission - sowing live clams across the bay floor to try to restore a species that remains decimated decades after crashing here in the mid-1980s.

Since then, researchers, conservationists and municipalities have struggled to figure out why the clams won't come back in the Great South Bay, which at its height of productivity in 1976 supplied more than half the nation's clam harvest. More than just a tasty part of Long Island's commercial fishing history, these bivalves also filter bay water, provide havens for tiny sea creatures and can even control what sort of algae thrive around them. "They're a major player in how the ecosystem functions," LoBue said.

The latest hopes for local hard clam restoration lie in the Nature Conservancy's 20 square miles of protected bay bottoms, scene of the largest clam transplant and seeding effort yet, and in laboratories at Stony Brook University, where scientists are gathering new data on the earliest part of the clam life cycle.



More research needed

Little research exists addressing how pressures on clams during their larval stage - after a clam egg is fertilized but before it drops to the bottom of the ocean and develops its hard shell - may be preventing clam populations in the bay from thriving, said Cornelia Schlenk, assistant director of New York Sea Grant, a collaboration between SUNY, Cornell University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, whose Hard Clam Research Initiative has funded a number of research projects.

One Sea Grant study due to be completed in August will plug data about clam's larval phase into a model that scientists use to predict how many clams the South Shore estuary can sustain, depending on environmental variables such as salinity, water temperature and vegetation. According to the current model, "even if you stopped fishing completely, it would take 10 years for the numbers of clams to rebound," Schlenk said. "You could put big clams out there and they might spawn, but are their larvae?"

Another question is whether brown tide - a harmful algal bloom that can cloud waters, crowd out other phytoplankton clams eat, and slow or even shut down feeding in adult clams - could be killing off clam larvae before they can set and metamorphose into adults.

In the past, some blamed brown tide, which first overwhelmed local waters in 1985, for wiping out swaths of local shellfish. Recent research indicates that healthy adult clam populations can keep brown tide at bay because the more clams there are, the more water they filter when feeding, which clears bay waters of phytoplankton. But diminished clam numbers mean much less water gets filtered, changing the composition of the bays.



Effects of brown tide

Researchers at Stony Brook have just completed a Sea Grant-funded study examining the effects of brown tide on the development, growth rate and survival of clam larvae spawned in the lab. Results are not yet available, but Schlenk said preliminary numbers indicated that some strains of brown tide could account for slow larval growth, perhaps because the tiny golden-brown algae provides a lower quality food than the other sea plants it elbows aside.

Stony Brook labs are also monitoring the progress of the Nature Conservancy's massive fieldwork experiment in clam transplants. Since last spring, the group has placed 650,000 clams in protected spots in their lands on the bottom of the Great South Bay.



Kick-start the population

If clams are spread too thinly across an area, the sperm and eggs they release when spawning may not meet to form new larvae that become the next generation of clams. "What we found through our surveys is that there are not enough adults to keep the population going," LoBue said. By upping the density, "we're trying to kick-start the population."

Back in the lab, researchers measure adult clams from the group's spawning sanctuaries, then shuck the shells and rate the soft bodies inside on how ready they are to reproduce using a 1 to 4 scale. Other team members test water from the sanctuaries for the presence of clam larvae to see how successful spawning events have been.

Out in the field - or rather, on the water - the effort looks something like a filmstrip run in reverse. Where for decades people raked clams from the bay floor, now Nature Conservancy staffers unload bags of clams from trucks, pilot them out in the water, and, guided by a global positioning system, deposit them at spawning sites.

According to scuba surveys, over 90 percent of the clams put in last fall "survived the transplant process and are living happily on the bottom the Great South Bay," LoBue said. "We think we're on the right track."
Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.

[T'krau]

http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/6825/pb8clam3ez.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[Killerpain]

http://capefeare.com/frenchwaiter.avi

[T'krau]

I can't get that link to work.

[spyware]

lol @ frenchwaiter.

[T'krau]

I can't get that link to work.
Never mind - now it works. It was worth the wait!

[PeTjA]

check this one
http://www.gryonline.org/happy
btw the last Picture "Jumpin Nutty" is a Flash Game!

[BloodBuster]

French Waiter : I laughed so hard my head fell off

[spyware]

More news! http://www.germainenude.com/vault.html

[PeTjA]

Link working?:confused:

[Killerpain]

http://www.illwillpress.com/vault.html

[spyware]

Thank's didn't Know it was broke.

[PeTjA]

Is CatDog part of painkiller?:cool:

[fleabay]

Oh man, I just noticed this was clan talk, not clam talk.

Boy, do I feel like dumb.

[T'krau]

Oh, clan talk...that's different, isn't it? OK.

from Dictionary.com -
Clan (n.) - A traditional social unit in the Scottish Highlands, consisting of a number of families claiming a common ancestor and following the same hereditary chieftain.
- A division of a tribe tracing descent from a common ancestor.
- A large group of relatives, friends, or associates.

[fleabay]

Maybe we are supposed to be talking about this.
http://www.clan.org.au/
http://www.clan.org.au/images/common/logo.gif

[T'krau]

http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/clan/