The following is a guest post by Jennifer Beard, the d evelopment associate for Harbor WildWatch, which is a c 3 non-profit environmental education organization based in Gig Harbor, Wash. A negative tide in the South Puget Sound during the summer is a big positive.
A low tide gives visitors a window into the Puget Sound and the special creatures which live in the intertidal zone without getting too wet. Not sure which beach to visit? Here are some ideas to GET you exploring during your next trip. Get Squirted — When the tide is way out you will notice or get surprised by squirting water. Many people think that the squirts come from geoducks pronounced gooey-ducks , but most geoducks live below the tidal zone and are probably under water, unless it is an extremely low tide.
More commonly, the squirts originate from the Rough Piddock clam. This clam rasps away at clay and soft rock to create a burrow where it will live for about 8 years. The part of the clam that beachgoers see is the siphon, which extends from the buried clam up to the water. The siphon allows water to circulate in and out of the clam for feeding, breathing and reproduction.
Harbor WildWatch naturalists partner with the clams to play a little joke on the kids. The Rough Piddock clam, they say, smells like a rose and when the kids sniff the protruding clam siphon, they get a squirt on the nose. Kids, you can play this joke on your adults! Get Slimed — New visitors to the Puget Sound are often intrigued by the empty clam shells lying on the beach with a perfect hole drilled at the hinge.
In fact, it looks manmade. The moon snail uses a special drilling appendage called a radula to make the hole and suck out the clam. The egg case is a gray, rubbery ring that looks like a tossed -out car part. The moon snail mixes sand with a special slime and the eggs to make the case. By the end of summer the eggs hatch and the rings dissolve back into sand. These large snails can be found in the intertidal zone, but they are often buried in the sand looking for clams to eat.
