Brackish Water Clams

Type: Chesapeake
Region: Central
Location: Chesapeake

Recent spring tides brought on by the full moon, caused extremely low tides in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries last week. These low tides present an opportunity to do a little exploring of areas normally underwater. Sometimes you can find interesting things such as artifacts and fossils. Brackish water clams (Rangia cuneata) can be found in most of the tidal rivers in Maryland in relatively low salinity areas. To the uninitiated they look like the common hard clam (Mercenaria mercenaria) that is found in the high salinity areas of Maryland�s coastal bays. The hard clam is of course very good to eat and a favorite among seafood lovers. The brackish water clam is not good to eat, although catfish, blue crabs and ducks enjoy eating the tiny young ones.

Brackish water clams can grow to about 3� long and can live four or five years. They prefer a mixture of sand and mud substrate and populations can be quite dense as can be seen in the first picture. They tend to expand their populations into areas that may be a little too shallow and when extremely cold temperatures, ice and spring tides expose them to freezing temperatures they can perish. They can be seen exposed in the low tide picture and most seen in this photo have died from freezing. Sea gulls, raccoons, otters, minnows and aquatic organisms will take advantage of the feast.