Are there clams in the gulf of mexico

The most famous of this group are the mussels. Mussels are a popular seafood product and are grown commercial having them attach to ropes hanging in the water. Another method of attachment is to literally cement your self to the bottom. Those bivalves who do this will usually lay on their side when they first settle out from their larval stage and attach using a fluid produced by the animal. This fluid eventually cements them to the bottom and the shell attached is usually longer than the other side, which is facing the environment.

The most famous of these are the oysters. These sessile bivalves are very dependent on tides and currents to help clear waste and mud from their bodies. Then there are the bivalves who actually live on the bottom — not attached — and are able to move, or even swim. This is usually done when they detect danger, such as a starfish, and they have been known to swim up to three feet.

Some will use this jet as a means of digging a depression in the sand they can settle in. In this group, the adductor has been reduced from two the number usually found in bivalves to one, and the foot is completely gone. As you might guess, reproduction is external in this group. Most have male and female members but some species such as scallops and shipworms are hermaphroditic. The gametes are released externally at the same time in an event called a mass spawning. To trigger when this should happen, the bivalves pay attention to water temperature, tides, and pheromones released by the opposite sex or by the release of the gametes themselves.

Scallop life cycle. The fertilized eggs quickly develop into a planktonic larva known as a veliger. This veliger is ciliated and can swim with the current to find a suitable settling spot.

Some species have long lived veliger stages. Historically, they have been a humble food source for coastal Mexican residents and fishing families, who most often roast them right in the sand on the beach or crack them open and enjoy them in raw, ceviche -like preparations.

In recent decades, as regional Mexican cuisine has swelled in popularity, so have these pretty, mildly-flavored shellfish. Diving for chocolate clams the old-fashioned way requires impressive lung capacity—after repeatedly plunging below the surface, I found a few spiny, purple sea urchins , but no clams; Gomez, however, gleefully pulled up half a dozen of them, popping up over the surface with a grin and a gasp to toss yet another shiny bivalve into the boat.

Once we had our fill of diving, we climbed back into the dinghy one at a time and, with a pang of regret, tipped our catch back into the gentle blue waves—these pristine waters are federally protected, and fishing is banned. Fortunately, the organizers were pros. A pair of local fishermen pulled a sack of the clams from a pickup truck just as we tumbled out of the boat and into the clear, shallow water, craving salt, beer, and lunch after our dive.

Earlier that morning they had shuttled these glossy monsters, nearly 4 inches wide, from beds outside of the regulated park zone for us to share on the beach. On an upturned cooler, Gomez wielded a heavy kitchen knife to split a clam open.

He carefully sliced the clam from the remaining shell, trimmed away the sandy bellies, then sliced the meaty red muscle that remained into bite-size bits. Taking a cue from Gomez, I tipped the remaining juices right into my drink for an improvised spicy michelada. Think of a mash-up of biology, ecology and business, laced with a little stand-up comedy. It starts at the beginning in the hatchery with the spawning, a temperature-controlled process in a tank that involves no romancing.

The babies — millions of them in a single batch — are fed a nutrient-rich phytoplankton of cultured algae daily, days a year. Six weeks later, measuring about the size of the head of a pin, they are transferred to the nursery. Southern Cross keeps four boats available to head out at daybreak to keep on top of filling orders from restaurants all over the country.

Because freshness is so critical, the Cedar Key clams are harvested, processed and shipped live on the same day. A little-known clam fact that always surprises the tour participants: The whole process from seed to table takes two years. Though the operation runs like a well-oiled machine, a disruption like a bad storm can wreak havoc. Water flows in though one siphon carrying oxygen and food particles over the gills and mantle.

Millions of cilia tiny hairs on the gills work together like a pump to push water out the other siphon, which expels the filtered water and waste. Because clams are filter feeders, they absorb and concentrate whatever pollutants are present, making them good indicators of the overall health of a body of water. Clams have a single, hatchet-shaped foot made of muscle tissue that is used to burrow into sand or mud.

Clams are protandrous hermaphrodites, meaning they begin life as males but often change to females. Approximately half of the population will undergo this sex change, which usually occurs by the end of the first year. In Florida, spawning occurs in spring and fall when water temperatures reach about 73 degrees Fahrenheit.

The release of sperm into the water by male clams stimulates females to expel eggs.