He found a clam on a Florida beach to make some chowder. Then he counted the rings
A Florida man and his family stumbled across what they thought was a dinner ingredient on the beach of the Gulf of Mexico last month.
According to a recent Facebook post from the Gulf Specimen Marine Lab in Panacea, near Tallahassee, an employee, Blaine Parker, was walking along Alligator Point in the Panhandle on Feb. 18, looking for shellfish to make “chowder.”
During the sandy stroll, the crew came across a giant quahog, aka an edible clam, weighing in at a whopping 2.6 pounds. A few pictures of the monster mollusk on the research lab’s page shows the situation, one with a smiling Parker barely able to hold the entire thing in his palm.
“We were just going to eat it, but we thought about it a while and figured it was probably pretty special,” the seafood lover told the Tallahassee Democrat. “We didn’t want to kill it.”
Parker not only realized this chance meeting was important, he knew enough to count the rings on its shell, similar to a tree’s rings, to determine the clam’s age.
In total, the clam had 214 layers.
Do the math: This mollusk has been in existence a very, very long time.
OK, they did the math for you: It was hatched in 1809.
Parker brought it over to his colleagues at the marine lab, which examined the big guy, officially known as an Ocean Quahog, Arctica islandica.
“Age can be calculated by the number of layers on the shell, with each layer representing a year,” read the post.
Since the discovery was made during Presidents Day weekend, they all decided on the nickname “Aber-clam Lincoln,” the 16th president who was born that year.
The research center says that the Ocean Quahog can live to be over 200, so this sight isn’t that unusual. Experts would not recommend making a meal out of it, as tempting as that may be, because the species is commercially eaten at the ripe age of 20 when they are young and tender like a spring chicken.
Yes, Abe was saved. Last Friday, caretakers at the lab released the “majestic” creature back into its “natural habitat where he was found so that he may live a full life without much human disruption,” it said.
Commenters loved the fish out of water tale:
“He wanted to retire in Florida,” one joked.
“That you could have eaten 214-year-old clam chowder is unique in and of itself,” wrote another. “Better yet to know that you had the smarts to save it is beyond awesome.”
Someone else summed up the story succinctly with, “That’s insane!”
Amazingly, Abe isn’t the oldest clam, not by a long shot. Ming, an ocean quahog dredged off the coast of Iceland in 2006, was calculated to be approximately 507 years old when found.
