Geoduck Fishing + Eating

One of Tina's pre-residency social gatherings was held at an attending doctors's beach house near Gig Harbor, about a 1.5 hour drive from Seattle.  We were told that we would be fishing for geoducks (pronoucned gooey-ducks) on the beach.  I had never heard of such an animal before - it sounded like a Pokemon or something.  One of Tina's co-residents gave us a briefing of the geoduck with help from Wikipedia.  You can read more about it on that link, but what I got out of it was that it is a big clam with a long neck, and is considered a delicacy in Asian cuisine.  How we were going to catch one was still unknown to me.  Sure enough, we go out to the beach and people were already digging.  How did they know where to start digging?  By looking for a geoduck's spout popping out of the sand.

Geoduck spout.  Evidently it's how they breathe.

Once the digging began, the geoduck's spout disappeared into the sand.  We were told they start digging down very quickly to escape danger.  The way to get them was to keep digging directly down from the spout spotting. This was quite a team effort, and they (I just watched) eventually got about a foot deep, but the sand would keep collapsing into the hole.  Their solution for that problem came in the form of a large barrel with open ends.

Oil barrel in the middle of the existing geoduck pit.

The oil barrel prevented the surrounding dirt from caving in to the center of the pit, but allowed for continued digging directly downwards.  Occasionally, they would have to push down on the barrel to get it to dig deeper into the sand.  The good news was that geoducks can only dig so far down.  So it's a matter of persistence as to whether it will get caught.  This was a very involved process, and required a lot of perseverance and willingness to get wet and dirty.  However, in the end, the humans prevailed, and they caught one!

Here is Tina holding it.  Needless to say, it was a very disgusting-looking creature.

Us posing with the geoduck.  It initially was hard for me to believe this is a delicacy in Asia.  But after thinking about all the things that are considered delicacies in Asia, it became a little less hard to believe.

Now that the creature was caught, it was time to eat it.  We thankfully had one person (only one) in the party who knew how to cook it.  She explained the process to us while Tina and I watched.  

She started by slicing the meat into very thin pieces.  She then boiled them for about 20-30 seconds.  Since they were thinly sliced, they didn't require any time at all to cook.  Then she mixed the meat with soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger, and green onions, and..

Viola, the final product.  It was super delicious.  It had a very tender, yet slightly chewy texture.  Not as tough as squid or octopus, but still chewy.  Good sauce, too.  Who knows, I may try my luck in digging for one next time.