Baby clams equal a healthy beach

Plunk your beach chair right on the line where the water hits the beach, and dig your feet down. No, that’s not the sand tickling your toes. It’s coquina clams, and they’re a sign that the Jersey Shore waters are doing just fine.

This terrific post from the Beach Chair Scientist gives us a wider view of what these clams — many of us call them call baby clams — are, and how they signal that the shore is healthy. I had no idea that people ate them in other parts of the world, or that they can grow to be up to an inch long.

The site has an excellent video of the little guys at work, too. If you’ve watched coquina clams at work, you know that they’re fast diggers, which is where the tickling sensation comes from.