Cool! The way they did it in RI (where the tides must have been less extreme) was to stand in cold water for as long as you could tolerate it, and dig into the unseen sand with a long-handled rake until it caught on something, then try to bring it to the surface to see what it was.

It occurs to me now though that my guide must have been wearing chest waders, and given the age of my memory, I must not have been at my full adult height, hence neck-deep quahogging. For a long time I thought all ocean water was painfully cold to swim in; my first trip to the tropics was a delight.

Whoa. That must’ve been an endurance test, digging blind in water numbing your legs! I hadn’t really thought of how extreme the tides were there…They seemed about the same as what I’d experienced with the North Sea, maybe less on the Cornwall coast. 🤔