“sesquipedalian”

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.

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.

Looks (based on catch quota info online) like they were bay quahaugs. Do you remember how deep the water was where you found them? I'm remembering now I couldn't see the bottom at all in Narragansett Bay, and I was wearing an ill-fitting borrowed pair of sneakers, so we were finding them by feel.

Any idea if these were ocean quahaugs (Arctica islandica) or Northern/bay quahaugs (mercenaria mercenaria)?

Although apparently if you work for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Northern quahaugs, Southern quahaugs and ocean quahaugs are all the same species?! www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/species-espe...

… ④ Quahaug: finally, the word likely comes from the Mohegan-Pequot language; quahaugs were traditionally important both culinarily and in the manufacture of wampumpeag, and the origin of the US slang “clam” for “dollar”. Now to condense this into a readable definition.

… ③ Quahaug: Hafrún the ocean quahog was the oldest individual animal whose age was precisely (and terminally) determined. To a fishmonger, a small quahaug is a countneck, littleneck, topneck, or cherrystone, but the distinctions are customary not regulatory. …

… ② Quahaug: but I did the requisite reading before I sat down to define the word. TIL a lot. There are a lot of people who mispronounce the word, phonetically; there's a reason why others spell it “cohog”. Also, quahaugs in Mexico are a different species, and in Iceland another genus …