Speaker 1: Welcome to brains Duck, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren Bolebaum. Here. The Gui duck is not a
Speaker 1: type of duck, and it's not particularly guy spelled geo duck.
Speaker 1: The Gui duck is the world's largest burrowing plam, averaging
Speaker 1: just over two pounds or right around a kilo in
Speaker 1: weight including their shell. But unlike say the giant clam,
Speaker 1: which is almost all shell, the Gui duck's shell is
Speaker 1: small compared to its soft body. Its body length can
Speaker 1: be up to three feet or a meter long, and
Speaker 1: its shell is usually only about six to eight inches
Speaker 1: long or about fifteen to twenty centimeters, which means that
Speaker 1: its shell only covers about a fifth of the Gui
Speaker 1: duck's body. That body is composed of a meaty mantle
Speaker 1: that fits mostly inside the shell, and a long, thick
Speaker 1: neck or siphon that protrudes out for one end. It
Speaker 1: has two openings at the tip of the siphon, so
Speaker 1: it looks sort of like an elephant's trunk or a
Speaker 1: worm with spouts. And look, I'm not trying to be
Speaker 1: rude or edgy here, I'm just being accurate. It looks
Speaker 1: really phallic. They're found in the northern part of North
Speaker 1: America's Pacific Coast, from Puget Sound up along British Columbia
Speaker 1: and into Alaska. Natural beds of them exist on many
Speaker 1: public beaches, but they're rarely visible except at very low tides.
Speaker 1: I say beds because these clams make a home by
Speaker 1: burying themselves two to three feet down up to about
Speaker 1: a meter in the mud, sand or gravel at the
Speaker 1: ocean's floor. Oh once they're in, they're in for life.
Speaker 1: They use their siphon to poke up above the sea
Speaker 1: bed into the water. Again. The end has two openings.
Speaker 1: They're a filter feeder, so one is for drawing in
Speaker 1: gulps of water from which they glean oxygen and food
Speaker 1: a phytoplankton, and then they push out excess water and
Speaker 1: inedible stuff through the other opening. They can retract into
Speaker 1: the sea floor to avoid predators, but again cannot fully
Speaker 1: retract into their shells. Gooby ducks reproduce through what's called
Speaker 1: broadcast spawning. Male clams release sperm into the ocean water,
Speaker 1: a prompting female clams to release eggs a couple million
Speaker 1: that ago if and or when they meet and fertilize
Speaker 1: in the water larvae form and begin swimming around, eating
Speaker 1: algae and growing their shells. Over a few weeks, they'll
Speaker 1: get heavy enough that they sink to the seafloor and
Speaker 1: burrow down. As they get older and bigger, they burrow
Speaker 1: further down, and then they just eat and breathe and
Speaker 1: hang out for oh say a century or so. They
Speaker 1: grow pretty fast during their first few years of life,
Speaker 1: reaching about one and a half pounds in five years
Speaker 1: and their full size by fifteen years, though yes, they
Speaker 1: can live much longer than that, over one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty years. Every year they build a new layer of
Speaker 1: their shell from the inside, so you can see the
Speaker 1: size that the shell was in previous years by looking
Speaker 1: at the rings formed on the outside as each progressively
Speaker 1: larger layer has been added from underneath. The scientists count
Speaker 1: and measure the rings of their shells to assess climate
Speaker 1: change over the decades. The oldest known Gui duck was
Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty eight years old, and the largest
Speaker 1: found in Discovery Bay, Washington, was eight point two pounds
Speaker 1: that's three point seven kilos. And guy ducks aren't just
Speaker 1: curious specimens, they're local delicacies. Indigenous peoples in the Pacific
Speaker 1: Northwest have harvested guy ducks for hundreds or perhaps thousands
Speaker 1: of years and ate them fresh or smoked. Their harvest
Speaker 1: continues to this day, with Native American tribes holding treaty
Speaker 1: rights to half of the shellfish harvest in Washington State's
Speaker 1: Puget Sound to prevent commercial overfishing. The harvest of guy
Speaker 1: ducks is tightly monitored and regulated, and has been in
Speaker 1: various ways since the nineteen twenties. These shellfish are popular
Speaker 1: outside of the Pacific Northwest too. Most of the clams
Speaker 1: are shipped to China. They're a popular ingredient around the
Speaker 1: lunar New Year. They typically go for about twenty to
Speaker 1: thirty dollars a pound wherever they're sold, though prices as
Speaker 1: high as three hundred dollars per clam are not unheard
Speaker 1: of in upscale restaurants around Hong Kong. The limited harvest
Speaker 1: and high prices that guy ducks fetch have led to
Speaker 1: the unlikely sounding crime of clam rustling and shellfish smuggling.
Speaker 1: In the early two thousands, wildlife authorities put away the
Speaker 1: head of a smuggling ring on the conviction of illegally
Speaker 1: harvesting a million bucks worth of guy ducks. People are
Speaker 1: also giving gui duck farming a try, which is approximately
Speaker 1: one hundred percent less likely to end and arrest, but
Speaker 1: the technical and environmental details of which haven't entirely been
Speaker 1: ironed out yet. I have never tried guy duck myself,
Speaker 1: but from what I understand, they can be tender to crunchy,
Speaker 1: to chewy to meaty, depending on how they're prepared, with
Speaker 1: a delicate sweet, a fresh to slightly oceany flavor. I
Speaker 1: get the idea that's like squid, but more flavorful. The
Speaker 1: siphon is the edible part of any clam, and you
Speaker 1: get a lot of it with a guy duck. They're
Speaker 1: eaten in all the ways that other molluscs are eaten,
Speaker 1: Simmered in soups and hot pots, sliced raw into sushi
Speaker 1: or sushimi or savice or crudo, a baked or stir
Speaker 1: fried or barbecued or breaded and deep fried or ground
Speaker 1: and deep fried in fretters, and beyond all of that.
Speaker 1: There is a school that has adopted the guy duck
Speaker 1: as its mascot. Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington is
Speaker 1: known for its quirky curriculum structure, and focus on freedom
Speaker 1: of speech and the exchange of ideas. Like the Guy Duck.
Speaker 1: Evergreen says that they are quote accessible to all who
Speaker 1: are willing to dig deep. I'll leave you today with
Speaker 1: their college chant Go guy Ducks, go through the mud
Speaker 1: and the sand. Let's go siphon Hi, squirt it out,
Speaker 1: swivel all about, let it all hang out. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is based on the article The Gooby Duck is the
Speaker 1: World's most not Safe for work mollusk on HowStuffWorks dot Com,
Speaker 1: written by Kristen Hall Geisler. Brain Stuff is production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com, and it
Speaker 1: is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my
Speaker 1: heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
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