The quahog is without question Rhode Island’s favorite clam. But, how much do we really know about it? To find out more about the underwater creature, we made a trip to Warwick’s Oakland Beach to talk to a man who has been harvesting the clam for more than 30 years, Jody King. This is his take on quahogging.
This is a 12-month-a-year job. I do this on average between 275 and 300 days per year. I love my job and every day is a challenge and I love a challenge.
My name is Jody King and this is my take on quahogging.
A quahog is a hard shell clam; it’s a mollusk.
In Rhode Island, we call them quahogs, anywhere else in the country, they call them hard shell clams.
We are unique.
It’s derived from an Indian name from the Indigenous people of Rhode Island, the Narragansetts.
They are one of the few animals on earth that never stop growing.
I’ve actually had them as big as my hand where you couldn’t see my fingers.
So I brought it to DEM (the Rhode Island Department Of Environmental Management), they drilled a hole in it and determined that it was almost 150 years old.
You can eat a 12-year-old quahog as well as you can eat 150-year-old quahog.
One’s just bigger and one is smaller.
I got into quahogging as a child, and if you had asked me when I was a child if this would be my profession, I would’ve probably laughed.
But I watched a friend when I was 30 years old catch a few clams and make a couple hundred dollars in an hour and a half, two hours.
I said, “This is it for me. I’ve found my job.”
My day generally starts about 4 o’clock before the birds are even up.
I’m up and out of bed for breakfast, feed the dogs, walk down the street to my boat, hop on the boat and go to work.
For the most part, when I get out there, I know where I want to go.
When I get there, I figure out the depth of the water. I set up my pipes and my rake, my handle. Depending on the depth, I throw them in and start pouring through the water blindly.
Everything for me depends on God and Mother Nature to give me conditions to move and the ability to do so.
And this will have bigger stuff in it ‘cause I went out of area.
Every day is different. No two days are the same.
I don’t catch the same amount of clams two days in a row because conditions change day by day.
So I try any, I try for five, I hope for 1,000.
If I get it, I’m happy. If I don’t, I go out again tomorrow and start all over.
You can make chowder, you can make stuffies, you can make casinos, you can make clams and pasta.
There’s a myriad of things that you can make with clams. Every one of them is good.
I haven’t had a clam meal that I didn’t love.
After 30 years, you think I’d be sick of them.
I still love clams as much today as I did the first time I caught ‘em.
