HOW TO BE A SEA SCROUNGE
Sea scrounging - for everything from clams and mussels to crabs to bait, cat food and fertilizer - is both easy and fun and the booty can be mouthwateringly delectable. Here's an overview of seafood that can be foraged.
by SUZANNA S. McDONALD
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Sea scrounging—for everything from clams and mussels
to crabs to bait, cat food and fertilizer — is both
easy and fun and the booty can be mouthwateringly
delectable. One of my favorite crannies for practicing the
art is a small cove in Maine. The inlet is ringed with red
granite boulders, quiet pine forests, low heaths and dark
bogs and contains bits of masts, hand-hewn beams, ribs and
other weathered remnants of an eighteenth-century merchant
shipwreck.
I'm told that — although the ship's passengers
managed to get ashore safely when the vessel ran aground
— many of them then slowly starved to death . . . not
because there was no food available, but because the
passengers were unable to recognize and harvest that food.
They needn't have perished: I know, because I personally
have taken clams, crabs, fish, huckleberries, cranberries
and rose hips from that same cove. I've also noted an
ancient Indian trash pile there that contains an
unbelievable number of clam shells. It stands to reason
that wild foods — abundantly available both before
and after the ship's disaster — must have filled the
bay just as profusely at the time of the wreck.
Of course, this one little inlet has not been unusually
blessed with free-for-the-gathering fare. Most coves,
estuaries and bays along the coasts of every large body of
water in the world seem — in their natural state
— to teem with edible life. It's not necessary to
have power boats and super-double-whammy fishing rigs to
harvest that bounty either: simple nets and poles are the
most complicated tools you'll need to practice the art of
the sea scrounge. The following general guide should get
you started.
HOW TO BE A SEA SCROUNGE
First, let me remind you that just as you don't pick any
old weed or mushroom for your table, you don't pick any old
clam or fish to eat, either. And never, never,
NEVER cook or eat any shellfish that are dead when you
find them . . . if the mollusk doesn't resist your efforts
to open his shell, or if the shell is broken, don't take
any chances with food poisoning. Keep your eyes open when
choosing a scrounging spot and follow these rules:
(1) AVOID POLLUTED AREAS. Diseases found in human waste,
such as typhoid and hepatitis, can be carried by shellfish.
Public health boards try to keep polluted beds posted with
warning signs . . . but signs have a way of disappearing.
Check before you take any shellfish.
Unposted pollution is another problem. Use your own
judgment, but I never scrounge near heavily traveled
highways or boat marinas where lead from exhaust fumes is
sure to have drifted onto the land and water. I stay far
away from any industrial plant that dumps mercury or other
chemical wastes and I avoid areas where crops are treated
with herbicides and pesticides that wash off the land and
into the sea. Steer clear of oil slicks too, unless you
happen to crave wild foods that taste of petroleum.
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