The Evergreen State College Shellfish Garden

Now growing at the Evergreen Beach

Month: April 2021

Spring 2021

April 10, 2021 /

We have a new group of students this quarter stewarding the growth of the shellfish. We had our first work party and the first zoom seminar this quarter, and we’re using Discord (“fun Slack”) for communications. The oysters got sampled at our first work party: “tastes like snorkeling”. They’re still pretty petite, but they are getting towards snack size.

The low tides are in the afternoons now, so we’re getting to hike through the Evergreen trails to get to the beach. The trillium (Trillium ovatum) is in bloom and the currants (Ribes sanguineum) and thimbleberries (Rubus parviflorus) are leafing out. There will be two really excellent low tides (full moons) coming up in the end of April/early May and in the end of May.

Clam Gardens

April 10, 2021 /

Pacific Northwest tribal nations have a long history of modifying mudflats to optimize the yield of multiple species of clams in the intertidal. The Clam Garden network is an active collaboration between tribal nations, resource managers, researchers and academics that is international and inter-agency, to promote the restoration, research and development of clam gardens based on traditional indigenous knowledge. In our student course, we have been reading this excellent paper about the archaeological study of butter clam (Saxidomus gigantea) consumption:

11,500 y of human–clam relationships provide long-term context for intertidal management in the Salish Sea, British Columbia

Ginevra Toniello, Dana Lepofsky, Gavia Lertzman-Lepofsky, Anne K. Salomon, Kirsten Rowell

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Oct 2019, 116 (44) 22106-22114; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1905921116

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The Evergreen State College
Olympia, Washington

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