Cisco’s Sonar

Asian Clams

By Bryce Nielson

Recently I was getting my daily dose of Facebook when a post appeared that indicated while walking along North Beach, someone had observed a shell that was different in appearance than the billions of extinct fingernail clams in Bear Lake.  A picture was posted with a live clam in a brown shell.  It

reminded me of something I picked up wandering along the shoreline of Lake Havasu this winter looking for quagga mussels.  I didn’t find any quaggas but I later determined that what I saw were Asian clams.

Asian clams are native to eastern Asia.  Currently the are widely distributed across the United States and in Utah.  They are found in most of the State’s river systems including Utah Lake and Lake Powell.   There are old records of them being found in Cache Valley in the marshes.  They are termed as an invasive species but I can’t find any information on them causing any problems.  They just hangout and filter phytoplankton.

I decided to go up by Lifton and see if I could find any.  After ripping my pants on a barb wire fence, I started to sort through the shell along the shore and I found a couple.  They are definitely different and maybe a bit larger that the extinct ones.  They have a brown shell with definitive ridges around the top.  The inside of the shell is purple, quite pretty.  I think these clams are coming in from Mud Lake.  When they get to Bear Lake, they starve since there isn’t a lot of phytoplankton in the water.  We shouldn’t worry about them because they are just a curiosity.  Something for the kids to look for when they are playing at the beach.