On 1/30/2015 1:02 PM, sf wrote:
>
> Ophelia... it just occurred to me that you can probably find cockles
> in Scotland and cockle is a type of clam! We use little necks for our
> clam chowder, you can use cockles. They're smaller than Little
> Necks, that's all. They are roughly the size of a Manila clam.
> Manilas are 20-30/lb. Cockles from New Zealand's North Island are
> 20-25 per pound. I looked but didn't find much about Scottish cockles
> other than it looks like they are not a big commercial product
> (somebody needs to fix that to start growing the economy) and they are
> mostly poached for sale elsewhere.
>
Cockles were a basic food in coastal areas of Scotland since prehistoric
times - but in many areas in the latter part of the last century,
foreign fishing boats came in and scraped up vast quantities of them,
not leaving enough for natural regeneration.

When I was a child, I remember going down at low tide with a rake, and
filling my bucket with them. But after the Spanish fishing fleet invaded
the Kyle there there were no more cockles to be found
There have been a few attempts to 'reseed' the area, and eventually
there may be enough for local people to once again harvest them.