Seashells 101

My earlier post was about our picnic trip to the Arous beach where we 'lonely' man managed to get our rough hands on 'oysters'. All those 30 odd seashells creature eventually ended up in our stomach. Amidst the oyster we also managed to grab 2 'snails' which was delicious.

When we returned to our camp, the Sudanese cooks and cleaners who missed us their 'saiyidi' for a whole day greeted us with a disgusted look for bringing home such weird smelly shell thingy and start cleaning it in their 'tidy' kitchen. One guy got interested but cringed when we tried to hand it to him to help us clean it. Another nicked name 'prawn' in his language almost scream when i scared him with one.

Last night, my friends and i were discussing about it and one of us suggested that what we have eaten was abalone and that made me feel like a loser for not catching some more. Even my wife thought it could be a clam, and when I suggested to the group, none could agree that its either oyster or clam or abalone. Last night I was already imagining the fortune I could make by harvesting some more of those abalone.

This morning as usual with no useful thing to do and a fine internet connection Sudan style, I started to search for the keywords and hey! Look what i found.. so this post today is just an introduction to myself and the rest who are interested about sea shells or those yummy aphrodisiac thing you would lose an inch on your right ass after leaving the fancy restaurant serving it.

First, the abalone. Abalone if u might find one only has one shell.. err ye ke? Well, thats what it says on this internet page here about abalone.
Certainly the picture above did not fit the description of what we brought home the other day here.
Next I lookup for oyster and again the picture above turned out on the internet here disappointed me as well as it does not look so much of what we got. Then I learned that there must be a slimy texture one sip with the oyster body which is part of the oyster profile. Our catch certainly did not have those slimy thing going on. So Oyster officially strike off out.

While I was browsing thru, I found a neat website here showing all the different seashells familiar on the beaches back home in Malaysia. I went thru the archive and still none match the creature that we caught but for education purpose I am posting some pictures here courtesy of the website for the different seashells likened to the one that I have brought home to the amusement of Nuaim my beloved eldest son(previous post).
The above is call tiger cowrie. One can spot a few of this along the coral where I normally go stingray spear fishing.
I have a few of this in my collection too.
These are angle wings. I remembered I found a lot of these during my honeymoon in Pulau Rebak Langkawi. I think I picked up a couple of those but I forgot where I throw them away.
The above is a Ramosus shells. I picked this up during my escapades to Tokar. They say its tasty but I never tried one yet.
This one is a spider conch. I had one of this or 'snail' mentioned earlier. It taste like squid and very the yummy one lah.
This volutano balls also taste like squid. the one i got the other day do not have those fancy patterns, but i guess they are the same family.
The above is a mussel shell. Very common. The smaller version would be called etok. Read it here to.
Makcik jual etok.
I found this quite a few in the waters also near where i go stingray hunting
Do u know what is this? Shell! Yes, but not the household name for fuel supply but its actually is a sunset scallop. Scallops are nice..Ive eaten 'em.

Finally back to the question that still linger in our brain what in gods name have we eaten? I finally found this perfect description. Its actually a clam, but from the giant clam species. Because, clam kecik looks like below..
Notice, how come the shell not same? My untrained eye also can tell that its not what we eaten. Giant clams actually can grow up to 1.2m.
The profile by NatGeo fits the description of the ones i find i.e. its stuck to the coral bed and its very the colorful that I notice that each one has different color. The one i found are either red, green, blue and orange. What a bliss to my goggly eyes that day. One fact not so music to my ears is that, it's even on the endangered list in some places. Hmmm now I have second thought of going hunting for it again. But, if we leave the baby one is not so bad kot? Hey wait a minute, the one we got are the baby one kan? Please do not report this post to the greenpeace ok.