{"id":21351,"date":"2015-10-14T01:03:26","date_gmt":"2015-10-14T08:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/?p=21351"},"modified":"2015-10-14T01:03:26","modified_gmt":"2015-10-14T08:03:26","slug":"pismo-beach-clam-festival-loves-pismo-clams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/pismo-beach-clam-festival-loves-pismo-clams\/","title":{"rendered":"Pismo Beach Clam Festival Loves Pismo Clams"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/images\/pzclm.jpg\" alt=\"img\" width=\"650\" height=\"339\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This weekend a beach town named after the Pismo clam\u00a0holds its\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/festivals\/pismo-beach-clam-festival.html\">annual namesake festival<\/a>. Each October the Pismo Beach Clam Festival celebrates the \u00a0distinctively flavored seafood\u00a0prepared as\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/dining\/pismo-beach-splash-cafe.html\">award-winning clam chowder<\/a>\u00a0in Pismo Beach! \u00a0The word, &#8220;pismo&#8221; comes\u00a0from the Chumash Indian word &#8220;pismu,&#8221; meaning &#8220;tar,&#8221; because of the natural deposits of tar found in the Pismo Beach area.<\/p>\n<p>The Pismo clam\u00a0invertebrate species once supported a significant commercial fishery and\u00a0harvest\u00a0which\u00a0began in the early 1900s when horse-drawn plows were used to rake the beaches. By 1911 popularity of Pismo clam meat for human consumption had grown in the\u00a0\u00a0historic epicenter of recreational clamming. Shortly\u00a0after the clam festival was launched in 1946\u00a0(bottom-left photo)\u00a0an estimated 5,000 diggers per day harvested clams. Today legal size clams of 4.5&#8243; are harder to come by and the bag limit is 10 per day.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PISMO CLAMS<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>LARGEST: The largest Pismo clam recorded in California came from Pismo Beach. It was 7.37-inches across and estimated to be 26 years old.<\/li>\n<li>OLDEST: The oldest Pismo clam on record\u00a0was estimated to be 53 years old.<\/li>\n<li>GROWTH RINGS: The age of Pismo clams can be determined by the concentric growth rings on the shell.<\/li>\n<li>The Pismo clam grows continuously throughout its life.<\/li>\n<li>Fossil remains of Pismo clams have been found in Pleistocene deposits at least 25,000 years old<\/li>\n<li>The Pismo clam prefers warmer waters\u00a0south of \u00a0Half Moon Bay; it doesn&#8217;t fare well in cold waters.<\/li>\n<li>PREDATORS\u00a0include\u00a0humans, sharks, rays, gulls, sea otters and some species of surf fish.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This weekend a beach town named after the Pismo clam\u00a0holds its\u00a0annual namesake festival. Each October the Pismo Beach Clam Festival celebrates the \u00a0distinctively flavored seafood\u00a0prepared as\u00a0award-winning clam chowder\u00a0in Pismo Beach! \u00a0The word, &#8220;pismo&#8221; comes\u00a0from the Chumash Indian word &#8220;pismu,&#8221; meaning &#8220;tar,&#8221; because of the natural deposits of tar found in the Pismo Beach area. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21351"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}