However, this requires very low tides, hand digging tools and back breaking work. Profitable commercial harvesting requires under water harvesting by divers. The method used for commercial harvest of geoducks today was discovered accidentally by United States Navy Divers. Today's commercial geoduck divers have refined this unique method of fishing geoducks utilizing high pressure water. Divers wear dry suits for protection from the cold water, are supplied with air pumped down to the diver through a flexible hose from a compressor on board a fishing boat and wear weights to keep them submerged.
Divers walk along the bottom looking for geoduck shows.
The divers use a nozzle fed with high pressure water from the fishing boat to liquefy the sand around the geoduck, remove the clam and place it in a bag clipped to their waist. Divers are in constant communication with their boat via high tech diver to ship communications. Geoducks and horse clams are mollusks this group includes clams, oysters, scallops, octopuses, squids, slugs and snails. Mollusks are invertebrates with soft, unsegmented bodies and have the mechanisms for producing a hard outer shell though many members only have this capacity to a limited degree. Male and female clams spawn annually beginning in late April and into July depending on a variety of factors.