Taylor uses a diesel-powered water pump, which spits water at about the same rate as a garden hose, hooked up to a four-foot-long pipe. The pipe is inserted into the sand next to the geoduck — you can tell where they are by an indentation in the sand from the siphon — and turned on, to dislodge and loosen that sand. Then the harvester simply follows the hose down into the sand and snags the clam. “A good harvester is getting a geoduck about every 10 seconds,” says Pinchot. At this point, they’re about 1.25 pounds in weight on average. Then off they go to New York or Hong Kong, and other places where people like to eat giant clam.