shallow area or catching lugworms and mud octopuses under
deep sediments. I will not further elaborate on the use of bare
hands in this work.
Sharper tools are much easier to use in tidal flats. Collection
gears used in mud tidal flats tend to have narrower blade,
because the mud would get on the wider blade, making it more
difficult to use. After long use, people take their tools to blacksmiths
to be sharpened and fixed, and that could also be when
the shape of tools can change slightly. Conditions of the tidal
flats can also affect which kinds of tools are used. For example,
hand hoes vary in shapes by different uses, in such that blade
of mud hoes is much sharper and narrower than that of field
hoes. These characteristics make it much easier to distinguish
one from the other (Fig. 4).Hand hoes used on sandy tidal flats
have blades almost as thick as the farming hoes and are even a
bit bigger, for they have to be durable enough for scraping the
sediment. However, their shapes vary a bit by the amount of
rock or pebbles mixed in on sandy tidal flats or the amount
of moisture content. Blade of hand hoes used on mud tidal
flats is long and curved, forming the perfect angle to make it
efficient to turn mud over. Women tend to use specific hand
hoes, while men use shovel to catch small octopuses.
Hand hoes
Manila clam hand hoes. Manila clams are spread from intertidal
region to shallow sea. Neither the ultra-fine grained
mud tidal flat nor the tidal flats with high sand content are fitting
habitats for them. They usually thrive in on sandy or pebbly
tidal flats with high mud contents. Therefore, there are
multitudes of hand hoe types to be matched with varying characteristics
of getbatang. Rock hand hoes are used on tidal flats
with a lot of rocks pebbles, for they are convenient for rooting
about the rocks (Fig. 5-1). They are strong and narrow as a
whole, and the blade and the neck are in an almost identical
width and thickness. On the other hand, hand hoes used on
sandy tidal flats with high water content have small and narrow
blade, so that it would require less amount of strength
to use (Fig. 5-2). Even the regular field hand hoes are divided
into two different types: ones with blade on only one side, and
the ones with blade on both sides. It seems that they reflect the
regional characteristics.
The one on Fig. 5-4 is from Daebu Island, and the one on
Fig. 5-3 was made in Oi Island. The one with double blades
had long and deeply curved neck with short grip (Table 1).
In contrast, water hand hoes have longest grip of all hand
hoes, and are used to collect water manila clams. Water manila
clam are the manila clams living puddles on mud tidal flats. To
catch them, one would have to dig under the puddle, so it
seems logical to use the hand hoes with longest neck (Table 1).