280 days of Urbpandemonium #25

[urbpan]

If you go to any New England beach, virtually any time of year, you will see them. They cover the rocks so thickly that you can't traverse them without the sickening pop of their shell under your shoe. They creep across the mud of the salt marshes and across the wet tidal sand. But if you went to the same beaches only three hundred years ago, you would see exactly zero periwinkles, Littorina littorea.

They are native to the other side of the North Atlantic, from Spain to Russia. I'm still not quite over my astonishment that this abundant sea snail of my childhood is an alien. Equally astonishing to me is the news that periwinkles are enjoyed as food by coastal Europeans, especially the Scots. Personally they violate my own prohibitions against eating mollusks, as well as anything else from the ocean, but I'm pleased that they are edible. Now that I know they aren't native to New England, I'm going to strongly advocate that my forager friends feast on these little algae grazers.