shellfish · The Trophy Room
Gumboot Chiton
The largest chiton on Earth, and one of the strangest animals on the WA coast — a leathery red-brown loaf the size of a shoe that grazes the rocks at low tide. Split it open and the orange foot inside is edible, if famously chewy. Coastal tribes have eaten it for millennia; most beachcombers just stare.
Identifying
- a big oval, up to a foot long, wrapped in a rusty red-brown leathery girdle with no visible plates
- the eight shell plates are hidden inside the girdle (unlike every other chiton) — pull it apart and you find them
- a broad orange-yellow foot underneath that grips rock like a tractor
- soft and slug-like out of water; unmistakable once seen
Facts
- also called the "wandering meatloaf" — its hidden plates are made of a rare iron mineral, magnetite, hard enough to scrape rock
- can live over 40 years, grazing algae off the intertidal
- the foot is the eating; old-timers pound it, then chowder it, because raw it is pure rubber
