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[Christian Stock]

For those who think, as a midwesterner, she would have been squeamish.

[Ric Gillespie]

For those who think, as a midwesterner, she would have been squeamish.

Earhart was a midwesterner in name only.  She spent most of her adult life in the east and feigned an East Coast upper class, Katherine Hepburn, accent.

[Christian Stock]

Hopefully she waited until September to eat the clams at the 7 site.

[Friend Weller]

Hopefully she waited until September to eat the clams at the 7 site.

Interesting thought....could AE, in her quest for sustenance as a castaway, ended up suffering from paralytic shellfish poisoning (the "R" rule) on Nikumaroro??

[Christian Stock]

Any indication she was steaming them over the fire like mussels? They would probably pop open. Otherwise, she would need the Jack knife.

Raw clams from a lagoon filled with bird poo might have been deadly. Even steamed would be iffy. I can’t eat mollusks, so I would have been roasting coconut crabs and small birds.

[Don White]

"Hunger is the best sauce" as the saying goes.

I'm remembering all the half-cooked, badly cooked, fell in the fire and dragged out again, food I ate on camping trips in my youth.

LTM,
Don

[Christian Stock]

I’ve been hungry enough to eat mollusks, and they usually make me want to crawl up under a tree and die.

[Don White]

Any indication she was steaming them over the fire like mussels? They would probably pop open. Otherwise, she would need the Jack knife.

Nothing has been found that could have been used for steaming. Apparently the castaway(s) could make fire but lacked anything to cook in. Indications are that the only cooking methods available were on a stick like marshmallows, or buried in the coals like a clambake, or perhaps resting on a rock at the edge of the fire.

The clam shells were opened by cutting the muscle holding them closed, or by breaking the shell. The shells do not appear to have been in fire.

LTM,
Don

[James Champion]

You could boil clams or other food in a coconut shell. Either directly on the fire or by heating rocks and dropping them in.  Given that the 'rocks' would be coral or limestone, putting them in with the food after heating them might put a good deal of lime in your food. Either way, I wonder if Amelia would have thought of it?

Thinking of doing so comes down to what you may have seen or heard of. It's a common camping demonstration these days to boil water in a foam cup in a campfire. I wonder if it was a common demonstration to do so in a paper cup in the 20's or 30's.

https://survivaltek.com/?p=4116

[Christian Stock]

Neither of them strike me as a survival expert. They seem like they were dressed and equipped for an uneventful flight from Chicago to Boston.

[Don White]

There's what could have been done, and then there's what evidence shows was done.
No evidence has been found that I recall of clam shells or coconut shells being placed in the fire.
Heating water in a paper cup or coconut shell may be well known now, but was it known in 1937?
To do it, you have to know how to do it, and you need to have or make a suitable container.
If you don't have a container, you have to know how to make one and have the means to make one.
There was discussion of this on previous threads.

There was not much available in the way of survival training in the 1930s. The military got involved in it by way of WWII.
The main source of any such training (limited as it might have been) was the Scouting programs. I don't know what might have been taught in the Girl Scouts, but the Boy Scouts offered a fair amount of useful training (based on what my grandfather, a Boy Scout c.1910, and my father, a Boy Scout c.1939, have told me). But I also haven't seen any record that Earhart or Noonan had been Scouts. Nor that they had sought out any such training in preparation for the flight. Amelia was not big on thorough preparation -- even obvious things like learning Morse Code, or making sure the radios worked, and how to operate them. She wasn't even terribly careful about preflighting her airplane. It just wasn't in her nature to take the time to have survival training she had no intention of needing.

It's a reasonable question whether even an islander, stranded with no outside help and only the tools that have been found, could have survived for very long.

Christian has put it very well -- they were just not prepared for this. It's remarkable that at least one appears to have survived for more than a few days.

LTM,
Don

[Christian Stock]

How did the colonists or other islanders prepare shellfish? I'd heard they open them while still in the surf, then leave the shells.

If she made it several months, was she eating 100% protein (birds, fish, clams)? Maybe that killed her? I've heard of castaways that ate the entire fish being very healthy after long periods, whereas others who just ate the meat were sick.

The artifacts that were found at the 7 site tell me that she had the clothes on her back, a jack knife and a small cosmetic bag. It seems like she lost the airplane early and unexpectedly, with most of the gear still on board.