No Fun with Pholads

The water in Florida doesn’t get cold enough to kill or slow the growth of marine borers. This means the attack on your dock by wood borers is year-round. Even the life of pressure treated lumber can be reduced to less than a decade because of wood borers like shipworms, pholads, gribbles and pill bugs.

Pholads , also known as Piddock Clams , can penetrate the toughest of wood, stone and shell. Their shells have a set of ridges that are used to cut into a surface, creating a tunnel where it will live. Pholads are a bivalve mollusk that differs from other clams because they have additional shell plates over their primary shell.

While Pholads don’t consume the wood as food, they do make a permanent residence out of the pear-shaped tunnels that they bore into your pilings and stringers. Pholads then produce free-swimming larvae that search for a new habitat to make their own tunnel. They grow while feeding on plankton and other material suspended in the water.

Pholads are tolerant of CCA (Chromated Copper Arsenate) and ACA (Ammoniacal Copper Arsenate) treated wood. Wrapping pilings in vinyl is the only way to prevent pholads from boring into the wood.

Pholads, also known as Wood Piddocks, can bore into the toughest wood, stone and shell.

Pholads are a bivalve mollusk. Martesia Striata is the species of Pholad that is known to bore into wood.