The Ensis macha, or Navaja or Navajuela as it is called in Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, is a dick-shaped bivalve

Bivalvia

Bivalvia is a taxonomic class of marine and freshwater molluscs. This class includes clams, oysters, mussels, scallops, and many other families of molluscs that have two hinged shells...

 mollusc of the family Pharidae

Pharidae

Pharidae is a family of clams related to the razor shells , a family which includes Pharidae by some authorities.-Genera:* Afrophaxas Cosel, 1993* Cultellus Schumacher, 1817* Ensiculus H...

. It inhabits the coasts of Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

, Chile

Chile

Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

 and southern Argentina

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

. Ensis macha lives in sand or muddy sediments in the subtidal zone where it can burrow to a depth of up to 13 metres. Ensis macha is one of the world's economically most significant Ensis

Ensis

Ensis is a genus of medium-sized edible saltwater clams, littoral bivalve mollusks in the family Pharidae.In the United States, other common names for species in this genus are razor clams or jackknife clams. This is because the long, narrow, and parallel-sided shape of their shells is unusual in...

species, with a total catch of 6,000 tons in Chile in 1999.