Low Tide Exposes 40yr outdated Large Clam Challenge on Nice Barrier Reef

Sea Girls Nice Barrier Reef has posted some breathtaking footage of over 100 Large Clams, Tridacna gigas, that had been just lately uncovered in a low tide attributable to the New Moon. The clams are located at Goolboddi on Orpheus Island, Queensland, and had been planted there as a part of an ACIAR-funded Large Clam Challenge that ran there within the late Nineteen Eighties and into the early Nineteen Nineties. The clams had been cultured from wild broodstock and the strategies developed in the course of the Large Clam Challenge had been exported to many different nations across the Pacific and Southeast Asia.

Sea Girls Nice Barrier Reef

The ladies photographed are a part of the Sea Girls Nice Barrier Reef program, which The Coral Sea Basis initiated in 2022 to facilitate coaching and networking of First Nations girls from across the Coral Sea arc. This system builds on the success of the award-winning Sea Women of Melanesia coaching program in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands and operates from the Coral Sea Basis base on Yunbenun (Magnetic Island) with the consent of the Wulgurukaba conventional homeowners.

This system goals to strengthen the connection between Indigenous girls and their conventional Nice Barrier Reef sea nation. Goals embrace empowering indigenous women from the Great Barrier Reef with the sensible marine science abilities and the marine conservation data they must be more practical advocates for sustainable administration of their marine sources, each inside their communities and the broader society. It additionally goals to forge new hyperlinks between indigenous Sea Girls across the Coral Sea arc, from the Nice Barrier Reef to the Torres Straits, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands.

Tridacna gigas has been listed below CITES Appendix II since 1985. They’ll weigh greater than 200 kilograms (440 lb), measure as a lot as 120 cm (47 in) throughout, and have a mean lifespan within the wild of over 100 years. They’ve change into endangered to over-collection and exploitation, and are collected for meals, their shells, and the aquarium market. As for this cultured Large Clam backyard, all we are able to say is wow, and no PAR meter is important to learn simply how a lot mild these now 40-year-old clams have to be receiving, baking in these shallows.