The Giant Clam Essay, Research Paper

The elephantine clam is known as a reef home

mollusc. The domestication factor has

become of big importance to the

Indo-Pacific peoples. Chiefly in the country of their diet.

These immense boodles

are immense marks for fishermen and can be found easy. With the crystal

H2O

complection of the reef Waterss they live in makes them even easier to be spotted

by

the fishermen an by poachers. The people of this part eat every portion

of the flesh of the

animate being. They either dry, cook, or eat them raw.

In

Taiwan there has been a big illeagal industry of selling these immense boodle.

With

a demand of somewhere around 100 dozenss of the meat a twelvemonth that is

worth about $ 7.50-

$ 21.25 a kg at the dockside of Taiwan. It is

being badly poached by aliens

and the population of the elephantine clam

is diminishing. The reefs that they live on are besides

being badly damaged

and destroyed in big sums. The elephantine clam has been

eliminated from

the countries of Indonesia and the Phillippines. The species Tridacnid gigas

and

the Tridacnid derasa are the most to a great extent hunted species.

Tridacnid gigas

are the largest of the elephantine boodles. They grow to around a metre in

length

and weigh around 300 kgs. These peculiar boodles are intersexs

which

range sexual adulthood at around five old ages of age. They spray out

big Numberss of their

eggs and sperm into the saltwater which so meet

to organize a free natation larvae. A big

Tridacnid gigas has the ability

to let go of 100s of 1000000s of microscopic eggs in a

individual twenty-four hours, which

makes it one of the most fertile Marine invertebrates. However most of

the

free drifting larvae do non last during their one hebdomad planktonic period.

The 1s

that survive settee on a spot of difficult reef by agencies of a sticky

byssal togss and East

their heavy mantles towards the Sun. They

continue to turn their at a rate of around five

to ten centimetres a twelvemonth.

But they are non safe from other reef marauders until they are

around

2.5 old ages old, which makes this big species hard to happen. About 100 of the

original eggs will finally go a full grown clam, but that figure

is much lower in

dense and exploited countries of a reef. Usually they will

continue to turn in that topographic point for

several decennaries. There is besides ne’er

any paternal attention and the clam will likely travel

anyplace but deeper in

the sand.

In the Asia Pacific country there are many groups of scientists

unnaturally cultivating

these big boodles in an attempt to larn more about

this rare and highly over hunted and

captured animal.