BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. – Progress was made Friday in Coastal Conservation Association Florida’s “billion clam initiative,” with the drone-assisted deployment of millions of clams in the Indian River Lagoon.
CCA Florida joined Capt. Blair Wiggins, of Blair Wiggins Outdoors, and partners from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and University of Florida Whitney Lab to plant the clams at Hog Point, south of Melbourne Beach along State Road A1A, the group said in a news release.
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The billion clam initiative seeks to revitalize and preserve the delicate ecosystem with the systematic distribution of clams — helped along by state-of-the-art technology — as a proactive approach to improving water quality through the large-scale replenishment of the shelled filter feeders, the release states.
The use of a patented drone helped plant the clams in specific locations and densities, quickening the maturation process when compared to manual spreading, according to CCA Florida. The overcoming of predation pressures, too, is said to be an advantage of using a drone to help spread the clams.
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As far as how Friday’s deployment of some 3-6 million clams was even possible via drone, Capt. Wiggins explained that the drops consisted of miniscule veliger larva, little clams which have just begun to develop their shells and thus have fighting chance against predators despite their small size.
“Everything eats them, including us, but what this does, it gives them about a 9-month head start on life,” Wiggins said.
From sacks of 100,000 veliger larvae each, the clams were loaded onto the drone and dropped to specifications including a density of 40 clams planted per square foot, Wiggins said.
“We’re putting them over one acre,” he said. “We have the clam beds out there now that we set out when the clams were big, and they’re doing their job; they’re spawning, a lot of places we’re finding clams where there haven’t been clams in five years, so we know the project we’re doing is working.”
Learn more from CCA Florida.
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