Site visit for Tampa Bay hard clam growth study
Scientists from USGS SPCMSC, University of South Florida (Tampa), and the Gulf Shellfish Institute are collaborating to improve understanding of hard clam populations in Tampa Bay. The group will visit sites near Port Manatee in Tampa Bay with a local hard clam grower to assess survival of southern quahog clams planted in 2017-2018.
Quahog clams are native to the West Florida shelf and have historically occupied portions of Tampa Bay with varying densities. Their mutualistic relationship with seagrass is of great interest to conservation efforts, but is not well understood. Research on how water chemistry and water temperature affect shell growth and survival is needed to understand the threats to past, present, and future quahog populations in the Tampa Bay area. This information is invaluable to the aquaculture industries, since changing habitat conditions may impose an ecological regime shift across the Gulf Coast region. The work also improves applications for using bivalve shells to reconstruct past marine conditions. During the spring and summer of 2025, live specimens of southern and northern hard clams will be collected for studies of shell growth and geochemistry.
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