BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. — This Friday, a specialized drone lifted off from the Old Fish House Bar & Grill in Grant to deliver one million seed clams into the Indian River Lagoon.
Three million more clams will be deployed over the weekend to improve water quality and support habitat restoration during the weekend-long “Project SeaSafe CleanWater Collective.”
Dr. Todd Osborne with the University of Florida Whitney Lab told us, “Well, clams are excellent and just like oysters, they filter water all day to breathe.
They’re pulling water across their gills, and their gills catch all the algae particles and all that kind of stuff. So that’s how they eat.” The University of Florida Whitney Laboratory, The
Coastal Conservation Association Florida, Duke Energy, and Star brite chose their distribution location because of its proximity to the Sebastian Inlet. Osborne said,
“So, our thought is that with the tide coming in and our organisms growing so well when they spawn, they’ll transfer their larval clams upriver. And that will be the natural mechanism for spreading them out.
So being close to the inlet helps us disperse the larvae when they’re spawning out.”
The clam deployment continues the Billion Clam Initiative, a large-scale effort led by the Coastal Conservation Association Florida (CCA) in partnership with the University of Florida’s Whitney Laboratory and Capt.
Blair Wiggins. The initiative deploys clams using state-of-the-art technology to improve water quality and restore ecological balance throughout the IRL.
To date, 50 million clams have been deployed in the Lagoon as part of
the Initiative. The effort will continue Saturday, between 9 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. at the Old Fish House Bar & Grill, 5185 S, 5185 US-1, Grant, FL 32949.
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