Overview
Brief Summary
Comprehensive Description
Distribution
Physical Description
Size
Identification Resources
Symbiosis
Parasitism
Commensalism
Mutualism
Life History & Behaviour
Behaviour
Natural History
Human Exploitation
Threats
Anthropogenic Factors
Research Project
Conservation
Trends & Status
References & More Information
Bibliographies | Human Exploitation
Giant clams are an important food supply for many populations of human. 40, 000 years ago when the first Humans populations came to places like Australia or Papua New Guinea, the stock of clams were perfectly sustainable for them (Ono 2009). Thus they were fishing some, living behind them the empty shell as a souvenir, and the clams populations were almost not impacted. However, the past century saw the emergences of over-population associated with global phenomenon such as over - 'thing' and globalisation. Thus, we started to exploit the stock of clams as we never did before, and populations started to decreases. The technology helped us to increase the fishing efficiency and being more precise to over-harvest. We ended slowly with a decrease of the food- stock for everybody.
The Tridacna maxima populations are widely distributed and generally abundant thus, the impact of human cannot extinct this populations globally as fast as they did for some others one. In addition, some marine park and refuge for giant clams populations would at least conserve a sufficient population to allow the species to re-colonise area surrounding the refuge.
However, major impact on local area, can dramatically decrease populations and extinction may happen in some cases. It was the case for Honk Kong for example. A sustainable exploitation is sometimes difficult to undertake, but in the case of Tridacna maxima, it should be quite easy not to over fish an etremely abundant species.
Ono 2009 |
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