What do clams do

I was so fascinated by the idea that our beaches are covered with high-resolution records of the ocean environment, waiting to be cut open and read. Particularly in seasons when food is scarce on land, native peoples could survive by taking advantage of the wealth of the sea, and bivalves are one of the most plentiful and accessible marine food sources available. Bivalves are one of the most sustainable sources of meat known, requiring very little additional food to farm and actively cleaning the environment in the process.

Mussels grown out on a rope farm are an easy investment, growing quickly and with very little required energy expenditure.

Someday, giant clams may provide the first carbon-neutral meat source, as they gain their food from symbiotic algae within their flesh. They ask for nothing from us, but provide vast services which we take for granted.

So the next time you see an inconspicuous airhole in the sand, thank the clam that could be deep below for aerating the sediment. The shell of that long-dead mussel at your feet may have fed a sea star, and now is a home for barnacles and many other creatures. While that mussel was alive, it sucked in algae to improve water quality on our beaches.

And the sand itself may contain countless fragments of even more ancient shells. Clams silently serve as an important cog in the vast machine that makes our oceans, rivers and lakes such amazing places to be.

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However, this foot is most useful for allowing the clam to burrow into the sand. For this reason, the foot is strongest at digging, which allows a clam to submerge itself safely out of harm's way. Aside from digging into the sand, most clams then move by using water currents, which allows them to move from one region to the other. On the other hand, clams do not have a lot of control over how or where water currents carry them. Most clams have two different kinds of muscles.

The most basic one that they have helps them open and shut their shells via their "valve" muscles. These muscles are very strong and can allow some clams which, by nature, are required to live in water to survive for short periods of time outside of the water. The other muscle that clams have is a muscular "foot".

The results of a University of Florida UF study conducted in demonstrate the unique sustainability of Florida hard clam aquaculture. Three environmentally-beneficial ecosystem services water filtration, nitrogen removal and carbon storage provided by clam farming were examined.

Efforts focused on assembling values for ecosystem services specific to clam culture. Measurements, particularly for harvest-sized clams at water temperatures found in Florida, are not available through the literature. To address these information gaps, pertinent laboratory measures were determined. Compare what happens, over minutes, in the aquarium with clams right and the aquarium without clams left. A single littleneck-sized clam can remove 0. Clams play an important role in the cycling of nutrients, including nitrogen N.

Clams do not absorb nitrogen directly from their environment, rather they feed on naturally-occurring phytoplankton, which use dissolved inorganic nitrogen, available in the water, to grow. Thus, clams incorporate nitrogen from their food into their tissues and shells.

When clams are harvested, the accumulated nitrogen is removed from the water. Clams also play an important role in the cycling of nutrients, including nitrogen. For example, clams release nitrogenous waste urine that can be used by phytoplankton as a source of nitrogen. Once fertilized, these develop into free-swimming larvae which otherwise look like microscopic versions of adults.

As they reach maturity, they move to the seafloor and prepare to metamorphose into their adult form. The layers of the shell grow from the mantle and continue to grow every year as the clam ages. Some clams live and grow for many years while others have shorter lifespans. The mantle uses a two-fold process to produce the shell. First it creates a layer of protein, and then it overlays minerals on the protein base to create the hard exterior of the shell.

A clam seashell has a shell consisting primarily of calcium carbonate exuded by the mantle. Clams obtain this calcium carbonate from the water around them. You might notice that a clam shell does not have a smooth surface, but rough ridges along the top. Each year, clams produce more shell surface during the spring and summer when food is plentiful. But as winter rolls around and food becomes scarce they cease shell-making until conditions are more favorable.

Researchers can use these checks to estimate how old a clam is, though they don't provide an exact estimate as temperature, species and region of growth can impact the rings.