Unmanned Aerial Vehicle The latest drone news
Call it a shelling of sorts.
A high-tech drone hovered above the Indian River Lagoon Friday to spread ‘cluster bombs’ of tiny baby super clams to seed a natural defense of an estuary that’s been under ecological attack for decades.
Friday’s drone deployment was part of the Indian River Lagoon (IRL) Billion Clam Initiative, spearheaded by the Coastal Conservation Association Florida (CCA Florida), a nonprofit sportfishing and marine advocacy group. CCA joined scientists at Hog Point, south of Melbourne Beach, to spread another 3 million clams in the lagoon, toward the goal of adding 1 billion clams to the estuary within a few years.
This raw footage, courtesy of CCA, shows the drone in action on Friday:
“The IRL Billion Clam Initiative is a science-backed, collaborative effort with the goal of improving water quality in the IRL,” Frank Gidus, CCA Florida director of habitat and environmental restoration, said in a media release. Gidus called Friday’s clam planting “an historic event for the IRL, as clam restoration has never been conducted on such a broad scale, and we are proud to work with such amazing partners who helped make this day happen.”
Drones soar above clam-planting by hand
Clams are filter feeders that remove algae and excess nutrients from coastal waters. They can also help to blunt waves, lessening shoreline erosion.
Most local clammers stopped making a decent living in the lagoon more than three decades ago. Theories vary as to why. Some blamed the economy, others state rules that were too expensive to follow and/or all the new homes, roads and resulting runoff. But researchers point more to prolonged periods of extremes: droughts or periods when heavy rains dumping too much fresh water into the lagoon for too long.
The Billion Clam Initiative uses state-of-the-art technology to distribute clams systematically on a largescale basis. Spreading clams via drone helps to overcome predation pressures and enable many more clams to be restored in the lagoon, CCA officials said in the release. Drone distribution also helps plant clams in specific spots and densities, “vastly accelerating the maturation process when compared to manual spreading,” they added.
“Birds do not eat them because the clams drop straight to the bottom but other predators like fish and rays can and will eat them,” Mary Hillyer Peelen Walther,” Frank Gidus said in an CCA email response. “The idea behind putting this many down at once is to overwhelm the system so there’s enough for predators to feed on but also enough to survive and grow and spawn.”
The clams are deployed on private leases and are protected, so the public isn’t allowed to harvest them.
On Friday, CCA joined Capt. Blair Wiggins of Blair Wiggins Outdoors and officials from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the University of Florida (UF) Whitney Lab, to deploy 3 million clams using a patented drone and innovative methodologies.
Clams help form a foundation for rebuilding shellfish and other marine life populations. The clearer water they create enables more sunlight to reach seagrasses, so the bottom plants can photosynthesize and grow. Seagrass is vital habitat for fish and other lagoon wildlife.
The Billion Clam Initiative, which began in 2017, has planted more than 27 million clams in the lagoon. For every $1 donated to the initiative, 100 clams are released in the lagoon. To help kick start the initiative, CCA Florida and the Duke Energy Mariculture Center donated $100,000 in October 2023.
Can ‘super clams’ clear up the lagoon?
For the past several years, UF has been planting baby clams transplanted from hardy lineages in Mosquito Lagoon to a lab, then to waters near River Rocks restaurant in Suntree, where they are providing glimmers of hope that these “super clams” could join an army of other filter feeders to help cleanse the lagoon.
The UF researchers had searched far and wide for clams with the genetic “right stuff” to survive the estuary’s harsher conditions along the Space Coast — made harsher by decades of overfertilizing, leaky septic tanks, sewer systems and stormwater runoff.
They looked throughout the entire 156-mile-long estuary for any surviving clams until finally striking shellfish gold — one pocket of sturdy “super” clams in southern Mosquito Lagoon. They harvested 39 palm-sized clams there, brought them to the lab and spawned 40 million larvae.
Word got out, spawning a grass-roots effort to grow back these fittest of shellfish.
The tough-as-nails ancestors of the baby clams released Friday survived it all: toxic algae blooms, powerful hurricanes, rancid sewage spills — you name it. Time will tell if this generation of “super clams” can do the same.
Jim Waymer is environment reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Waymer at 321-242-3663 or [email protected], on X (Twitter): @JWayEnviro.
