A few years ago when I was scuba diving in both Malaysia and Thailand, we
were told that bombing of reefs was against the law, yet on some days we
heard underwater explosions every couple of minutes throughout the day.  I
have no way of knowing who was doing it but I suspect that people are making
their living fishing this way, and it is not tourists.

"Wesley M. Thorsson" wrote:

> The attributing "mining" of Tricacnidae to tourists as a major problem
> is baseless.  Undoubtedly one or two tourists have done that, but any
> major depletion is not done by tourists (shell collectors, I presume
> they mean)
>
> In the past, in the market in Suva, Fiji, one or two Fijians were
> selling Tridacna and had their meat in buckets including the mantles.
> Not very appetizing looking.  So far as I know, the edible and
> marketable part of Tridacnae is the muscle, which is about 3 or 4 inches
> in diameter and also about that long in a 3 foot diameter clam.  In
> Palau, when a Palauan man brought us out to shell in an area between
> Koror and Pelileu, he enjoyed the muscle raw, cut up into small cubes.
> We also thought it tasted good.  In Cook Islands, the boat drivers also
> took a six inch Tridacna for a snack on the muscle.  The shallow reefs
> in Itutake have thousands of dead Tridacna shells, and the clams you see
> on the reef are under 6 inches.
>
> The primary eaters of Tridacna from the open reef are undoubtedly the
> local people, who greatly outnumber tourists on most of the reefs.  Most
> of the dissappearance of Tridacna is undoubtedly from this cause, and
> improved availability of the areas to local people with outboard boats.
>  The sale of large shells is possibly a cause in some areas, but it is
> much more likely a biproduct of killing the clams for local food.  The
> eating of Tridacna is no more unethical than the eating of other clams
> which are on the menu worldwide, but there has to be some control of the
> process with Tridacna to insure their continuing availability.  There
> has been control of commercial clams in most countries for a long time
> for this purpose.
>
> There are Tridacna cultivation labs on many Pacific Islands:  Palau,
> Cook Islands, Kosrae, Pohnpei, and Solomon Islands among others.  These
> raise the Tricacna for two purposes:  (1) produce replacement clams to
> keep up the reef population and (2) for sale of meat (primarily to
> Japan) and shells to support the aquaculture activity.
>
> At least in the past, in the area outside Koror, Palau, Commercial
> Fishing Vessels would put out boats on the isolated reefs (not available
> to most Palauans) where Tridacna were large and in such quantity that
> they were separated by only a shell length or two.  In a short time, a
> boat crew could insert a knife in a clam, separate the muscle from the
> shell and put the muscle in the boat, about filing the boat in a
> morning.  While I was in Koror, one boat had been captured by Palau
> authorities and the ship wheel removed and the ship moored off shore
> several hundred feet with the crew restricted to the ship.  The boat had
> been in that status awaiting the arrival of a circuit judge for about a
> half year.  I was told that the usual punishment was thousands of
> dollars fines and loss of the boat.
> --
>                      Aloha from Wesley M. Thorsson
> Editor of Internet Hawaiian Shell News, a monthly Internet Publication
>            122 Waialeale St, Honolulu, HI  96825-2020,  U.S.A
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