Aboriginal Gardens Make Happy Clams
An ancient form of aquaculture practiced on the West Coast proves to be quite productive....
Clam gardens are beach-terraces that were constructed by First Nations on the West Coast over many hundred of years before European contact, in a deceptively simple form of aquaculture. Dr. Anne Salomon , a marine ecologist from Simon Fraser University, and her group, investigated just how productive these clam gardens were. They cultivated clams in the gardens and on normal beaches, and found that, in the gardens, clams grew, on average, twice as large as in their natural environment. Dr. Salomon thinks that we can learn from this low-impact form of traditional aquaculture.
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