Assessing Potential Benthic Impacts of Harvesting the Pacific Geoduck Clam in Intertidal and Subtidal Sites in British Columbia
Journal of Shellfish Research
Vol 34, no. 3, 757-775, 2015
Wenshan Liu et al
This paper is cited by Taylor Shellfish as supporting their application for a new geoduck aquaculture permit in Henderson Inlet, Thurston County. It does not.
First note the sponsors:
- Aquaculture Collaborative Research and Development Program of Fisheries, Ocean Canada
- Underwater Harvester’s Association
- BC Ministry of Forests/BC Timber Sales
Is this an unbiased study?
Reading the abstract would have you believe that there is no impact of geoduck aquaculture on the environment. When the details are examined relative to the proposed intertidal geoduck farm, the story is different.
One of their two plots, half the study, was subtidal and has no bearing on issues of intertidal aquaculture.
At the other site there were no geoduck harvested, only a very small simulated harvest of about 500 square feet, a miniscule area less than 1% of an actual geoduck plantation. The results are not scalable to an actual cultivation site. Because there were no geoduck present, mobilization of substrates did not include clam feces or pseudofeces.
Furthermore, there was no identification of organisms by species, and no way to tell whether one species increased or decreased. In short, there is very little contribution towards answering the questions about impact of geoduck aquaculture on the animals that live in the beach.