SPECIAL TRAITS AND PROMISES OF THE GIANT CLAM (TRIDACNA MAXIMA) IN FRENCH POLYNESIA

Naturally drawn to the sea,Polynesians are traditionally fish-ers and lagoon or coastal seafoodconsumers. With an increasingpopulation in the Society Islands(Fig. 1) and a correspondingincrease in the demand for lagoonseafood products, certain islandshave diversified their economicactivities to meet the demand forseafood. In some French Polynesianislands, fishers are frequently seencollecting and cleaning giantclams on site before draining andfreezing them for export to Tahiti,or exchanging them when shipsarrive. In fact, many artisanal fish-eries have developed over the past30 years, targeting both fish andinvertebrates; an activity that hasbeen boosted by the arrival ofships with cold storage roomsand, more recently, by inter-islandair transport.French Polynesia’s geographicdistribution is wide and sparse(118 islands scattered out over anEZZ of some 5 million km