This post describes the beginning of a project assessing the comparative impacts of Ocean Acidification on two species of clams found locally in the Puget Sound

Approximately 200 individuals from each species of Manila Clam, Ruditapes philippinarum, and Pacific Littleneck Clam, Leukoma staminea, where collected in Liberty Bay

Collection occurred at low tide around 9 to 10 PM on February 15th, 2022 Clams were unearthed using a short rake, and were generally within 5-10 cm of surface in moderately gravelly areas. Manila clams were highly abundant, wherease Pacific littlenecks abundance was patchy. Areas were found with large numbers of what appeared to relatively recent mortalities in littlenecks, which we hypothesized may have been related to the recent heat dome in June-July 2021

160+ clams of each species were moved the the Chew Shellfish Center at the NOAA facility in Manchester and placed in bags containing 20 clams each in a flow-through system

20 clams of each species were placed in a cooler and transported to Seattle for histological processing the following day