The pictures below show the coverage of the raceway (5.6m x 1.4m) after we put back those 2.5M juvenile clams; what you see is only clams & nothing but clams one day after the cleaning process. Also a very modern Christmass tree we saw at Hong Kong airport on a trip to Hainan in Dec 2014, just before the hostile take-over 2 weeks later.

These last pictures from TMDC were taken before Christmass 2014 after we cleaned all the 4 raceways with juvenile clams at the same time; the 32cm plastic basin has a 6cm layer of small clams 1-3mm in size or 7lt (2 gallon), an estimated well over 2.5 million juvenile clams, all obtained from only 8 spawning clams into 3 raceways.            Our biggest juvenile Derasa sitting on a Maxima brood-stock was 51mm at an age of 7 months and 3 weeks; normally it takes one year to reach 50mm for T,Derasa.

Even the 3 months old Maxima seed-clams only 3mm in size need regular scraping and cleaning to survive; it may seem a very rough way of doing this, but it's the only way to make sure our mortality rate remains practically undetectable. 

This is now November and our oldest clams are 7 months and growing well; they also need more cleaning and for that we simply drain the raceway, scrape the clams into a heap, take the whole mess out to separate the clams from the dirt and put the clean juvenile clams in a clean raceway for them to continue to grow under the best possible conditions. 

In September we had the very anticipated visit of Colette Wabnitz, SPC's (New Caledonia) expert specialized in aquarium trade and aquaculture; she was impressed by the production we did get in such a short time and also by the variety of colors of our brood-stock.  She also took some DNA samples for identification of the new species Tridacna Noae recently described in some Pacific islands.We took the opportunity to test our brand improved new 'stone age' BBQ with turkey-tail, chicken, pork-chops, sausage etc. And last but not least, see here some pictures of 5 weeks old Maximas, and 5 months old Derasas!

Our first spawning of Derasa & Maxima was in the first week of May; the biggest Derasa from that lot is about 4 months old and now 17mm as seen on the US 10cts coin, all those 'patches' of clams in the raceway have between 10 to 50 or more clams.

At the end of August, we had to wrap a large black plastic tarpaulin around our water storage tank which was getting too hot after we cut the trees that were shading it but also shedding their leaves in our raceways during the heavy winds from the tropical depressions.  We had some major success with 2 new spawnings of the more common T.Maxima and even T.Squamosa. We are now preparing for the much anticipated visit of a very important visitor from the SPC in Noumea who will investigate if and how SPC could help the Yap farmers getting in on the 'action'.

It's now the end of July and after a succession of 5 tropical depressions in 4 weeks, we finally get some sunshine to take these pictures with my underwater camera. The pictures of the juveniles were taken AFTER the cleaning operation, all you see is 'patches' of 2 - 3mm clams ( Derasa & Maxima mixed ), not dirt or sand, some have 5 clams, some have dozens, some must have hundreds.  Altogether we estimated having around 50.000 juveniles in the first 3 months of breeding, second phase coming soon as soon as this crazy weather stops; unfortunately it still does not look good as a 'monster' is building up East of Guam and sucking in all clouds from Palau to Pohnpei, giving us very strong continuous winds with heavy short showers.  See here a Google Earth picture of the "Dance of the T.Ds" taken on 29 July; fortunately these 2 fizzled out and the third one is now a Typhoon on it's way to Taiwan or Japan!  We can't wait to see what other amazing colors we will get in all those clams we produced?  

By the middle of April, exactly seven months after my arrival in Yap, I was finally able to move to live on the hatchery site and Yap Telecom came with a very clever machine to dig and install my new phone line which also connected me back again to the Internet. To avoid any more surprises with the unpredictable climate, we started making some temporary rain protections over the raceways with the only flimsy material available here in Yap and so far it's working. So we continued spawning again and had very good success with the Maximas filling 3 raceways with millions of healthy larvae which are now only a few days from settlement. The Derasa brood-stock will need some 'conditioning' for a few weeks before trying another spawning attempt.
It is to be expected that these rain protections will not be able to resist strong winds the way they are now, so we will have to order some clear fibreglass roofing sheets from China to install a more permanent and robust system.

Then in April started the spawning trials, first with Derasa brood-stock imported from Palau almost 30 years ago but they did not seem ready and gave only small quantities of eggs, then later we tried the local Maximas from the reef, but these were at first very 'uncooperative' as they refused to spawn during daytime hours and were always going off at night, when  controlled spawning is much more difficult due to constant attacks of millions of sand-flies and mosquitos. After a few failures we finally got them under control but then another bad surprise came and destroyed 7 raceways with larvae after extremely have rains dropped the salinity in such short times that our pumping system could not cope with.

By the end of March I had my 74 th birthday at the site with my partner, my crew & friends, even this amazing fire Sunset came to the party.

Once we had the power installed, the real hatchery work started with collecting the brood-stock, testing all the equipment and fixing all the 'bugs' in our system, like air and/or water leaks, pumping problems, initial staff basic training etc. In between all this we had the visit of the Australian Ambassador to FSM (photos later) and a delegation from the Swedish Embassy also, all very interested in what we are trying to do here in Yap.

March 7, after installing a pumping by-pass system and also repairing and reinforcing the main sea-water storage tank, the hatchery is now fully operational, but still waiting for the POWER to be connected to the site; in the meantime we and the electricians are back working on the house containers.  

Feb 21, another week without rain, so we finished the air-lines over the raceways and worked on setting up the sea-line water intake for the whole hatchery. We had a few anxious moments with that long PVC pipe going out about 120 meters but at the end all went well and we started testing our diesel pump to fill the big elevated blue water storage tank. After 30 minutes pumping, at 2/3 full we had the biggest disappointment of the week when one corner of the storage tank started to collapse on itself and leaking, showing a structural defect in the manufacturing. 
We had hoped to be fully operational this week, unfortunately this has now been delayed by a few days.  
Once the hatchery is ready, we have to go back to finish those house containers, setting up an IKEA type of furniture with Chinese instructions!!!

Feb 14, taking advantage of the good weather we started the above ground water intake plumbing and drainage, finished the brood-stock tank and tried out the fiberglass rod frame system for the air outlets; all worked out fine and we are now only one week away from being fully operational.

Feb 8th, at last this week the rain stopped so we switched work to the hatchery and progress was really fast; we assembled the 6 'pizza slices' of the 30.000 lt water storage tank in 2 days, then we prepared the drainage system of the raceways and finally we assembled all 14 raceways in one day only.  This was a super team effort that went much faster than expected and earned everybody a couple of beers on Friday afternoon. Just need the finishing touches now and we can start spawning the clams.

January 31, bogged in, progress is frustratingly slow due to early & very wet raining season. Unable to avoid leaks we finally decided to put a second roof over the containers. As the saying goes: "after rain comes sunshine"  let's hope it won't be too long !

After some problems with shipping delays, "D" day finally arrived on 11 January in the New Year; first the small container with all the raceways which is going to be our future workshop, then the BIG one with all the rest of the hardware like electric & diesel pumps, blowers, a generator, PVC pipes & fittings, water storage tank etc etc, plus the 2 house containers elements which are going to be my on-site accommodation.  Now the 'serious' work can finally start!

Dec 6th 2013, as advised by our water-storage tank supplier we made some final reinforcements on the foundations; notice the water surface in the background of the picture, it's not a lake, it's Yap's lagoon usually as calm as a lake, what a site!

Now on 29 Nov,  finishing all the 144 concrete footings for our raceways etc, we are adjusting the final level for each structure and by next week preparations will be finished and waiting for the hardware from China expected here in Yap by Dec 26. This great job was achieved thanks to the assistance of my partner Gus and our  contractor 'supervisor' John, plus the hard work of our diversified team: master builder General Julius, truck driver 'dynamite' Jerry, carpenter 'all rounder' Gilbert and last but not least, Daniel the machine operator and 5 star BBQ chef who served us the best 'Turkey tails', crabs, lobsters & fish every Friday after each week's work.  Congratulations and thanks to all; the final completion will start in January next year and if the clams want to 'cooperate' we will be 'in business' & breeding by early February, probably a 'world' record'!   
 TO ALL INVOLVED, JOB WELL DONE !

After all the problems of last week, we finally started digging the trenches for the raceway footings, but lining and leveling them up was more difficult than expected.  The boys worked very hard in soaring temperatures and we finished the footings of the first 4 raceways on 14/11/13.

After a 2 days Typhoon disruption we wanted to start of the footings of the raceways, but soon realized we had to remove the tree-stumps and their enormous root-systems first. We called in some heavy equipment and 2 hours later it was all done, but then we had to get rid of all those stumps, so we called in some even heavier equipment which buried the lot and fixed our boat inlet wall in the mangroves. As bonus we ended with some 20% more usable land area, 9/11/2014.    Next week we start on the 14 raceways footings.

First some views of the highest point on Yap, then the building of the footings of the sea-water storage tank and the workshop container which were finished on 1 Nov 2013, with site cleaning and some BBQ to finish the week.

The clearing of the trees has started on 23 Oct 2013 and now the real size of the site is revealed; also today we could see the channel very clearly as shown here, it's 200 ft wide and at least 3/4 mile long, bringing clean ocean water from the reef right  to the shore. We have our own shower block already and a small private bay to keep our future boats.

On 20 Oct 2013 the lease agreement has been signed by the Chiefs of the Malaay Community for our new allocated hatchery site which is about 1/3 of their Public Park and will be able to accommodate close to 60 large fibreglass raceways for the production of seed-clams to be farmed by Yap Communities for the Asian sea-food markets.   A few trees will be cleared, others will be pruned; site preparations starting immediately for arrival of hardware from China within a few weeks.  First expected spawning by the end of February 2014.

This is 'treasure' island, a small private place where my landlord keeps his 120+  Derasa brood-stock clams which he donated for our project.  The hospitality & generosity of the people here is simply incredible.

Below some pictures of the future hatchery site with small private bay & beach plus a 'men's house' to relax after work.       My temporary apartment is on the left of that green building; the only small inconvenience here is the super slow internet, everything else feels like Paradise.

Here some colorful clams wanted by the aquarium industry.

Pictures of the Exmouth clam farm project which had to be abandoned because of unsuitable climatic conditions, much too hot in summer, too cold in winter; don't try this in a dry desert climate, it's just not viable!

Pictures of Reefarm on Fitzroy island near Cairns in 1988 & 1989.