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HEPCA Tridacna Hatchery
February 2024
HEPCA, the Hurghada Environmental Protection and Conservation Association, is by far the most visible environmental actor in Egypt’s Red Sea. I knew this before I arrived in Port Ghalib to visit their Tridacna clam hatchery (though the several USAID-sponsored billboards I passed along the highway were a good reminder of HEPCA’s reach). Theirs is simply a name that pops up in conversations about the Red Sea as though they are a part of its natural environment—like Ras Mohammed or the longimanus.
HEPCA formed in 1992 after a concerted effort by several of Hurghada’s diving centers to protect coral reefs from the anchors of dive boats. Their solution was to install fifty mooring buoys across the most popular diving spots, and from this singular focus (which took several years to achieve) the NGO was born. Since then, HEPCA has installed over 900 buoys in what is the largest mooring system in the world. It has also launched many other projects, including solid waste management plants, public awareness initiatives, and conservation campaigns. The Tridacna hatchery I was visiting, the first of its kind in Egypt and the wider region, is part of a marine research center launched in 2016. There I met Ahmed, a young marine biologist who oversees the hatchery.
The center is located at the northern edge of Port Ghalib, and is a cluster of small buildings designed to appear ecologically and culturally congruent rather than high-tech. A stretch of sand separates it from the sea a few minutes’ walk away. It was quiet when I arrived, and the noon sun was made tolerable by a strong breeze. The only sound was the whirring of a large water pump.
Ahmed led me through a shady corridor of young trees to the hatchery. In shape and size, it appeared similar to a greenhouse and was likewise covered in a translucent tarp. Inside, more than twenty open top tanks—the smallest filled with 300 liters of seawater—are divided into two groups along the length of the structure, with a shallow drainage channel separating them. On one side are the Tridacna hatchlings (“One mistake and they could die,” warned Ahmed) and on the other side the older, less vulnerable clams.
Tridacna are a genus of large saltwater clams, and the two species cultured in this hatchery (T. gigas and T. squamosa) are easily recognizable in the Red Sea by their brightly colored, psychedelic-looking mantles. Like corals, they rely on microalgae for food in a symbiotic relationship. Where once they were abundant, Dr. Mahmoud Hanafy, one of Egypt’s foremost marine biologists and a scientific advisor to HEPCA, noticed that their population was declining due to overfishing and poor fishing practices.
Though this hatchery launched in 2018, it wasn’t until 2020 that they were able to successfully cultivate their first generation. That batch sits in a large rectangular tank in the corner of the hatchery, some of them as large as ten centimeters and all with vibrant blue mantles. HEPCA has already repopulated several parts of the coast with them, using divers to nestle the clams along the coral reefs. Clams from this hatchery have also been sold to aquariums abroad, which helps keep the project financially sustainable.
Another success for the project has been their ability to induce spawning inside the tanks of the hatchery. Tridacna begin their lives as microscopic spawn, and after fertilization it takes five months before they are visible to the naked eye. Once that happens, they are very gently detached from the tanks’ surfaces and placed onto coral rocks sourced from the desert. These are in turn placed inside plastic crates that rest at the bottom of the tanks.
Ahmed begins his day by draining each tank until the water rests just above the crates. He then pours in a solution of water and algae to feed the clams. (This nutritional mixture is kept on site in a temperature- and light-controlled room inside repurposed plastic bottles.) He then cleans out any excess algae and refills the tanks before conducting some more checks, like making sure the water is properly aerated and that no rock is too crowded with clams.
The benefit of pumping water directly from the sea, he explained, is that it ensures the correct pH, salinity, and water temperature as the clams’ natural environment—three fewer factors they would otherwise have to control. The flipside, however, is that when their natural environment itself becomes less hospitable, the effects are echoed in the hatchery. The success of Tridacna fertilization is affected by water temperature, and Ahmed informed me that their most recent spawn was very poor, down from more than 100,000 to just 30,000. Last year’s scorching summer is likely to blame.
For the clams that do survive, something exciting awaits them after their second birthday. Ahmed led me out the other end of the hatchery and over a sandy path in the direction of the beach. There, just beyond the hatchery, lies a deep fissure in the rock where clear, emerald-hued seawater surfaces eight meters beneath our feet.
It is a striking natural formation. Through the wind-tossed water you can see the rock extend down into the earth. The rock itself is layered, revealing glimpses of its past from millennia to just a few hours ago, where the last high tide mark is seen. There are several of these fissures, all along the same perpendicular line from the beach. Plastic crates identical to the ones found inside the hatchery lay in the water beneath us, brimming with clams. Here, basking in sunlight, they await their final relocation to the watery world beyond.
