In this episode of the "How to Protect the Ocean" podcast, host Andrew Luan discusses the fascinating connection between giant clams and the efficiency of solar panels. He highlights the vibrant colors of giant clams, which are not only visually stunning but also play a crucial role in coral reef ecosystems, particularly in the Southeast Pacific.
The key focus is on the algae, specifically zooxanthellae, that live within the soft tissue of giant clams. These algae absorb sunlight and are essential for the clams' survival, as they facilitate photosynthesis and contribute to the clam's calcium shell formation. Remarkably, giant clams can absorb about 95% of the light that hits them, significantly outperforming current solar panel technology, which has an efficiency of around 67%.
Luan emphasizes the potential for replicating the light-absorbing mechanisms of giant clams in solar panel design. By studying the arrangement of the algae within the clams, scientists could potentially enhance solar panel efficiency, making them more effective in harnessing solar energy. This innovation could be pivotal in addressing global energy needs and reducing reliance on fossil fuels.
The episode underscores the importance of protecting biodiversity, as the loss of species like giant clams could mean missing out on valuable insights and advancements in renewable energy technology. Luan encourages listeners to appreciate the interconnectedness of marine life and its potential benefits for humanity, particularly in the context of sustainable energy solutions.
Link to article: https://www.animalsaroundtheglobe.com/these-giant-sparkly-clams-hide-the-best-solar-panels-ever-found-2-240554/
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what if i told you that giant clams can help solar panels be more efficient imagine that a clam a thing that sits in the ocean has beautiful colors around it has purple blue green yellow like just very very bright fluorescent colors stands could be like four meters wide four meters long however you want to measure it looking amazing and i'm telling you that this clam can actually help solar panels become more efficient and help in the increase of renewable energy to be able to meet our energy needs globally what if i told you that would you believe me i wouldn't i first i'd be like no i don't think so i don't see the connection but it has to do with algae that sits in these clams that allows it to absorb sunlight and allows the algae that actually uses the sunlight to be able to flourish and that's going to help the way that it's arranged that's going to help the solar panels become more efficient we're going to talk about that on today's episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast let's start the show hey everybody welcome back to another exciting episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast i'm your host Andrew luen this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean how you can speak up for the ocean and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action and this is the place if this is the first time you've been here you know we're on youtube now we're on spotify video right now we also have audio on apple podcast spotify and so forth but if this is if this is your first time or your new is the first couple times and you haven't checked out our website please do speak up for blue.com is where you go to find out all of our podcast episodes our youtube episodes all of our podcast like other podcasts that we have beyond jaws just aquedox it's just a bunch of different ones that we have that are very good for you to be there uh it's and of course we also have information that is sent to you through our newsletter so if you want to get that sent right to an inbox monday to friday at eight a.m. eastern every week you can do so every day of the week you can do so by going to speak up for blue.com/newsletter that's speak up for blue.com/newsletter and check out what we have we send news we send job ads we send our videos and updating podcasts and so forth it's a lot of fun check that out speak up for blue.com/newsletter let's talk about clams right now now this is probably not the clams that you're thinking about not the edible clams that you would get on a plate when you go to a seafood restaurant you pay a lot of money for or you go to your seafood dealer or your seafood supermarket and you're like hey you know what i want clams you get these little clams that come in and you eat them and they're delicious and especially if they're grown sustainably uh they're they're very good this is a different type of clam this is like one of my favorite species of all time i'm a big invertebrate guy i'm not sure if you've noticed that cuttlefish are big uh thing octopus i'm very interested in these types of species they really make me uh they make me happy they make me happy and clams giant clams are really important in coral reef areas especially in the southeast pacific these things are massive these things are not only live animals but they also act as uh in the picture that i'm going to show you act as the coral reef they have corals living on their shell they're a hard shell coral they require calcium and they have this fleshy inside that shows these beautiful colors that kind of come out so as the clam opens during the day it'll end and when it's healthy it'll come out with this like soft tissue and it'll just come out it almost looks like a flower but it's like this this neon blue green purple uh yellow different types of colors that just kind of show and it what it does is it actually sits there and it grabs it does two things one is it grabs sunlight and this is what we're going to be focusing on today but it grabs sunlight but it also filters in other organisms like filters in plankton and to eat and it goes through a siphon and it comes out and so it helps clean the water now i used to be a marine aquarium hobbyist i loved being a marine i loved having the reef in my house like having a aquarium i don't do it anymore because i can't spend as much time i also worry about importing animals and where they're coming from and so forth it became really difficult i felt bad if something if something died and so i stopped doing it however one of the things i used to fall in love with was giant clams giant clams were the best they're still the best they're i would love to see if i've never actually snorkeled in the south east south east specific where they're found i would love to go see them they would be an amazing uh you know bucket list item for me to go see them not sure about you i'd love to hear your bucket list item in the comments below but these things are gorgeous and i remember having them in a tank on part of as part of my coral reef and i used to have to feed it you know almost like buy a like a little pipette and you'd have to feed it plankton and so i'd grow my own plankton or i'd buy plankton that was grown from a lab and i would go in and i would squirt it and have to directly squirt it this is these are not easy species to take care of if you are a marine aquarium hobbyist you need to be almost in the advanced category to be able to take care of them properly to make sure they're healthy you need the right lighting and you need the right plankton to actually feed them they will clear up your tank especially when you first get them that's the one really realize when you first get a coral reef tank and you get these types of corals that really siphon in and these clams that really siphon in and take out all the plankton in in your water if you have cloudy water that has a lot of organisms in it that will kind of clear up that water it's really kind of cool to see plus it brings in more sunlight so if you have lights it'll bring in more light to the corals as well as the clams now the way the clams work as i mentioned before you feed them manually with plankton or they use sunlight actually both they use sunlight they absorb sunlight so that there's zoanthellae the actual algae cells that actually live within the soft tissue of the clam grab light to allow those algae to live and probably bring off some calcium build up their calcium shell so they need that light to be able to absorb that light they need to kind of go out of their shell open up their shell in that soft tissue yes and that's why you see the colors that you actually see in these giant clams if this these organisms aren't there if this algae is not there it's the the species will eventually die it's kind of like a bleaching coral in a way but the tissue will deteriorate the clam will die and it won't be able to eat anymore won't be able to function the interesting part of this is getting into the solar panels solar panels right now are that you worry about the efficiency i think according to this article that i found in animals around the globe i think the efficiency was about sixty some odd percent i think is what it is sixty seven percent not the best efficiency but not terrible the interesting thing is the corals only reflect five percent of that light away from the organism so that means it absorbs 95 percent of the light so the efficiency is a lot better increased by 30 percent than the than the solar panels that are now the common solar panels that you have now now imagine if you can duplicate the efficiency in the clam the giant clam and put it in a solar panel where you can get more from each solar panel wouldn't that make it a lot better especially when we're trying to solve our energy crisis especially when we're trying to divest our uh infrastructure of fossil fuels this would be really cool so the way that they looked at it they did like a lab analysis they looked at how the algae were arranged within the fleshy tissue of the giant clam they were arranged in a line and that made it a lot easier to be able to absorb absorb the sunlight then once they can absorb the sunlight they use that sunlight and they incorporate it into the body and they feed off of it and so forth they use photosynthesis imagine if you're able to duplicate that that formation and put it on solar panels once you're able to do that the solar panels are able to thrive they're able to increase their efficiency the other thing that they're looking at is the type of algae that's there are they optimal for doing this uh this light can they deep can they be replicated into solar panels to make sure that the the compounds that actually absorb the light from the algae cells can they be duplicated and can they be added to solar panels to increase the efficiency of these solar panels here's the kicker we found this out from a giant clam i asked you before if i said that we can increase the efficiency of solar panels by looking at giant clamps i asked you if that if you would believe me some of you are probably like no i don't even know what this guy's talking about this is this is crazy talk i thought the same thing but imagine now if we didn't have giant clamps if we didn't take care of our coral reefs properly and we didn't know about these giant clamps this is why we are like scientists are always talking about protecting biodiversity protecting as many animals as possible because you never know what we're going to learn from these animals like we protect sharks not only because they're an apex predator and they regulate the food web but also because they have a lot of properties that have helped us in cancer research these animals are important to our own health we've looked at how animals regenerate like starfish like corals and so forth and we looked at the compounds in there and how we can help in terms of growing cells in terms of growing organs there are a lot of different things that you can get from the ocean that will help us in pharmaceuticals we know horseshoe crabs have this like coagulant in their blood that they're just used for vaccines there's a lot of things that benefit us that are in the ocean but if we don't protect biodiversity we don't know what we're going to miss and you're probably like well yeah well if you don't know we're going to miss well we don't then we don't know what we're going to miss it's no big deal what if we can cure the next big disease that comes in what if we can cure more cancers what if we can cure more diseases that affect us or or be able to you know fortify our vaccines and our other medicines that will help us in recovering from these different diseases that we face whether they be new diseases or whether they're old diseases the modern medicine is based off of what we notice and observe and replicate from nature ocean has a lot of biodiversity we are doing a very terrible job in protecting that biodiversity because every time we talk about biodiversity people are like ah whatever it has nothing to do with me at least with climate change when we say we got to protect the ocean because it helps us regulate climate change and reduce climate change at least we know there's like a direct effect if we reduce climate change and through the ocean or protect the ocean to help reduce climate change we know that we can help and we want to make sure there's enough algae in the water we want to make sure the water quality is good enough we want to make sure that we're protecting species and protecting habitats that allow us to develop and protect these natural processes that allow carbon dioxide absorption and methane absorption and not the release of these of these greenhouse gases that is a little easier to understand for people to say hey you know what yeah we need the ocean it's every second breath is because of the ocean but a lot of times when it comes to biodiversity I just I see people they just glaze over you know they're just like I just don't get it like yeah we want to protect species we want to make sure that the animals are safe they're well for the animals are good and we protect them but what do we really need them for like if we lose the species is it that big of a deal who knows right I think it's a big deal just to lose a species and the extinction rate of species is crazy but we still need to protect everything because we don't know what we're missing we don't know what we're going to miss out on the next species that it goes extinct could save part of humankind and I know some of you are just like well yeah well there's too much of us anyway but we still need to help people it's still in our blood it's still what we do as a human species to help as many people as possible to do that we need to protect biodiversity like giant clamps protect those species because they will help us become more efficient in absorbing light and absorbing solar energy to help our energy needs and help divest us away from fossil fuels dirty fossils like coal oil gas all that kind of stuff and get us back into renewable energy get us more sustainable and still be able to fill the energy needs of this today's world like it because we need a lot of energy and so biodiversity is a big deal protecting biodiversity is a big deal it should be important to you it's important to me should be important to everybody and we need to get that across by highlighting stories like this giant clamps are extremely important and so I wanted to highlight it with you I wanted to highlight the fact that we need to protect biodiversity and that giant clamps are super cool and you need to know about them if you haven't known about them before and if you're ever in the southeast pacific and you're able to dive into snorkel or snorkel on these animals or within these animals don't touch them they're very sensitive but be able to see them I I hope you do because that is on my bucket list and I hope it's on yours as well at least now anyway but love to hear your thoughts on these giant clamps and how they can make solar panels more efficient the story I'd love to hear your thoughts on solar panels and if you're an engineer or something like that you want to talk more about solar panels and how they can help the ocean please feel free to reach out to me at how to protect the ocean that's all one word how to protect the ocean on instagram but don't forget you can follow us subscribe subscribe to us on spotify youtube apple podcast any of your favorite podcast apps you can get access to us just by subscribing or following and hitting that notification bell and I want to thank you for joining us on today's episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast I'm your host angeloo and have a great day we'll talk to you next time and happy conservation
