Habitat Description of the Threatened Freshwater Clam, Galatea paradoxa (Born 1778) at the Volta Estuary, Ghana

Abstract

This research was conducted to at two of the few remaining habitats of the threatened freshwater clam (Galatea paradoxa) at the Volta Estuary in Ghana to describe the current state of the clam habitat with respect to the physicochemical water parameters and the characterize the bottom sediment on which they thrive. The research was carried out over an 18-month period with the aim of facilitating the transplanting of juvenile clams from their natural habitats to portions of the estuarine environments with similar physicochemical and characteristics which will consequently lead to the conservation of the clampopulation and expansion of the clam habitat. The measured physicochemical water parameters were fairly similar at the two locations and exhibited temporal fluctuations which could be attributed to seasonal changes as well as anthropogenic activities within the catchment of the sampling locations.The results of the grain size analyses revealed very low sedimentological diversity and it was observed that the estuarine sediments fall under the sandy textural group (>95%) which characterized both sampling locations in the Estuary