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Meet ‘Giant Clam Girl’ of S’pore and her team's plan to save species with Lego bricks
Also a champion for coral reefs and cowrie snails, Dr Neo Mei Lin has been researching ways to improve and protect marine ecosystems
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Marine biologist Neo Mei Lin is using Lego bricks to cultivate corals because their flat surfaces allow the animals to rest and grow.
PHOTO: SPH MEDIA/BENNY LOH
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For nearly 20 years, marine scientist Neo Mei Lin has been fighting to save the giant clam, the unsung hero of the ocean. The clam helps remove pollutants from water, shelter fish and crabs, and produces material that builds up coral reefs. But it is increasingly under threat from climate change, pollution and poachers.
Since 2006, Dr Neo has studied the giant clam – the largest species can grow to over one metre long and weigh about 300 kg – to help improve its conservation.
From 2011 to 2018, she led a restocking project that grew the clams in a hatchery and transplanted them onto coral reefs, where they live, in Singapore’s waters.
“Knowing that I helped these clams to grow in the lab and then return to the reefs is an astonishing experience for me,” says the 36-year-old senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Tropical Marine Science Institute.
"When I started this project, I didn’t know if I’ll succeed. But when I did – and also later growing them big enough for the reefs – it was an almost surreal feeling and I’m definitely happy to have grown them from scratch."
'Fertility specialists' at work
Find out how Dr Neo Mei Lin and her team grow corals in the laboratory
Her work has also shone a global spotlight on the clams’ plight. In 2021, she was the first from Singapore to receive the non-profit Pew Charitable Trusts’ prestigious Pew Fellows Program in Marine Conservation.
The organisation taps on an international committee of marine science experts to vet nominees for the fellowship and select the recipients. “I’m thrilled to be named a Pew Marine Fellow as it validates my years of research and outreach efforts on the giant clams,” she says.
With the fellowship, the “Giant Clam Girl” – as she is affectionately known as in her field – has been reaching out to regional researchers to seek information on their areas’ giant clam populations. This month, she conducted an in-person workshop to discuss the conservation and management of giant clams with relevant stakeholders from South-east Asia.
During the workshop, she launched her book, A Field Guide to the Giant Clams of the Indo-Pacific, which aims to raise public awareness of the mollusc.
“My hope is to build a network of people in the region to help giant clams in many different ways, whether it is monitoring their populations, raising awareness about them, engaging with coastal communities who fish, eat and sell them to find ways to do so sustainably, and more.”
‘Fertility specialist’ to corals, cowries and clams
While Dr Neo has become a leading expert on the giant clam, particularly the fluted giant clam, she has expanded her research to include hard corals – the foundation of coral reefs and cowrie snails – which help keep reef ecosystems in balance by eating algae and small invertebrates, and other giant clam species such as the boring giant clam.
She explains that corals, cowries and clams are common in the aquarium and wildlife trades. Her research team is studying how to culture them in the laboratory, so that researchers and traders can use these instead of wild specimens for their work and sales respectively.
One of the methods she and her team is employing requires fragmenting corals collected from the seabed and attaching them onto Lego bricks to regrow. Once the fragments grow to a healthy size, they are transplanted back into the sea and the bricks are used again for future reef regeneration projects. (see sidebar)
“If we can find out how they grow under different marine conditions, and how changes in the climate affect them, for example when the water is warmer or more acidic, we can also use the information to refine conservation efforts. We can develop protocols and best practices for those in the aquarium trade, for the species’ well-being.”
Hard corals can reproduce asexually when storms, waves or marine animals break off fragments that eventually form new colonies. Dr Neo and her teammates have shed light on how well the corals tolerate fragmentation, the minimum size the fragments need to be to grow on their own, and other issues.
With the cowrie snail, she is starting from scratch. “We’re working on the tiger cowrie, one of the largest species. When we did a literature review, we found one paper on how to rear them in an aquarium. We had nothing to go on, except that single study.”
Her team has been feeding the snails different vegetables to find an optimal diet for them, and observing their behaviour around the clock, including installing cameras to capture what they do at night.
“The goal is to identify a mating behaviour and period of mating, so that we know when to culture the larvae in the laboratory in the future. We’ve had different female snails laying eggs and hatching them recently, so now our laboratory is full of cowrie babies, and we are trying to get as much information from them as fast as we can.”
Dr Neo’s research on the boring giant clam – “so-called because they burrow into the seabed, not because of their nature” – has been met with several challenges, including the inconsistent production of eggs and sperm needed to produce viable larvae.
Still, her team has successfully reared some baby clams, and is currently monitoring their behaviour, growth and survival in the aquarium.
She shares that this work is particularly close to her heart. “It’s the only other native extant species of giant clam in Singapore, so I want to do what I can for it.”
Fighting marine plastic pollution
As Dr Neo makes progress on her work with the corals, cowries and clams, she is also tackling the issue of marine plastic pollution. “Considering the well-known negative impacts of plastic pollution on marine wildlife, urgent actions to reduce the rate of plastic pollution into the oceans are needed,” she explains.
She is leading a project to understand the extent of such pollution along Singapore’s coastlines, as part of a larger, joint effort with scientists in the city-state and the UK to investigate marine plastic pollution in South-east Asia.
Her research includes surveying parts of Singapore’s beaches, mangroves, seagrasses and coral reefs to collect plastic litter as well as water and sediment samples to look for microplastics. This includes conducting the surveys during the country’s monsoon seasons to determine their influence on the extent of the pollution.
“We’re also studying some species, such as sea cucumbers in the seagrasses and coral reefs, and fiddler crabs in the mangroves, to see if they have absorbed microplastics from the environment into their bodies,” she says.
So far, her team has found that plastic pollution is omnipresent across all the coastal habitats surveyed in Singapore. The mangroves, in particular, are hotspots as they trap more marine debris and microplastics compared to the other habitats.
She notes that the project will provide more information on the types and sources of plastic pollution in the different environments. “If the microplastic particles are nylon, they are probably from our clothing. When we wash synthetic fabrics made of plastic, they shed microplastics that travel through our sewage and end up in the seas.”
“From a management point of view, the more data we have about where the plastic pollution comes from, the better we will be able to make suggestions to prevent leakages into the seas.”
For Dr Neo, all of her research bends to the same purpose: To improve and protect marine ecosystems.
She stresses that such conservation is crucial: “By protecting and maintaining nature’s integrity and its wildlife, we can also preserve their benefits for people’s well-being, helping both the planet and us.”
We The Earth is a partnership between The Straits Times and Rolex and its Perpetual Planet Initiative. Marine biologist Neo Mei Lin is a stellar example of the many individuals who are doing their part to solve the issues earth faces.
