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A zebra shark (Stegostoma tigrinum) off the Maldives in the Indian Ocean. A project to reintroduce this endangered species to West Papua begins in November. Photograph: imageBroker/Alamy
July 8, 2021
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Kneeling on the seabed a few metres underwater, I pick up a clam and begin gently cleaning its furrowed, porcelain smile with a toothbrush. It’s a giant clam but a young one and still just a handful. Here in Fiji, giant clams or vasua as they are known, were so heavily overfished for their meat and shells that by the 1980s they were thought to be extinct locally. 

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