Manila clam (Ruditapes philippinarum) production time series

This dataset provides the long-term record (from 1986 to 2007) of manila clam (Ruditapes philippinarum) production in the north-western Adriatic Sea. The species was introduced to Europe in the 1970s and to Italy in 1983, changing the social, economic and traditional structures of the fishing sector.

The dataset has been extracted from Turolla E., 2008. L’allevamento della vongola verace nel Delta del Po. Grafiche Adriatica, 96 pp and Zentilini A., 2008. La venericoltura in Italia a 25 anni dal suo esordio Il Pesce N. 3, the data have been collected manually and standardised in the unit of measurement.

The production data were collected by Aurelio Zentilin (Almar Scarl) from the Marano and Grado lagoons, by Emanuele Rossetti (Consorzio Coop. Pescatori del Polesine) from the Venice lagoon and by Edoardo Turolla (Istituto Delta Ecologia Applicata Srl) from the Po Delta in the Emilia-Romagna and Veneto regions and from the Goro lagoon. 

 The dataset is provided in two formats:

- Microsoft Excel XLSX file, including 3 sheets (Dataset, Fields and units, Taxonomy)

- CSV files (UTF-8), 3 files corresponding to the 3 sheets of the Excel file

The dataset includes 88 records of manila clam production in different coastal areas (i.e., Marano and Grado lagoons, Po Delta area, Goro lagoon) and 22 records of manila clam production in the whole area, for a total of 110 records. The fields are described in Table 1.

All the dataset fields are described in the Excel sheet/CSV file “Fields and units”, while the taxonomic related information for Ruditapes philippinarum is provided in the Excel sheet/CSV file “Taxonomy”. Information extracted from the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS; https://marinespecies.org/) is provided here (see details in Table 2).

Table 1. Fields in the dataset (NA=not available).

Field

Darwin Core term

Unit

Precision

Note

Area

Location

NA

NA

Considered area for the estimate of Ruditapes philippinarum production

Year

dateIdentified

YYYY

NA

The year on which the data refere

Production

organismQuantity

tons of eel

NA

Total production of Ruditapes philippinarum for the refered area

Table 2. Provided taxonomic information.

Taxon

the name used in the dataset

ScientificName_accepted

the name accepted according WoRMS

AphiaID

Unique identifier in WoRMS

Kingdom

Taxonomic level

Phylum

Taxonomic level

Class

Taxonomic level

Order

Taxonomic level

Family

Taxonomic level

Genus

Taxonomic level

Species

Taxonomic level

This dataset allows the analysis of the trends in manila clam production in the years following the introduction of R. philippinarum in the main coastal areas of the northwestern Adriatic Sea (i.e. 1986) to 2007 and highlights the economic and social importance of manila clam aquaculture in the northwestern Adriatic Sea. Further information and reflections on this subject can be found in Turolla E., 2008. L’allevamento della vongola verace nel Delta del Po. Grafiche Adriatica, 96 pp and Zentilini A., 2008. La venericoltura in Italia a 25 anni dal suo esordio Il Pesce N. 3.