A gallery from our babymoon excursion to Savaia, Samoa, where they have a giant clam sanctuary. Ian and I always try to visit whenever we’re in Samoa to see how the clams are faring, and enjoy whenever we’re on the south side of the island.

We paid our entrance fee to the family living nearby (the fees go towards village community funds which protect this marine sanctuary area), and got in the lagoon. There are two mixed fresh and saltwater rock pools as soon as you enter, but we skipped those and snorkeled out to the buoy markers where the clams were.

However, we couldn’t find it for like the first two hours!! We swam to the spot where we remember swimming to last time, but after several failed attempts getting out and getting back in the water to find the clams, and almost giving up the third time, I looked it up online to double check the location and we just missed it by a little bit! It can be found by swimming several hundred meters straight out and is right in the middle of the buoy markers.

We swam over again and stayed for another hour to hang out and admire the colorful and unique patterns from the four species of giant clams: Tridacna gigas, T. maxima, T. noae, and T. squamosa. The largest species, T. gigas, is the world’s largest bivalve species, so it always gives us a feeling of awe and inspiration to see such a magical creation with our own eyes.