This Japanese Fisherman Discovered Bolivia’s Only Giant Freshwater Clams
This Japanese Fisherman Discovered Bolivia’s Only Giant Freshwater Clams
August 11, 2015 / 6:00 am
By Sorrel Moseley-Williams
What links a Japanese fish farmer, a Peruvian Chilean chef, and a Bolivian restaurateur?
Freshwater clams and a land-locked Latin American nation, obviously.
Making the obscure habitat of southeast Bolivia their home, Gustavo Mizushima’s clams recently caught the attention of chef Jaime Barbas García and restaurateur Jorge Calvo from the Jardin de Asia restaurant in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. But for the second generation Japanese fish farmer, his discovery of the mollusk was slightly more accidental.
“I’d get in the pools to go fishing and one day, I trod on something sharp,” remembers Mizushima. “Thinking it was a stone, I picked it up to throw it out of the pool and saw it was a big clam. That was around 20 years ago.”
While clams first appeared on Earth around 488 million years ago, the story of Mizushima’s large freshwater variety begins in 1945, when the Bolivian government granted green cards to 270 Japanese families at the end of World War II. Given 50 hectares of virgin land, these issei or “first generation” went on to found several communities near Santa Cruz de la Sierra.
More:
http://munchies.vice.com/articles/this-japanese-fisherman-discovered-bolivias-only-giant-freshwater-clams
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Do not forget Bolivia has pink river dolphins. [/center]
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