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When zebra mussels colonized Lake Erie, it began to recover
- lgrebe 7y agoI don't understand the title.
- credit_guy 7y agoIt's a bit difficult to parse. Zebra mussels colonized the Lake Erie at a time when it was so polluted that it had been declare biologically dead. In particular this happened: "Some of my readers may remember media stories from 1969, when the Cuyahoga River, which flows into Lake Erie, caught fire one hot summer day—yes, it had that much toxic waste in it."
- devoply 7y agoYes and yet humans hate zebra mussels and label them an invasive species because they are an economic menace screwing with pipes and ship hulls and costing billions of dollars of economic damage.
- kingosticks 7y agoWhat happens to a boat hull if you don't clear the mussels off? Do they actually damage it or does it just look unsightly?
- Someone 7y agoIts not about the looks. It significantly decreases top speed and fuel efficiency. https://www.simarine.net/protection-ships-hulls-fouling-corrosion/ https://www.simarine.net/protection-ships-hulls-fouling-corr...: ”The fouling of the vessel is the main reason for the increase in the roughness of the part of the vessel below sea level and therefore the increase in hull frictional resistance as it moves through water. As a result fuel consumption increases and vessel speed decreases. The slime (bio film – silt) on the submerged part of the vessel is responsible for an increase in vessel drag of approximately 2%. Seaweed increases the vessel drag by 10% and mussels by up to 40%. Increase in drag will directly impact on enhanced fuel consumption and significantly increased harmful gas emissions.”
- pvaldes 7y agoWill block the ballast water system (entry and exit). Will interfere with any bail water operation. Will increase the often huge fuel bill (more resistence to move in water). Will damage and increase friction in moving parts of the propeller. Will block water cooling systems putting the engine in risk. Will increase painting and cleaning bills. Will scratch rubber buoys that will need to be replaced faster. Will significatively ease bioincrustation by bigger animals And of course it cuts human skin
- tw04 7y agoIt's not just boats. These invaded the river I grew up on and I was fortunate enough to step on one while wading. It cut me bad enough I probably should have had stitches. While they may be good for cleaning a lake/river, they make it completely useless for swimming/wading without sturdy footwear
- inferiorhuman 7y agoDidn't the Cuyahoga catch fire a few times back then? … I just checked, the Wikipedia article opens with a statement claiming it's caught fire thirteen times. To say that the Cuyahoga river was polluted is a pretty dramatic understatement.
- dang 7y agoThe submitted title was "Zebra Mussels Colonised Lake Erie, So Polluted It Caught Fire". We changed it to try to represent the article more clearly.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rob74 7y agoWhile I understand the point about zebra mussels cleaning up lake Erie, I can't agree with the idea that we should welcome all invasive species. After all, the presence of e.g. feral cats on various islands or foxes in Australia is just another one of the messes humans made, and we should feel as responsible for the damage they do as we feel responsible for pollution. Zebra mussels may be one of the few examples where an invasive species was actually good for the ecosystem, other invasive species just exterminate or squeeze out native species, leading to a loss of biodiversity.
- jaspax 7y agoI don't think that Greer is claiming that we should "welcome all invasive species" as much simply pointing out that Nature doesn't stand still. What we call an "invasive species" is, from a broader perspective, simply Nature adapting to changing circumstances, which includes opening up new habitat to previously unknown species. This only looks odd or threatening if we assume that Nature should be static and fixed, and that only humans can or should enact environmental change.
- marcus_holmes 7y agoAlso, that evolution works by "the survival of the fittest". If an invasive species (that didn't evolve in the environment it's invading) is better-suited to the environment than the native species (who did evolve there, and by rights should be better suited to it), then that's a win for evolution. The fitter species survive, and will then evolve into the niches available. The introduction of mammals to New Zealand is a disaster for the birds that live there and that have evolved into all the niches available. But for the planetary biosphere, it's a win because the mammals are better suited to living there (otherwise they wouldn't be so successful). Cane toads, though... that one is going to be interesting.
- empath75 7y ago> But for the planetary biosphere, it's a win because the mammals are better suited to living there It's not a win in either case. It's just what happened. Evolution and nature and the biosphere don't have goals.
- pvaldes 7y agoThe gray format is insuferable
- kibwen 7y ago> Some of my readers may remember media stories from 1969, when the Cuyahoga River, which flows into Lake Erie, caught fire one hot summer day—yes, it had that much toxic waste in it. This actually understates the situation; the Cuyahoga caught fire no less than thirteen times since 1868. The 1969 fire was merely the one that served as a rallying cry to pass legislation to take action. https://www.alleghenyfront.org/how-a-burning-river-helped-create-the-clean-water-act/ https://www.alleghenyfront.org/how-a-burning-river-helped-cr...
- slfnflctd 7y agoMore of a philosophical perspective than any sort of real proposal, but worth a read if you're into that. It's a mid-length piece, looks longer than it is due to the comment section at bottom.
- jaas 7y agoIf you want to read more about this kind of thing, I can highly recommend this book: The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan It's incredibly well researched and written, and gave me a much better understanding of what's going with the ecosystems.
- sehugg 7y agoThe alewife invasion and mediation is an interesting fish tale: https://fishingbooker.com/blog/history-of-fishing-on-the-great-lakes-part-2/ https://fishingbooker.com/blog/history-of-fishing-on-the-gre...
- dole 7y agoWe had ConEd workers come to our schools in Ohio in the 80-90's to educate us about how they had to spend millions of dollars and hundreds of man-hours annually power washing the mussels out of the lakewater cooling pools and pipes at the Fermi II nuclear plant between Detroit and Toledo because the mussels prefer the warmer waters. I cursed and still cursed stepping on the sharp mussel shells lining the now clean and swimmable beach waters of Lake Michigan. Decades of misplaced vitriol. https://goo.gl/maps/VrWdpomeGvXZcFsJ6 https://goo.gl/maps/VrWdpomeGvXZcFsJ6
- lostlogin 7y agoLeaping out a boat into shallow water and landing on muscles or oysters is not misplaced vitriol.
- ctrlaltdylan 7y agoI was hoping this article would go more into the detail of other invasive species in the Lakes like Asian Carp and those nasty looking parasitic Laprey's.
- giardini 7y agoctrlaltdyaln says>"like Asian Carp..." Mmmmm! Good eating: "Eat The Enemy: The Delicious Solution To Menacing Asian Carp" https://www.huffpost.com/entry/eat-the-enemy-asian-carp_n_6324896 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/eat-the-enemy-asian-carp_n_63...
- ctrlaltdylan 7y agoI didn't know you could eat them! I'll have to try out this recipe thanks!
- canada_dry 7y agoEvery time I read stories about how polluted our (US/Canada) streams and lakes are it makes me shutter to think of how monumentally bad China must be with little to no environmental protection! This recent video of just one small, insignificant shop in China for example. It needs to somehow dispose of thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83GDV0xsTTs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83GDV0xsTTs) and my suspicion is that it goes into local rivers.
- bsder 7y ago> Every time I read stories about how polluted our (US/Canada) streams and lakes are it makes me shutter to think of how monumentally bad China must be with little to no environmental protection! We were that bad. The EPA (signed by Nixon!) is what turned that around.
- hyperman1 7y agoread 'excuse me sir, but would you like to buy a kilo of isopropyl bromide'. Gergel proudly tells of doing exactly this in The USA. Some kid started to mess with it and got a nasty accident, if I remember correctly
- gumby 7y agoHappy as I am about the result (the essay wanders a bit after getting to the "punch line") it reminds me how bizarre I find that people regularly eat mussels, oysters, vertebrate livers, kidneys and the like. The idea of eating a used filter really revolts me.
- nosianu 7y agoWell, that is one unusual source for an HN submission! Quite interesting read - about the author, from that website: > John Michael Greer is a widely read author and blogger whose work focuses on the overlaps between ecology, spirituality, and the future of industrial society. > He served twelve years as Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America, and currently heads the Druidical Order of the Golden Dawn. He currently lives in East Providence, Rhode Island, with his wife Sara. "Ancient Order of Druids in America" and "Druidical Order of the Golden Dawn" - who has heard of those before? I looked them up and found - https://aoda.org/ https://aoda.org/ - http://www.druidical-gd.org/ http://www.druidical-gd.org/ I'm not one to dismiss something just because it is... unusual. I must admit I would not ask if this was some professor of biology at XYZ University. I have no idea what to think about an American Grand Archdruid. Does anybody have any well-founded opinions about those organizations? I like their page title "Frequently Thrown Tantrums" though -- http://www.druidical-gd.org/ftt.html http://www.druidical-gd.org/ftt.html
- Aloha 7y agothe FTT page is hilarious. It's also something that speaks to every person who has run a website for an organization, when I was webmaster for a convention, I had a text file with canned responses, 8 of them or so, that answered 80% of the questions received, all of which were answerable by reading the website.
- ordu 7y agoMy philosophy professor in a college was also a Professor of Magic History in a School of Witchcraft and Wizardry[1]. Really. After that I do not pay much attention to such a things, I prefer to judge by what people say, not by how do they look. [1] http://ostentum.ru/en/ http://ostentum.ru/en/
- kragen 7y agoAs you can see from his skeptical remarks about Gaia consciousness in this post, he's pretty sane, despite sounding weird. I've enjoyed reading his blog The Archdruid Report, which I'm disappointed to see he deleted.
- HillaryBriss 7y ago
- cjensen 7y agoI think this piece is misguided. Some background: as a kid, my family boated on the SF Bay. I can remember when cormorants were rare on the bay. There were no porpoises or dolphins in the bay. It was rare for a whale to enter the bay. There were zero brown pelicans. All of those observations are entirely opposite of today's bay. Acts of government have seriously improved water ecosystems. Now that memory is a data point of one. But we also all should know that the Cuyahoga has not caught fire in 50 years and that's not because of the work of zebra mussels -- they don't consume stuff which is volatile enough to catch fire spontaneously. In summary, before reading the piece everyone should be aware that waterways have generally been substantially cleaned up in the last 50 years. With that as background, I have immediate questions: What evidence is there that Erie was cleaned up by mussels and not by new environmental laws? Even if the mussels helped, were they a necessary condition to cleaning this up? Or did they simply advance the cleanup by a few years? The piece contains good skeptical thinking, but it does not sufficiently lay evidence that Zebra Mussels were a cause of Erie's cleanup, rather than a coincidence. It's pretense at being a factual explanation of history is unearned.
- taftster 7y agoYou're right, the article makes too strong of a correlation between the affects that Zebra & Quagga mussels have had and Lake Erie's recovery. But I'm curious, does that totally discredit the article? No doubt, if left alone without any government policy, Lake Erie may not have recovered from purely natural means, such as the introduction of an invasive species. I believe, like you, that government policy has helped in the restoration, at least has helped speed it up. But I don't think that's the author's real point. The point he is ultimately making is stated in the article: > "Our culture — meaning here the collective culture of modern Western industrial society — is obsessed by the false belief that nature can’t adapt to our actions." and: > "Our habitual way of dealing with Mother Nature assumes that we talk and she listens, full stop, end of sentence. [...] What we need to recognize, rather, is that we’re engaged in a conversation with the old broad. We said “pollution,” she quipped “zebra mussels;” we said “internal combustion engines,” and she smiled and said “coastal flooding.” We can listen to her responses and learn from them - or not, and find out the hard way what else she has to say." I think the author is suggesting that nature will, in the end, restore balance and that we, as species, could possibly help by simply getting out of the way or maybe working with natural processes. Understanding nature's process rather than fighting it is likely the best way out of the messes that we've created for ourselves.
- brandonmenc 7y agoI'm from Erie and lived there during all of this, and can confirm. Especially this: > And the human reaction? That’s where things get interesting. The human reaction was all-out panic Zebra mussels grabbed headlines in the local paper for years. Everyone went nuts. We all thought it was doomsday and believed you'd never be able to float a boat in the bay ever again.
- corliss78 7y agoI remember seeing all of the warning signs about zebra mussels when I was growing up there.
- mrfusion 7y agoI wonder if you could invent a pool filter powered by zebra mussels? You’d obviously need a good way to keep them contained in the filter area and out of the piping and pool proper. Can it be done?
- Something1234 7y agoI doubt it. Maybe in a natural pool closer to a swimming hole, but who would want those mussels to be in their bool. If they colonize the pool floor, you're going to end up with your feet being cut up.
- ordu 7y agoIn the text of the article there are words: "we could always roll snake-eyes in the evolutionary crapshoot" I'm not an English native and I cannot grasp the precise meaning of the "to roll snake-eyes". What does it mean? Does the rolling of snake eyes somehow different from rolling human eyes? Or maybe snakes cannot roll their eyes(?) and... I don't know. Would someone be so nice to explain this, please?
- jeffmcjunkin 7y ago"Rolling snake eyes" means rolling two ones on six-sided dice. In many games that's a bad throw, as it only adds to two out of a possible twelve.
- ChuckMcM 7y ago"snake eyes" is the value '1', '1' with two six sided dice. In the gambling of games of Craps it means the player instantly loses their bet.
- sha666sum 7y agoIt refers to getting two 1's when rolling dice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_eyes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_eyes
- ilamont 7y agoI've been visiting the St. Lawrence river downstream of the Great Lakes since the 1970s. My mother grew up in the era before the Saint Lawrence Seaway was established in the 50s, which made the river navigable by larger ships (although not container ships) below the Thousand Islands to Montreal and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, opening up the Great Lakes to international shipping and trade. The river used to be filthy. Lots of industry on the U.S. and Canadian sides and in the Great Lakes dumped all kinds of untreated waste into the ecosystem. I also remember a major oil slick which I believe was caused by a maritime accident. This was before the advent of better navigation technology and environmental protection laws. The water may have become cleaner over time, but I noticed that by the early 2000s, the types of fish that I had caught off the dock by the dozens as a child in the 70s and 80s -- perch, sunfish, bass -- were becoming extremely rare. Ten years later, these shore species had all but disappeared except for a few bays and harbors. The disappearance of these fish coincided with the appearance of the zebra mussel. The lore told here is that the zebra mussels were carried over by Ukrainian freighters in the 1990s (similar to the story in TFA). But other new species have appeared on the river, too -- cormorants, carp, and Canadian geese are very visible now, and they weren't in the past. We also seem to have more extreme variations in water levels, with flooding this year and in 2017, and very low levels in other years. Surely that impacts water temperature and breeding conditions for some aquatic species. I think some people blamed the zebra mussels and the cormorants for the disappearance of many species of fish, but I think there's a larger story taking place, with many factors contributing to changes in the ecosystem.
- jswizzy 7y agoWhat sort of pollution does that blogger think is coming out a nuclear plant? He seems to think cooling towers and water show how pollute. It's just water.
- dm3730 7y ago> What sort of pollution does that blogger think is coming out a nuclear plant? If it's an effluent or sewer pipe, do you think "it's just water"?
- HillaryBriss 7y agoI stopped reading at Gaia is a tough and feisty old broad because no one -- not even a Druid -- is allowed to say "broad" and be taken seriously nowadays. I'm sorry. I didn't write the rules. That's just the way it is.
- pvaldes 7y agoA better title would be: "When zebra mussels colonized Lake Erie it pivoted irreversibly towards a totally different ecosystem" It never recovered.