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Clams filter the water and check whether the water is polluted or clean
- neonate 6y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20201229081029/https://www.polishnews.co.uk/poznan-the-clams-filter-the-water-they-check-whether-the-water-is-polluted-or-clean/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201229081029/https://www.polis...
- drjasonharrison 6y agoMinimally invasive to the fresh water muscles, parallel redundancy, human plus laboratory confirmation. Like using rats to find landmines or dogs to find contraband without the long training times.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mhh__ 6y ago(Un?)fortunately, Boeing apparently didn't use Ferrets as furry little cable runners https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/71461/did-boeing-really-use-ferrets-to-run-wires-through-aircraft-during-construction https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/71461/did-boein...
- Jkvngt 6y agoHow many clams are needed? Where do you get them?
- krallja 6y agoFrom the article: 24 at a time, for a duty cycle of 3 months. > We have three measuring devices in the company and eight clams in each. In total, we “employ” 200 individuals during the year. This other article[1] says they get them from a lake, and are returned to the same lake after three months. They are marked so the scientists won’t pick up the same clam twice. 1: https://www.boredpanda.com/clams-measure-water-quality-poland-fat-kathy/ https://www.boredpanda.com/clams-measure-water-quality-polan...
- smiley1437 6y ago3 teams of 8 clams (mussels) If the water quality is normal, the clams open and close randomly. If all 8 clams close, something is off with the water and prompts more investigation. They get the clams from a nearby lake, and somewhat comfortingly, they retire them back to the lake when they've done a tour of duty. They're even marked so they don't reuse the same clams! Nice to hear that they don't just euthanize them even if they are just clams. Guess I'm getting soft in my old age
- brnt 6y agoIt's not a sign of softness that you take a (minimal) effort to save a lifeform (that was useful to you). It's basic humanity, for lack of a better term (animality?).
- frongpik 6y agoThey gotta feed those clams with something valuable in return to their service to really restore the balance.
- jrumbut 6y agoI'd love to see what that leads to on an evolutionary timescale. Water departments of the future just go from clam bed to clam bed delivering treats and collecting water quality reports.
- endymi0n 6y agohttps://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rentnerteich https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
- bourgoin 6y agoMaybe "animal husbandry" is the term you're looking for?
- brnt 6y ago
- kubusz 6y agonot only Poznan but there are multiple polish towns which have clams on duty - eg. Warsaw, Rzeszów
- ktta 6y agoNew York City has a project with Oysters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9oUGWuKRwg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9oUGWuKRwg
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoThis has been known for a long time. I have often heard it suggested that places do this. Glad to see it actually being done. I guarantee that if they did it around here, some knuckleheads would row out to the clam beds at night, and harvest them all.
- Aromasin 6y agoMentioned in the comment below, but a few places are implementing it including New York City, South Carolina, and the Northern European Sea just from a quick YouTube search: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9oUGWuKRwg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9oUGWuKRwg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysmb-lH6A7A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysmb-lH6A7A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgAONydtbnU&feature=emb_title https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgAONydtbnU&feature=emb_titl... I also know of a couple projects in my area, near Poole and Christchurch harbours in the South of England, that have successfully reintroduced oyster beds in areas which were previously barren.
- cl0ckt0wer 6y agoLink's not working for me ATM, but here's another link about how they perform in the real world: https://www.bayjournal.com/news/fisheries/pumped-up-performance-oysters-filtering-feat-overstated/article_bbe67d38-8f09-11ea-a5ab-5fd7465dee21.html https://www.bayjournal.com/news/fisheries/pumped-up-performa...
- jbarrs 6y agoarchive.org seems to have a copy of this article https://web.archive.org/web/20201230222606/https://www.polishnews.co.uk/poznan-the-clams-filter-the-water-they-check-whether-the-water-is-polluted-or-clean/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201230222606/https://www.polis... EDIT: the other article linked is unavailable in the EU because of GDPR. Thankfully, archive.org has a copy of that article as well. https://web.archive.org/web/20200721190853/https://www.bayjournal.com/news/fisheries/pumped-up-performance-oysters-filtering-feat-overstated/article_bbe67d38-8f09-11ea-a5ab-5fd7465dee21.html https://web.archive.org/web/20200721190853/https://www.bayjo...
- ta988 6y agoSorry it was working for me when i posted it, is there a way for me to edit it?
- dukeofdoom 6y agoMaybe they could have alerted about the lead contaminated water in Flint Michigan? A disaster that will affect the next generation. Lead Lowers IQ's in Children and increase crime rate in adults. BTW, the invasive Zebra mussels have done a great job clearing up the Great Lakes. At times the water is so clear on a sunny day in the summer it can look tropical blue.
- dccoolgai 6y agoThe water being crystal clear looks cool, but it's an ecological disaster for larger fish in the food chain that depend on the turbidity of the water for ambushing smaller fish.
- dukeofdoom 6y agoThats probably True. But to what extent will nature mitigate this, and offset the negative with positives. For example: 1) Clearer water means that light reaches deeper. Potentially allowing more aquatic plants to grow over huge new areas. Providing new habitat, food sources and shelter for fish. 2) Zebra mussels might trap some chemicals like PCBs. And accumulate them in their shells. Once the mussel dies, they fall to the bottom, and might permanently lock up them up into the sediment.
- danielheath 6y agoEventually, sure. Not on human timescales, though. The new habitat is for species that don’t exist in that lake (since it’s full of fish adapted to how it was).
- RamshackleJ 6y agowrong. The great lakes has been an ecological experiment since the St. Lawrence seaway was opened and continued to be that when the Chicago river was reversed. There are almost no "native" species left in any of the lakes (excluding superior). If you want sustainable native great lakes ecology you need to cut them off from the oceans, re-reverse the flow of the Chicago and do a one-off massive trout and other native fish stocking. None of that is ever going to happen so until then we can keep experimenting with ecology and in that case Zebra muscles is much better than massive population booms and busts of alewives or other invasive fish species (Salmon were originally introduced to help keep the alewife population down)
- Frost1x 6y agoIt's a pretty cheap sensor that can potentially detect all sorts of toxins in the water as a supplement to normal water quality analysis. You really can't expect any sort of reasonable sensor technologies to detect wide ranges of potentially harmful contaminants in water supplies while you can use mussels, clams, etc. as biological sensors--the modern "canary in a coal mine." I worked with a research project that was sensing, collecting and analyzing types of mussels in rivers that were used as an indirect measurement of water quality in the river. The assumption is that the mussels can act as a proxy for certain contaminants. In fact, they actually filter a lot of water daily so you can occasionally analyze one as to what sort of contaminants it absorbed as a proxy for whats probably in the water. Meanwhile, water intakes typically only monitor for known and suspected contaminants. They have to rely on other indirect measurements like changes conductivity as a signal to analyze the water and these are noisy and fairly unreliable compositional change detection proxies. Neat stuff.
- mrlala 6y agoWhat kind of "feedback" do you get from the mussels in a polluted environment? Is it death or something more interesting?
- hrrsn 6y ago>Mussels open the shells and every now and then take in a small amount of water, filtering out everything that is suitable for eating. When the water is polluted, they do their best to separate from it, and everyone’s shells just close at the same time. This happens within two minutes. If two or three clams close, it doesn’t have to mean anything, but if there are eight, it’s an alarm. Then our role is to find out what has upset them so much and find out if it is a real or a false alarm – says Podolski.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- studius 6y agoWhatever it is, it seems like we should put some GPS and transmitters on those clams and put them online.
- minitoar 6y agoLove that they just glue a magnet to the shell then presumably use a Hall sensor or reed switch. Cyborg shellfish.
- dunce2020 6y agoIs the water vegan?
- itronitron 6y agoInteresting, in the US there are several facilities that use Bluegills to detect water quality problems. https://www.army.mil/article/50369/bluegills_monitor_treated_groundwater https://www.army.mil/article/50369/bluegills_monitor_treated... https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Anti-terror-fish-guard-S-F-s-water-Bluegill-2553021.php https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Anti-terror-fish-guard-S...
- discordance 6y agoReminds me of the clams that were getting high in Puget Sound - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44256765 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44256765
- mmhsieh 6y agoFireflies serve a similar kind of function; they only thrive in low-pollution areas.
- baldfat 6y agoZebra Clams are changing the Great Lakes. Pretty much changing the whole ecosystem.
- RamshackleJ 6y agoChanging it from one invasive species dominated ecology to a different invasive species dominated ecology. at least the new invasive ecology has clean water.
- baldfat 6y agoWell since we KILLED the Great Lakes in the early 20th Century
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kull 6y agoFor those who love eating clams and just like myself wonder how safe it is to eat clams, while they filter huge amount of water -- yes, it would be like eating a used filter, that's why clams that you get in restaurants must be grown in very clean water [1]. [1] https://www.thurstoncountywa.gov/planning/planningdocuments/shellfish-facts-only.pdf https://www.thurstoncountywa.gov/planning/planningdocuments/...
- gumby 6y agoI am squeamish about eating any used filters: bivalves of any sort (and other filter feeders), liver, kidney... People have been doing so for a long time which is why I use the term "squeamish" which implies some lack of rationality. I thought oysters were "purified" by putting them in a bucket of clean water overnight. Myth?
- hackily 6y agoThat is to let them spit their sand out, and it only takes about 20 minutes. If you want to let them spit overnight, you should put them into salt water, fresh water will kill them. Most shellfish for consumption are farmed, and it's really important that they're grown in clean water to taste good, especially if the intent is to eat them raw.
- dinkleberg 6y agoI don't know if it's rational or not, especially since I'm sure there are plenty of microplastics and pollutants in everything else, but I've completely removed filters & anything whole like shrimp from my diet. I enjoy shrimp and scallops, but honestly I feel like given my current knowledge it's not worth it. Maybe we'll find out that all the microplastics in the ocean are totally fine, but better safe than sorry in my opinion.
- luckman212 6y agoAre the microplastics just in the ocean though? I thought they were turning up just about everywhere now, even human placentas[0] [0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412020322297 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...
- lxe 6y agoLove the article, but what is this site? I can't find any info on Polish News or who runs it. No about link and all social media links are empty.
- Mathnerd314 6y agoJust checking the article, it's a scraped auto-translation of a polish article: https://tvn24.pl/poznan/poznan-malze-filtruja-wode-sprawdzaja-czy-woda-jest-zanieczyszczona-czy-czysta-4690274 https://tvn24.pl/poznan/poznan-malze-filtruja-wode-sprawdzaj... So it seems to be one of those content-farm sites, similar to the ones responsible for disseminating fake news on social media
- dfischer 6y agoThis is an odd form of cross species slavery. It’s one thing to agree to the conditions and another to force it upon life. This... has a lot to contemplate. Service dogs don’t agree but there is an essence of joy there. Can you feel a clams emotions? I guess at this point you get close to the contemplation of plant life. There’s one thing to kill life and use it for food and then another to use it as a test for poison. There’s probably more nuances. I’m not taking a stance that any of these things are wrong. I am however trying to make sense of the consequences of these pieces of the architecture of life that we participate in.
- dfischer 6y agoWhy is this downvoted?
- cybernoodles 6y agoVery unscientific claim on my part, but I'm sure it doesn't make them better off to be restricted to servitude for another species.
- dfischer 6y agoCan you expand on that? What you're saying sounds interesting but it's vague or ambiguous.
- knuthsat 6y agoI thought that mussels and bivalves are like plants, there's no central nervous system and nothing else allowing them to be capable of consciousness.
- dfischer 6y agoHow can we define what "capable of consciousness" is? As we become a species closer to exploring the vast cosmos, we have to be humble in our assumptions of what consciousness or life is. It's quite a Copernicus error to think that humanity is the center of relative consciousness to compare against. What consciousness is may be entirely incommensurable - which would be a serious error in our discovery of what else exists in the universe. There's a lot of wisdom in Star Trek: TNG, and it feels more prudent than ever to contemplate these lessons as we near the point of becoming space faring species.
- jmpeax 6y agoIf the water very slowly gets more and more polluted, will the clams notice? Do they need to be periodically recalibrated?
- qsort 6y agoI wonder if clams could be composed to make a Turing-complete clam computer. It looks like this kind of behavior is sufficiently deterministic to be programmable.