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This finding reported in the article is interesting: "Related to this discovery is an extreme irony. Governments and organisations around the world have, for a

This finding reported in the article is interesting: "Related to this discovery is an extreme irony. Governments and organisations around the world have, for a very long time, tried to stop algal blooms from strangling rivers by reducing phosphorous pollution, believing the algal feed off this nutrient boost. But in doing so, they might have encouraged the green snot that is Didymo. 'It goes against everything we’ve been thinking for 50 years,' says Spaulding." The main takeaway from this interesting article is that we still need to do a lot more foundational science about microorganisms and their ecological relationships with various changes in the natural environment.

hyperbovine 12y ago
Or more fundamentally: attempts at eco-engineering are destined to fail. This is the most ironclad reason I can come up with for why conservation is the only route.
- freehunter 12y ago
  The problem is, things get damaged. Sometimes very severely. It's not possible to keep everyone from acting irresponsibly, and as humans in a modern society, we have a lot of impact on nature. All it takes is one ship with a handful of zebra mussels to infest the entire Great Lakes ecosystem. All it takes is one person accidentally releasing Asian grass carp for it to infest the entire country. All it takes is one farmer using a bit too much fertilizer to form massive algae blooms in a nearby lake. Conservation is an important preventative step. But that's like telling a bleeding person that they shouldn't have stepped on that nail. The damage is done, and the patient needs antibiotics and stitches now. It's important to prevent damage from being done, but it's just as important to fix it after the fact.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - hyperbovine 12y ago
    With both Asian carp and zebra mussels, (and lionfish and starlings etc etc etc) we are essentially powerless to stop their advance. To extend your metaphor, we literally have nothing in the way of antibiotics and stitches to salve this wound. We need to be trying orders of magnitude more than we actually are to prevent such calamities from happening in the first place. People have this misplaced faith the we as a race can engineer our way of out any problem, and it's just not true. Ban the nail, I say.

hyperbovine 12y ago

Or more fundamentally: attempts at eco-engineering are destined to fail. This is the most ironclad reason I can come up with for why conservation is the only route.

freehunter 12y ago
The problem is, things get damaged. Sometimes very severely. It's not possible to keep everyone from acting irresponsibly, and as humans in a modern society, we have a lot of impact on nature. All it takes is one ship with a handful of zebra mussels to infest the entire Great Lakes ecosystem. All it takes is one person accidentally releasing Asian grass carp for it to infest the entire country. All it takes is one farmer using a bit too much fertilizer to form massive algae blooms in a nearby lake. Conservation is an important preventative step. But that's like telling a bleeding person that they shouldn't have stepped on that nail. The damage is done, and the patient needs antibiotics and stitches now. It's important to prevent damage from being done, but it's just as important to fix it after the fact.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- hyperbovine 12y ago
  With both Asian carp and zebra mussels, (and lionfish and starlings etc etc etc) we are essentially powerless to stop their advance. To extend your metaphor, we literally have nothing in the way of antibiotics and stitches to salve this wound. We need to be trying orders of magnitude more than we actually are to prevent such calamities from happening in the first place. People have this misplaced faith the we as a race can engineer our way of out any problem, and it's just not true. Ban the nail, I say.