Posted on 02/28/2014 1:51:59 PM PST by neverdem
Since they arrived in the Great Lakes in the 1980s, two species of mussels the size of pistachios have spread to hundreds of lakes and rivers in 34 states and have done vast economic and ecological damage.
These silent invaders, the quagga and zebra mussels, have disrupted ecosystems by devouring phytoplankton, the foundation of the aquatic food web, and have clogged the water intakes and pipes of cities and towns, power plants, factories and even irrigated golf courses.
Now the mussels may have met their match: Daniel P. Molloy, an emeritus biologist at the New York State Museum in Albany and a self-described Bronx boy who became fascinated by things living in water.
Inspired by Rachel Carsons Silent Spring in high school, Dr. Molloy, now 66, has long been a pioneer in the development of environmentally safe control agents to replace broad-spectrum chemical pesticides.
Leading a team at the museums Cambridge Field Research Laboratory in upstate New York, he discovered a bacterium, Pseudomonas fluorescens strain CL145A, that kills the mussels but appears to have little or no effect on other organisms...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Thanks for the ping!
Even if it were cheap cat food or food for shrimp farms built inland, the solution is a capitalist one.
They’re pretty scrawny and might be full of pollution. I wouldn’t feed it to my cat let alone eat it myself.
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