
When zebra mussels colonized Lake Erie, it began to recover - barry-cotter
https://www.ecosophia.net/a-conversation-with-nature/
======
cjensen
I 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
You'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.

------
nosianu
Well, 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)

~~~
ordu
My 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/)

------
jaas
If 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
The alewife invasion and mediation is an interesting fish tale:
[https://fishingbooker.com/blog/history-of-fishing-on-the-
gre...](https://fishingbooker.com/blog/history-of-fishing-on-the-great-lakes-
part-2/)

------
kibwen
_> 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-
cr...](https://www.alleghenyfront.org/how-a-burning-river-helped-create-the-
clean-water-act/)

------
canada_dry
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!

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
> 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
read '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

------
rob74
While 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
I 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
Also, 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
> 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.

~~~
mrfusion
You raise a good point too. if there are no wins or losses in nature maybe it
comes down to promoting species we enjoy most?

~~~
ordu
How about maximizing diversity? Because it is more fun for people and because
it increases fitness of the biosphere as an ultimate ecosystem?

As for me it sounds better. Yes, local people could be annoyed by lions or
venomous snakes, but for the most humans lions and snakes are just a curiosity
that makes world more interesting.

~~~
marcus_holmes
but I think this was the point of the article.

Losing highly-adapted, very fragile species to a more robust invader is a loss
of biodiversity. But that holds biodiversity as a higher virtue than
survivability and adaptability. Is that justified?

This is the thing: if species A out-performs species B in a given ecosystem
niche, and species B becomes extinct as a result, that's how nature works.
That's evolution. There's nothing "wrong" or "bad" about that. Survival of the
fittest.

If humans caused species A to be there, that's irrelevant. It doesn't make
Species A's survival (or species B's extinction) "unnatural" or "wrong". We
were just a transport mechanism, like any other "natural" transport mechanism.

Surely evolution and survival of the fittest overrules biodiversity?

------
ordu
In 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?

~~~
sha666sum
It refers to getting two 1's when rolling dice.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_eyes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_eyes)

------
ilamont
I'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.

------
dole
We 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
Leaping out a boat into shallow water and landing on muscles or oysters is not
misplaced vitriol.

------
ctrlaltdylan
I 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
ctrlaltdyaln 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_63...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/eat-the-enemy-asian-
carp_n_6324896)

~~~
ctrlaltdylan
I didn't know you could eat them! I'll have to try out this recipe thanks!

------
slfnflctd
More 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.

------
brandonmenc
I'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
I remember seeing all of the warning signs about zebra mussels when I was
growing up there.

------
gumby
Happy 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.

------
mrfusion
I 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
I 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.

------
jswizzy
What 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
> 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"?

------
pvaldes
A better title would be: "When zebra mussels colonized Lake Erie it pivoted
irreversibly towards a totally different ecosystem"

It never recovered.

------
lgrebe
I don't understand the title.

~~~
credit_guy
It'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
Yes 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
What happens to a boat hull if you don't clear the mussels off? Do they
actually damage it or does it just look unsightly?

~~~
pvaldes
Will 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

------
HillaryBriss
I 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.

