If you ever stop by a seafood restaurant around the Chesapeake Bay, you might want to try out the local oysters. Eating them not only means a delicious meal for yourself, but more business for local oyster farms, too. Plus, you’ll be helping to clean up the polluted waters in the process.
Interestingly, Chesapeake oysters weren’t even on menus until recent years. As the global news agency AFP reports, these formerly abundant mollusks were nearly wiped out 20 years ago due to over-harvesting and pollution. As NPR puts it, by 1990, the bay’s oyster population dropped to a mere 1 percent of what it was in the early 20th century.
MORE: Kelp: The Sea Weed That Could Save Mankind
However, in the last decade, oyster rescue programs have significantly brought back this local delicacy. (Note: It’s still nowhere near its historic numbers.) The AFP reports that the Oyster Recovery Partnership (ORP) — a team of scientists, environmentalists, government groups and volunteers — has reintroduced 4.5 billion oysters to the waters over the last 10 years. Promisingly, the report found that these efforts have seriously paid off. Virginia collected 10,000 tons of oysters during the winter of 2012-13, which was double last year’s harvest and 20 times more than 15 years ago.
This is not only good news for shellfish lovers, but it’s wonderful news for the environment as well since these oysters are playing an important part in cleaning up the Chesapeake. How so? As Steve Allen, biologist and senior manager at ORP said, oysters are “the kidney of the bay.” An acre can filter 140 million gallons of water an hour, removing 3,000 pounds of nitrogen a year. AFP also mentions that oyster reefs provide habitats for other local (and delicious) sea life such as fish, mussels and blue crabs.
So what’s the bottom line? Slurp up!
Tag: water filter
Need Clean Water? Find the Nearest Evergreen
What if someone told you that a small piece of sapwood from a pine tree could be used as an effect water filter — no pumps, batteries, or chemicals needed. Would you believe them or think that the story was a giant whopper?
Well, it’s no fib, as a team at MIT did just that. To make the filter, the team stripped the bark off white pine branches and placed it into a plastic tube. The porous tissue in the branch, called xylem, naturally filtered out the contaminants in water. “Today’s filtration membranes have nanoscale pores that are not something you can manufacture in a garage very easily,” said Rohit Karnik, associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. “The idea here is that we don’t need to fabricate a membrane, because it’s easily available. You can just take a piece of wood and make a filter out of it.”
According to a study published in the journal PLoS One, this makeshift filter can purify up to four liters of water a day and remove up to 99 percent of E. coli. The filter has the potential to be a game-changer in water-pinched communities around the world and in emergency situations.
MORE: How a Bag of Mushrooms Can Clean A Polluted River
The team is trying to find other types of natural filters. “There’s huge variation between plants. There could be much better plants out there that are suitable for this process,” said Karnik. “Ideally, a filter would be a thin slice of wood you could use for a few days, then throw it away and replace at almost no cost.” Maybe one day creating clean water could come be done right in your own backyard.