“Filter cleaning” with mussels

Mussels may be familiar to us on our dinner plates, steamed in butter and white wine sauce. In New York, it has become a city project  to study a related type of mussel called the ribbed mussel (Geukensia demissa) in Long Island Sound. These mussels are the focus of a developing technology called “bioextraction” that might help clean up coastal waters.

Link to photo on wikipedia.
Filter-feeding blue mussels, familiar to us on our dinner plates. Photo from Wikipedia.

Ribbed mussels have some fascinating facts – they grow their shells in an annual cycle, so like counting tree rings, we can determine the age of a ribbed mussel by Continue reading

March 31, 2014Permalink 1 Comment