Clam cleanup

January 1,2009
Science Daily

We're using them as pollutant traps," said Harriette Phelps, Ph.D., a biologist at the University of the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C. In Maryland, high school students teamed up with marine biologist to try and clean up the toxins in rivers. Usually this is a hard, pricey job but we have found a way to easily clean up the rivers that won't cost a thing. The students collected clams and placed them in some of the rivers over dirty areas like highways. Clams are filter feeders so they naturally such in water and absorb the content of it. What the clams didn't know was that by eating they were doing us a huge favor. Not only was the muscle they grabbing it's food particles, but it grabbed toxins in the water as well. When brought into the lab and cracked open the pollution in the water was reviled. The clams reviled that a outlawed pesticide that was thought to be buried, had leaked out. "We can trace them back to sources, and then hopefully we can go from there and get rid of the sources," Dr. Phelps said.
I think of the clams as little cops busting the toxins in the water. Then when they are studied in the lab its like the police figuring out how and what the criminal was using. Its really cool that we have found a way to clean up the mess we made using natural techniques. The clam isn't forced to do anything it doesn't want or need to and in return they clean our rivers. In class now we are learning about relationships between animals. There are three major types of interactions, competition, predation, and symbiosis. Then there are three different types of symbiotic relations. Mutualism where both organisms benefit, commensailism where one organism is helped and the other isn't helped or harmed, and parasitism, where one organism is helped and the other isn't helped or harmed. This is a really good example of either commercialism because the clam isn't harmed but it doesn't necessarily benefit from being in the river.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2009/0110-clam_cleanup.htm