Fish as filters?

There's been a bit of press lately (see for example) surrounding a new paper from VIMS that concludes that the Atlantic menhaden or Bunker (Brevoortia tyrannus) is not very good at cleaning the Chesapeake Bay.  This seems an odd sort of paper but its actually not that crazy an idea.  Its turns out that lots of bivalve species like hard clams and soft clams actually pump enough water through their gills, sifting food as they go, that they can actually have a significant impact on the water clarity and nutrient content of the water.  Indeed, the zebra and quagga mussels that have invaded the Great Lakes have changed the entire ecosystem by doing exactly that.  With clearer water, there's less plankton productivity in the water column and more macrophytic plants and algae growing on the bottom.  Menhaden are filter feeders too, and they can occur in large schools, so perhaps its logical to think that they might be able to do the same sort of thing as the clams.  Alas, based on the VIMS experiments, it seems that they can't.

This is an interesting example of a negative result publication.  Often times you'll hear folks say we shouldn't publish negative results because, technically, you failed to prove that they clean the water, which is not the same as proving that they don't.  Well, as long as everybody is aware of that distinction, I still think negative results like that are useful to know, for two reasons.  One, its likely that they don't; if they do, then the effect is so minor that it was difficult to detect.  And two, it might save someone else from having the same idea and trying the same futile experiment.

The Chesapeake has some sporadic problems with hypoxia, which is ultimately a nutrient pollution issue, so I applaud the researchers for looking at a biological solution for what is otherwise a pretty intractable problem.