Comment by cjensen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cjensen | Hacker News Reader

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.

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.

I believe that the SF Bay losing many larger ocean mammals was related to World War 2 anti-submarine nets that closed off the bay from their migration for years. At least, that's what I recall from a marine mammal course a few years back.

The shutdown of industry and decline of agriculture stopped additional pollution, but Zebra mussels are great at utilizing phosphorus, which when present at high levels reduces oxygen in the water.

Shellfish like oysters are present in the San Francisco bay too. They are a key part of the lifecycle, and the colonization of Lake Eire by the mussels helped other life appear.

It’s also hilarious to declare the mussels invasive. The lake was a pitiful, dead environment. Any life is invasive.

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