Where clams, mussels, oysters, and scallops grow, oceans and waterways are better for it.
The bivalve mollusks are filter feeders: they pull water into their shells, trap food through gill filtering, eat phytoplankton, bacteria, and algae, and then release the filtered water and waste through a siphon.
Mussels, in particular, can filter around 25 liters of seawater a day, improving the water quality with each suction and release — and even pulling out carbon suspended in the water.
At the end of their lifespan — which can be anywhere from 20 to 200 years, depending on their environment — mussel shell debris also creates habitats for tiny marine creatures on the seafloor.
These benefits have been documented both in the wild, from intertidal rock pools to deep-sea ocean sediments, and in more controlled farm sites.
A scientific study published in Reviews in Aquaculture found that mussel farms — located in coastal marine environments, sheltered bays, estuaries, or open ocean waters — increase surrounding species abundance by 3.6 times and diversity by 1.1 times.
Today, roughly 90% of shellfish consumed is farmed.
“If you look at a global scale, shellfish are the most sustainably produced type of seafood,” Christopher Golden, associate professor of nutrition and planetary health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told the New York Times.
Luke Gardner, an aquaculture expert with the research organization California Sea Grant, agreed. He said shellfish growers are usually at the forefront of clean water regulations and local restoration projects.
“You can’t farm in dirty water,” he said. “Oyster farmers are environmentalists — at heart and for business.”
Outside of the farms, North America’s freshwater rivers, streams, and lakes are home to nearly 300 native mussel species.
However, in recent decades, they have been increasingly threatened by the rise of invasive species — like zebra mussels and dreissenid mussels — that kill native freshwater mussels by attaching to and smothering massive colonies so they can not open to feed or breathe.
This, coupled with widespread habitat loss and river decline, has led to a noticeable decline. Today, 70% of native North American mussel species are listed as vulnerable, threatened, or endangered.
In a new study, published in the scientific journal Zootaxa on September 23, researchers from Shedd Aquarium, Arkansas State University, and the U.S. Geological Survey shared an exciting discovery.
They had found five new species of freshwater mussels.
“We describe five new species,” the researchers stated in their paper. “Obovaria sipseyensis from the Tombigbee River basin of Alabama and Mississippi; Obovaria neeskaensis from the White River basin of Arkansas and Missouri; Obovaria pinetorum from the west Gulf Coast drainages of Louisiana and Texas; Obovaria tallahattae from lower Mississippi River tributaries of Mississippi; and Obovaria lumbo from Lake Pontchartrain, Pascagoula River, and Pearl River basins of Louisiana and Mississippi.”
The findings came after 20 years of field research.
To conduct the study, the researchers donned masks and snorkels and waded through rivers and muddy streams of the Mississippi Embayment and Gulf coastal rivers of North America.
As they combed through mussel beds, they collected genetic samples to bring back to their labs for DNA analysis.
"Identifying new species is the foundation of biodiversity conservation," Kentaro Inoue, research biologist at Shedd Aquarium and lead author of the paper, said in a press release.
"Conservation efforts can only protect what we recognize, and without this work, we risk certain species going extinct before they’re even known to science.”
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