Bluegill fish tackling Osama
Cities across the US are using the commonly found Bluegill fish as an early warning system to warn of chemical attacks on municipal water supplies, according to this Associated Press report.
Small numbers of the fish are kept in tanks constantly replenished with water from the municipal supply, and sensors in each tank work around the clock to register changes in the breathing, heartbeat and swimming patterns of the bluegills that occur in the presence of toxins.
“Nature’s given us pretty much the most powerful and reliable early warning center out there,” said Bill Lawler, co-founder of Intelligent Automation Corp., a Southern California company that makes and sells the bluegill monitoring system. “There’s no known manmade sensor that can do the same job as the bluegill.”
Bluegills — a hardy species about the size of a human hand — are considered more versatile. They are highly attuned to chemical disturbances in their environment, and when exposed to toxins, they experience the fish version of coughing, flexing their gills to expel unwanted particles.
The computerized system in use in San Francisco and elsewhere is designed to detect even slight changes in the bluegills’ vital signs and send an e-mail alert when something is wrong.
Similar systems have been used in the mining industry for over a hundred years: the canaries have just learned to swim…
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Cities across the US are using the commonly found Bluegill fish as an early warning system to warn of chemical attacks on municipal water supplies, according to this Associated Press report.
Similar systems have been used in the mining industry for over a hundred years: the canaries have just learned to swim…
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