Finding the Pulse of Healthy Native Freshwater Mussels

Fishy Fridays

Weekly spotlight on fisheries science journal articles

 

Jeff Kopaska
AFS Executive Director
[email protected]

Today’s paper was recently published online in the Journal of Aquatic Animal Health, and will be coming out in our first Oxford edition of that journal soon.  I had not chosen an aquaculture or aquatic animal health paper in too long, and I knew it was time. 

The article assessed the current condition of freshwater mussel propagation techniques, identified challenges in assessing the health of freshwater mussels, and suggested a variety of future research needs in this area of endeavor.  I found it interesting that there is an acute lack of standardization across the various facilities that conduct mussel propagation, and that the potential for loss of institutional knowledge regarding culture of these animals is acute. This is also a great example of collaboration between societies, as the focus group discussions occurred during a meeting of the Freshwater Mollusk Conservation Society, and we were able to publish in an AFS journal. I think it also identifies how opportunistic advances can play out, by planning ahead and conducting the focused work at a gathering of interested individuals, the summarized work then can be readily disseminated to the broader research community. These are the kinds of professional development opportunities that we should encourage more often at our annual meetings. 

You still have time to submit an abstract for the San Antonio meeting!

Here is the link to today’s paper:

Finding the pulse of healthy native freshwater mussels (order Unionida): Insights from propagation biologists