Freshwater Mussels Are Dying And No One Knows Why

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2020

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 2016, biologists and fishermen across the country started to notice something disturbing. Freshwater mussels were dying in large numbers. NPR National Correspondent Nathan Rott tells us about the unsolved mystery surrounding the die-off, the team racing to figure it out, and why mussels are so important for the health of our streams and rivers.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're listening to shortwave from NPR.
0:04.6	Hey everybody, Maddie Sifai here with National Dust Correspondent, Nate Roth.
0:09.3	Hey Nate.
0:10.3	Hello Maddie.
0:11.3	So what have you brought us today?
0:13.7	So I have an unsolved mystery involving nature's Britta filter.
0:19.8	Everyone's favorite bivalve, fresh water muscles.
0:22.9	Wow, I'm here for it.
0:24.4	Let's do it.
0:26.5	So back in 2016, biologists and fishermen in a few different parts of the country started
0:30.7	to notice that something was wrong in some of the rivers that they were frequenting.
0:35.3	They kept seeing these huge die-offs of fresh water muscles.
0:39.1	They were washing up on shores or were half buried in river bottoms, dead or rotting.
0:44.5	And nobody could figure out why.
0:46.8	Other critters were just fine.
0:47.9	It just seemed to be affecting muscles.
0:49.8	So are we talking like a mass die-off situation here?
0:53.4	That's what biologists are calling it.
0:54.8	They've confirmed mass die-offs in the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, the Southeast.
0:59.4	They've even been documented in Spain and Sweden.
1:03.2	And to make it worse, fresh water muscles are already one of the most imperiled groups
1:07.2	of species on the planet.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.