Yes, apparently they can. It’s amazing how we can go fishing, or consume fish, or simply watch fish, but we never really give them a second thought. Of course, we’d never think that these underwater organisms could be of such significant help to us humans.
Large cities such as San Francisco, New York, and Washington are using fish called bluegills in coal mines and water treatment plants to guard their drinking water. The fish are kept in tanks and sensors are used to detect changes in the breathing, heartbeat, and swim patterns of the fish when they are exposed to toxic chemicals.
Ever since the September 11 attacks, the national government has been very careful to monitor the United States water supply and make sure that it is not prone to terrorist attacks.
Bluegills, usually sizes as small as the human hand, can sense when toxins are present. This becomes obvious when they flex their gills in an effort to rid themselves of these toxins. The blue gills can detect such substances as cyanides, diesel fuel, mercury, and pesticides.
These fish, however, are limited as to their “detecting” abilities. While they are able to identify many toxins, they cannot detect germs.
This new device is called the Intelligent Aquatic Biomonitoring System and has been requested by many other cities to be put into use. The cost is expensive, though, starting at $45,000.
I think this is really interesting. Normally, we probably wouldn’t think of fish as protective of us, but in a sense, they are when they are used in this manner. I think that as many cities in the U.S. as possible should try to implement these tanks of bluegills. That way, we can at least be fairly certain that we are preventing terrorist attacks by toxic chemicals in the national water supply. We don’t really have this kind of control over any other kinds of attacks, so these fish should be used for our advantage.
Source: Environmental News Network.
