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Science

Fish Changes Colors When Detecting Pollution 34

Posted by timothy from the changing-colors-while-nude dept.
Ant writes: "Say goodbye to Birkenstock sandals and woolly jumpers -- tomorrow's eco-warrior will like nothing better than swimming naked in defense of cleaner oceans. That, at least, is the hope of researchers in Singapore, who are developing a breed of fish capable of detecting water pollutants by changing color."
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Fish Changes Colors When Detecting Pollution More

Fish Changes Colors When Detecting Pollution

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  • What happens if these fish escape in the wild and change the ecological balance in the ocean? Suddenly because of their unique phisiology they have an advantage over other fish. Or other fish realize that these fish change color in poluted water and leave the area? Then you have fish that were in an area leave. It could be worse. I think that this genitic manipulation of fish shoudl stop. Will theswe fish be able to breed? Some fancy varieties of Goldfish currently cannot because they have been so inbreed and so selectively breed that they can no longer breed and if they tried they would probably die in the process. Yes this is truth. I am a fish breeder and keeper, and if you do your research you will find that certain fancy goldfish are man made mutants that can barely survive. There are also species of swordtails and mollies that fit in this category as well as the infamous 'parrott' fish, which is a hybred that is often injected with dye to give it its color.

    Why not make humans change the color of their skin when they are aground polutants? What are we afraid of?? Having blue people?

    • What happens if these fish escape in the wild and change the ecological balance in the ocean?

      Zebrafish (Brachydanio rerio) are unlikely to do anything in the ocean except die. They are freshwater fish.
      • Obviously you know less about fish as many freshwater fish CAN survive in brackish water and saltwater. Zebra fish are very hardy fish and it is posible that they escape into streams. ,P>Boy didn't any of you people see that sci fi movie where the genitically created bugs that were not supposed to be able to multiply mutated and took over the sewer. I think it was called mimic?? What about the whole theme in Jurasic park, nature will find away. Boy you people are just stupid.
        • I can't believe that you're using Jurassic Park as scientific evidence that we should stop genetic engineering. You should know by now that Hollywood isn't exactly known for its scientific accuracy ... come on now.

          You're the one that's stupid.

          • THere have been numerous movies on the subject. Maybe you are just to stupiud to realize the following facts:

            1) Oscars are not native to Florida, but because som many have been released or 'flushed' they are now on the Florida fishing tables. Pick one up stupid.

            2) Piranas are not allowed in teh US for the reason that they may take over a stream. FACT, stupid!

            3) Guppies, and other livebearers have been released to help control algae in some areas. The result is that their fast reproduction causes the ecological balance to shift and natural species disappear.

            There are probably dozons of other examples that people could come up with. The movies are not totally off the mark.

            Who are you play 'God'?

            Did you know that many of the steroids that we feed our livestock suck as cattle steroids to make them larger, beefer, and produce more milk are probably causing people to be more alergic to milk, people to be more aggressive and causing some of the other problems we are having????

            I guess natures cows and fish aren't god enough for you you need to make them bigger. Hmm FYI, there are other movies out side of Jurassic park, like Pirannas, Shark Attack, and probably many others. Since you probably wont get the point of any of these movies, I'll tell you.

            The point is that no one seems to care weather or not we SHOULD be doing this and is only interested in weather we CAN do this.

        • You call other people stupid while citing a movie where a 14 year old girl gasps "I know this" about a "unix box" and then uses some bizarre 3d GUI to "hack" a password that noone else seemed to be able to do?
    • I don't think that they got a big advantage. Very likely other fish can detect polution much better, the only advantage they have is that we humans can see what they detect, other fish only feels that the water is poluted. I think they will just die.

  • Superb Idea, as long as... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ieshan ( 409693 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <nahsei>> on Monday December 24, 2001 @09:44PM (#2748655) Homepage Journal
    If you ask me, this is a superb idea, as long as the fish can survive in the waters you release them.

    Basically, this isn't harming anyone or anything. The fish have been manipulated once, and have very little advantage over other fish in the water. In fact, they probably have no advantage, being that they aren't conscious enough to realize that they're changing color in a certain amount of pollutant.

    However, if we're releasing fish into waters they'll surely die just to see, visually, on their new color coded scales, that they'll die... I think that's wrong.

    I disagree with the dude who said he was a fish breeder and that he doesn't understand how we evil humans can be altering nature to better suit us. He goes so far as to suggest genetic experiments on humans. Counterpoint: This is an operation useful to human society AND ecological wellbeing, as once the fish in the water can show us where the water is polluted, they can also show us where we need to direct cleaning and research.

    Genetic Engineering is one of the most useful and dangerous sciences of our times. Everything with a purpose is dangerous - we just need to be careful.

    • If you ask me, this is a superb idea, as long as the fish can survive in the waters you release them.

      Basically, this isn't harming anyone or anything. The fish have been manipulated once, and have very little advantage over other fish in the water. In fact, they probably have no advantage, being that they aren't conscious enough to realize that they're changing color in a certain amount of pollutant.

      I can sense the Law of Unintended Consequences stepping in here.

      Suppose that the color change makes the fish more noticeable to predators, and therefore the altered fish are more likely to become dinner (Most fish coloring is designed around either attracting dinner or avoiding being dinner). Then you've created a situation in which the food chain becomes more heavily focused in polluted areas. And encouraging fish to gather in polluted areas can have all sorts of negative affects, such as decreasing their fertility.

      I guess I come down on the side of believing that some things don't have enough benefit to screw with...

    • How about if we just release one fish, which was going to die anyway? The fish would have an explicit purpose from the moment it is conceived; a destiny, and a promise that its life will not have been in vain.

      That's far more than most humans ever get. (Not that I'd want it myself, but a lot of people seem to desire such.)
  • this is not something that needs to be created/solved through bioengineering. There are many, *many* plants called phytoindicators that change in response to environmental factors. Chinese Maple is a good example, whose leaves change from maroon to green in the presence of lots of nitrogen in the soil. You'll find this a lot when someoen has then in their garden and the fertilize with an artificial fertilizer which doe slittle but burn the soil.....

    this is all 'old knowledge' - as in ~6000+ yr and started mostly with the natives of the American continents. It's a shame that this part of the world seems to be mostly ignored

    -shpoffo

  • Water testing (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Guppy ( 12314 )
    Just wanted to add a comment on the use of fish in testing water. When discharging waste water, whether from municipal or industrial treatment plants, there are requirements that certain types of tests be performed.

    These assays are designed to measure some specific parameter or contaminant in the water, using the usual techniques of analytical chemistry.

    However, after testing for specific contaminants, some facilities will then do a "canary in a coal mine" assay, rearing fish in the water to check for overall health. The species used might vary, but will usually be commercially available fish that can breed easily in captivity, so many kinds of common aquarium fish are used, of which the zebrafish is one example. Another bonus of using zebrafish is that the this species of fish is considered a "standard" laboratory animal, like rats and mice, and so the genetics and physiology of the fish has been studied in detail.

    Rather than releasing these fish into the wild, I got the impression that these genetically engineered fish would be used to augment this last type of testing in the laboratory, since the fluorescent indicators could be linked to more specific indicators of some aspect of the fish's health.
    • I recall once seeing a show about italy -- where they don't have alot of money to spend on water testing -- in a particular water facility, they have a plastic pipe that siphons some of the water coming into the system, and a trout that swims in the pipe (trout like to swim against the flow of the water IIRC?) and if the trout gets sick this is some indicator :)
  • Actually this could be a handy way to quickly assess the health of your aquaculture system.

    You might not want to engineer your crop, but you could collocate, or segregate, some sort of indicator fish which would tell you if water quality is getting poor. It might save on expensive test kits, which would only need to be dragged out when your fish start turning magenta, green, blue, or pretty polka-dot, stripey, fractal patterned.

    --

    Zebrafish are pretty hardy. Maybe you could just sell them to kids in the ornamental (aquarium) trade. Then you could sell them a bunch of eyedropper chemicals (where you make your real margin), that they can drip in to the tank to change the color of their fish for that day.

    Throw in an e-Paper aquarium backdrop, and you could have a winning combination in time for Christmas 2002 ...

  • First, let me say that I don't really believe in the evils of transgenic manipulation; I fully feel that this is a technology that has its place in the world and will be fundamental to how humanity copes with growing populations in the future.

    However, the article says: The Singapore team is working toward producing fish that give off a different-colored glow depending on water temperature, which may lead to using fluorescent fish as temperature indicators.

    Wow. They're going to replace a common, cheap, nondestructive technology (thermometers) with living beings. This kind of meddling strikes me as particularly naive; doing science for science's sake with no attention paid to consequences. I really don't see the benefit of this; it strikes me as particularly mad scientist and unethical. Am I out in left-field, or does anyone else agree?
    • And here is where capitalism saves. If thermometers really are that cheap compared to fish, who in their right mind (except for the scientists trying to gain a little more knowledge of genetics) would use the fish? Once the experiments are done, and the results duly recorded for posterity, the project is abandoned - or converted to a more useful tack.

      No?
  • Aren't fish already sensitive to polluted waters ? Heck, we humans turn bluish/green when surrounded by chain-smokers.. I'm pretty sure fish have similar reactions when their environment is hostile to their health.

    Or you could just look for dead yet unmutilated fish, that's a sure sign.
  • In countries such as Indonesia, test kits for measuring pollutants are not readily available. The other thing to consider is how expensive such pollution-sensitive fish will be?

    Regarding native fish, it is highly unlikely these hybridized fish will be able to successfully mate and reproduce with other native fish.

    Then there are the ethical issues of introducing "altered" species of fish into our waterways. When looking at this issue, one needs to consider how much we humans have already altered our waterways through habitat destruction and pollutants. We're just adding another one of our "creations". As our knowledge of genetics increases, we will begin to see many other examples of lifeforms altered to serve a function they were never inteneded for.

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