Wired Fish Monitor Water Toxins

boustrophedon writes "First miners used canaries to detect bad air. Now USA Today reports that municipalities monitor water quality by monitoring fish. The Bio-Sensor is a standard rack with eight 500 ml compartments, each containing a fish and a submerged sensor to detect a microvolt level bioelectric field. 'If at least six of the eight show signs of distress [typically due to a toxic condition], the Bio-Sensor sounds an alarm. It immediately saves a sample of the water (for more detailed analysis) while it notifies the humans in charge.'"

Comments

Now all they need to do

[TykeClone]

is to put lasers on their freaking heads.

Is that too much to ask?

Not impressed

[FiReaNGeL]

For a 35000$ machine, all that it does is tell you that "something" the fish doesn't like is in the water. It doesn't tell you what, how, how much. And guppies are quite sensitive fish... their "distress" could be caused by something that isn't dangerous at all for humans.

Plus its animal cruelty. 500 mL of space isn't much (size of a Pepsi can?) to live in. And then we just wait for them to die (become "distressed" as the article put it). Does it require constant cleaning like an aquarium? If not, I bet you gonna change these 'biosensor' fish quite often...

Stupid idea. Just use/develop chemical sensors, or something.

Re:Not impressed

[2nd Post!]

What do you think guppies are, if not chemical sensors?

Re:Not impressed

[FiReaNGeL]

Living beings that don't deserve to be treated like a simple chemical sensor?

Re:Not impressed

[CodeWanker]

But it does tell you to take a look. The problem with chemical sensors is that you may not get meaningful feedback about the quantity of a pollutant... So you don't know if it's at a dangerous level or not. As for animal cruelty, if I've got to pick between a fish drinking water that causes distress and a person, I pick a fish. Do you wait until the toxins have reached such a level that hundreds or thousands of fish float up to the top in a terminal state of distress, or do you use a few you can actually monitor cost-effectively? And chemical sensors can break in ways you can't detect that render them useless or, worse, cause them to deliver a false sense of security. Fish, on the other hand, are obviously healthy or obviously not.

Re:Not impressed

[2nd Post!]

No living being deserves to be treated like a simple chemical sensor; but everyone born with asthma already is. Heck, everyone in LA is too.

The issue is whether we are talking ethics or effectiveness. A guppy is very effective. Is a guppy chemical sensor also ethical?

How about monitoring fish already present in existing waterways?
What if those fish were stocked?
Wired/Tagged?

Unfortunately that this is even an issue means we screwed up because the water is already potentially dirty. The best fix then is to clean up the water, and avoid the whole issue, right?

Re:Not impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

For a 35000$ machine,
Note that for a piece of industrial equipment, that's *cheap*.

all that it does is tell you that "something" the fish doesn't like is in the water. It doesn't tell you what, how, how much.
True, but it's better than the status quo, which is not even knowing that something is wrong at all. Once the guppies start tweaking, you can run more extensive (and expensive) tests to tell you more.

And guppies are quite sensitive fish... their "distress" could be caused by something that isn't dangerous at all for humans.
So don't use guppies. The article says it works with any fish, so use a hardier one. Besides, the phrase you are missing is "Better safe than sorry." So the guppies overreact to a particular compound. Better that than having a sensor which misses some compound which does cause harm. (Note the "we don't test for diesel" in the article.)

Plus its animal cruelty.
Compare with other treatment of guppies: use as a feeder fish for other animal, sold to naive people who put them in uncycled, chlorinated tanks where they are chemically poisoned, offspring of the prolific, livebearing guppies are destroyed as excess ... At least in this case, the guppies are helping to protect the humans, and the animals (including other fish) which are at the other end of the water pipe.

500 mL of space isn't much (size of a Pepsi can?)
The 16 oz Snapple Bottle in front of me says 473 mL. So bigger than a Pepsi can, smaller than a 20 oz Pepsi bottle.

And then we just wait for them to die (become "distressed" as the article put it).
Distressed != Die. They look for subtle electrical field changes for a readout. So a fish can be "distressed" without being belly-up.

Does it require constant cleaning like an aquarium? If not, I bet you gonna change these 'biosensor' fish quite often...
Think about it - to get a continous readout of the water parameters, you need to have a continuous change of water. I bet the fish live in better water quality than the hobbist at the other end of the tap who only does a weekly water change. (And admit it, most don't do even that.) At any rate, it will need to be cleaned about as often as a chemical sensor would. (Probably less - chemical sensors tend to be finiky beast which are fouled easily.)

Stupid idea. Just use/develop chemical sensors, or something.
When you develop a cheap chemical sensor which displays the same response to the same broad range of chemicals which the fish can detect, the world will beat a path to your door. (i.e. "Use chemical sensors" is like saying "you don't need rockets, just have Superman fly you to Mars" - there ain't no such thing.) Your flippant "or something" indicates you haven't a fools clue in hell of what it takes to get a robust sensor for *one* compound, let alone the multitude of compouds detected by the fish. (And if you thought $35000 was expensive, wait till you get the bill for the cheical sensors.

That said, I agree that there is an ethical issue with keeping the fish in a small, probably featureless enclosure. But for me, those concerns are outweighed by the benefits to public health of monitoring the public water supply. You may disagree if you are a PETA/vegan, though.

Re:Not impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

The best fix then is to clean up the water, and avoid the whole issue, right?

But that's too much work. Much easier to come up with short-term, "band-aid" solutions for the problem every few years until the end of time...

In the subcontinent

[vijaya_chandra]

Efforts like this won't work in our place back in India and the fish used for testing are guaranteed to suffocate within a minute in most of the water bodies.

The main problem actually in most of the areas is due to faulty distribution systems from the water-treating plants to the houses, where in some cases, the pipelines develop cracks letting stuff inside and sewage pipes (in case there are any) find a way to pass on some of their contents to the water pipelines.

Tech Review

[lysander]

The Technology Review had an article about this (or a similar system) a few months ago. They described the system a bit more -- I believe it's being used to monitor NYC's water. That article also mentions that the fish are only in the monitor for six weeks at a time, which may or may not make you feel better about animal cruelty concerns.

Swimming Sentinels - February 29, 2004
David Talbot
Fish enlisted in protecting water supplies from toxins

Re:Tech Review

[lysander]

Eh, "in the monitor tank", but whatever.

And if you stick one of the fish in your ear..

[jbarr]

...you can understand...oh, never mind...

This is an automated version of an old idea

[WayneConrad]

This is an automated version of an idea that's been around awhile. When I was doing a computer installation for a water plant in Yuma, Arizona, maybe 8 years ago, I saw a fish tank in the control room. They fed a continuous supply of the plant's water through that tank. If the fish started acting funny or floated upside down, they would know to issue an alert and start testing water quality right now. It wasn't a substitute for laboratory testing of the water, but an adjunct to it. You can only do lab tests every so often, but fish are testing the water all the time.

Even if they won't detect everything, fish are cheap, and that's important to the smaller water plants. Besides, the fish give the plant operator something to look at in between doing preventative maintenance and studying for the certification. Running a water plant is boring.

Re:This is an automated version of an old idea

[fireduck]

Same here. My father worked at a water treatment plant in Los Angeles, and he had the fish tank in his lab maybe 20 years ago. As I recall, the idea wasn't to test for instantaneous water quality problems, but rather long term toxicity of the water. My father was generally opposed to the idea, as the fish were in really small boxes maybe 6" on a side and kept in the dark until someone opened the lid and checked on 'em.

Next Step?

[hprotagonist0]

If these bio-sensors take the same route that computers took, pretty soon they'll start to miniturize them, and then we'll all be using...microfish.

/ducks

Re:Next Step?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they could move to using a layer of algae: microfilm.

sensors

[ryanelm]

the best sensors that exist, as far as we know, are biological. in fact, the technology boom started 4 billion years ago. We will

• never

build a more advanced machine than a cell, the real challenge is to learn how to program the abundant hardware lying around to do something useful. these fish are a step in that direction.

Re:sensors

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction: as far as you know.

"never"? What makes you so sure?

Re:sensors

[ryanelm]

i just don't see any evidence that we can advance our machines any faster than evolution did it in the first place(never call evolution slow). in that case it will take on the order of billions of years to catch up, that is never to me. furthermore it is extremely likely that we will, in the interveneing time, figure out how the existing technology works and never get around to 'reinventing the cell' as it were.

Rapid Bioassessment

[NotYourMother]

Best internship I ever HAD!!! Drive around all day in the summer with GPS equipment and dip nets. Hooray for water quality grant money! http://www.shore.co.monmouth.nj.us/health/labpages /rba.asp