Researchers look to mussels to help heal an ailing bay

by Tim Flanagan on February 4, 2010

LESLIE BROWN has the story in the Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber:

Two divers who explored the submerged floor of inner Quartermaster Harbor last week were pleased with what they found — flat, featureless muck. Or as ecologist Brian Allen put it, “A whole lot of nothing.”

It wasn’t a surprise: Inner Quartermaster has layers and layers of silt and few fish, due to its notoriously low levels of dissolved oxygen.

But what that flat, muddy sea floor will provide is a good spot to sink an anchor for several months, which in turn will open the door to an innovative experiment in how to heal a place like Quartermaster — an estuary suffering from a massive overload of nutrients.

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