Unexpected Insight

 The photo is of dragon fly larve and a baby clam.  Did you know that a dragonfly will grow from this state to a full grown dragonfly over the course of two or more years?  They have these enormous pinchers on their heads.  They can eat other bugs and animals that are as much as twice there size.  

Learn more:
http://www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/
central/elkneck.asp

The clam is a freshwater clam.  It is found in the upper Chesapeake Bay.  We were not sure if it was an indigenous clam or of the asian variety.  Clams like this used to cover the floor of the upper bay and its tributaries.  Today, they are hard to find and even harder to find alive.  When clams reproduce hundreds of thousands of eggs are released into the water and fertilized.  Most of the eggs are eaten or die on the floor of the river or wetland.  Some float in the water and attach themselves to freshwater eels.  The clams live in the slime of the eels until they are big enough to fend for themselves.  This relationship is little understood, but the effects of it's success have a huge impact on the health of the Chesapeake Bay and it's tributaries.  

I have never been someone to jump onto the environmental reactionary, feel good bandwagon, but learning about this relationship and the impact that it has on a place that I love was penetrating.  We know very little about how this all takes place, but the job that the clam performs, filtering the sediment at the bottom of our waterways, is very important to us and the environment as a whole.  If nothing else, we should do what we can to see these processes succeed because we do not know what the effect is.

Okay.  So, I can hear people now, "You have no idea how this relationship affects anything and you want to turn over thousands of peoples lives on something we know nothing about."  I'm not asking that.  I'm asking that people just pay a little bit more attention.  I'm asking that people seek answers and take interest in the work of people who are trying to figure things out.  Each little bit ads up.

I think that we should do it because we humans, are good at solving problems.  Because we are good at rising to a challenge and because we want the world to be a better place for our kids.  If something so small can have such a big impact on our lives, what other things are we affecting that we don't know about?

I have never been one to make any statement about the environment.  I have never put my neck out to support any environmental cause, but I am a big fan of thinking things through.  I am a big fan of doing things in an intelligent manner.  I love innovation and I think that we have an opportunity to do smart things and innovate in a way that is not just about the latest iPhone.  It is a challenge, a challenge worth taking on.