Is it possible to categorise the health of a mussel rapidly and non-destructively in the field?

A key challenge in the investigation of mass mortality events (MMEs) and the general study of mussel health is simply telling a sick mussel from a healthy mussel, and thus detecting problems in populations. It is therefore desirable to find a simple and effective screening tool that can be used in situ to monitor vulnerable populations without causing harm.

The goal of this project was to develop a tool to allow us to track changes in population health of mussels and also track the progression of health in individual mussels. The stress tester tool we developed measures value closure strength of the mussels and is capable of tracking changes in population health and providing a rough metric for individual health status, but due to large variations in individual measurements, it is not particularly accurate at detecting changes in the health of individuals.

Contact me if you would like to get your hands on a mussel stress tester