Question: What got you into Freshwater Pearl Mussels?

Karen answered on 6 Nov 2018:

Thanks for your question 🙂 When I was younger I used to go to the river with my big brothers and we’d collect the shells of the freshwater pearl mussel (these wash up on the riverside once the animals has died), but we never knew what the were. When I was in college I ended up in environmental science and I had to pick an animal to study for a project, so I picked the freshwater pearl mussel. I thought this way I would learn more about them! I studied the shape of mussels in rivers and in lakes. It turns out in rivers, mussels are really thin so that the water will flow around them and not push them around! Around the time I was finishing college, Europe gave Ireland money to work with farmers and foresters to help make the rivers cleaner for the freshwater pearl mussel. After college, I saw the research project about the freshwater pearl mussel and I went for it, because I was pretty interested in them at this stage! And here I am! 🙂