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No fluke: A cleaner Boston Harbor no longer causing tumors in flounders

A researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute reports Boston Harbor is now so clean that he hasn't found any flounders with liver tumors there since 2004. Back in the bad old days when raw sewage routinely flowed into the harbor, flounders would show up with liver tumors.

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Back when I was at Lincoln Lab in the 1980's -- I had a colleague who did a lot of Scuba
He said the very largest lobsters in the entire region hung out next to the sewage outfall just off Deer Island [the old version of the "Treatment Plant"]

Why do you think that they were there?? -- the "Food for Lobsters" came out of the Sewage Outfall

Moral of the story -- the "Tamale" or the Lobster's Liver is the repository for a lot of stuff -- if you are a Tamale aficionado be sure you know from whence the lobsters came

PS: that goes for filter feeders such as Clams as well

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Deer Island's current outfall tunnel extends more than nine miles out into Massachusetts Bay. And the stuff that comes out of it is no longer pure sewage.

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What ever comes out of that pipe is warmer and those lobsters stay active all winter. I am not pretending to know the science, but that is usual thing that has the most impact around pipes outflowing into bodies of water.

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Once again offering up your "opinion" about technology and science without the slightest understanding of what you are talking about.

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please explain your comment... the Deer Island outfall pipe does not discharge 'sewerage', it discharges liquid effluent that has had the solids removed (sludge shipped via pipeline to Quincy, dried and turned into fertilizer pellets). http://www.mwra.com/03sewer/html/sewssc.htm for info & those pesky "facts".

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He was talking about the old sewage outfall pipe that predates the modern system to which you refer....

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Tomalley, not tamale.

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..

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Feel bad for the guy whose job for the past 15 years has been looking for flounder liver tumors.

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his job is half scuba diving and half sciencing.

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Every couple of years they declare, "i am tired of being cold and wet," and they gravitate to statistical data analysis, writing, and other stuff you can do in street clothes... And just as often, they later decide, "i miss the lab" and gravitate back to hands on work. So the career path has some variation and it is not unremitting.... Although i did hear a friend say recently, "if i never touch another human brain, it'll still be too soon!" I kinda wish we had been in public where that could have been overhead.

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Does this mean that Flounder Fleet will return to the Neponsit River?

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Hough's Neck is the flounder capital of the world !

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If any of the respondents bothered to READ -- they would have noticed that I was talking about the era the era that gave rise to the song with the Lyrics

Well I love that dirty water
Oh, Boston, you're my home.........

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https://youtu.be/5apEctKwiD8

Both the Charles [in the song] and the Harbor in that era had plenty of vatous Stuff in it. Some of the 'stuff" even ended up on the beaches in Quincy

That's why George H. W. Bush campaigning against M.S. Dukakis in 1988 predated John Kerry by renting a boat and touring Boston Harbor

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You can just swim in it for the halibut.

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