You know that unsettling feeling you get when you’re swimming in a freshwater body, and some underwater plant grazes your foot?
Well, what if I told you that researchers recently found a wriggling, fist-sized blob of slime at the artificially forged mouth of Toronto’s Don River? And what if I added on the fact that this slimy specimen is actually an entire colony of living things?
Hopefully I didn’t catch you right at lunchtime with this information, but the facts remain — there’s a living slime monster lurking in a Toronto waterway.
Okay, maybe I got a little too ominous there, as this living mass of goop found in the new mouth of the Don is nothing to fear, and is actually a sign that the engineered waterway is developing into a healthy river mouth.
It may look like a jellyfish species ready to deliver a potent sting, but this ball of gelatinous life is totally harmless.
Waterfront Toronto reported the discovery of a bryozoan colony living in the mouth of the Don in February. The species of filter-feeding aquatic invertebrates have fossil records dating back to the Ordovician period tens of millions of years ago, and are commonly referred to as moss animals due to their tendency to exist in sedentary colonies.
The Toronto Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) discovered the blob, a colony of thousands of microscopic bryozoan formed into a mass roughly the size of a human fist.
According to the waterfront agency, “Bryozoans are filter feeders, eating plankton, algae, and bacteria. They clean the water as they feed. Their presence means the water quality is good. So, seeing one in the new mouth for the Don River is a sign that efforts to clean up the Don River are working.”
Basically, these goopy animal clusters serve a similar purpose to bodies of water that the liver serves in a circulatory system.
Having these slimy friends in our new river means that potentially harmful bacterial or algal blooms are being kept in check, though they might make you think twice about wading into the Don. (But why would you even want to do that to begin with?)
Waterfront Toronto has shared all the details of this and other aquatic species that have been found in and around the new river mouth, all marking positive signs for the nascent waterway.
However, while blobs of slime may prove beneficial for the Don River mouth and Toronto Harbour, not all is well in the waters around the city.
Lake Ontario and others on the Great Lakes system continue to suffer the scourge of invasive parasitic vampire fish known as sea lamprey. These eel-like creatures latch onto prey with their horrifying mouths bearing concentric rings of teeth that act like saws, allowing the parasites to bleed their victims dry.
