Welcome back to Terraforming Earth. Let’s look at new tech for oil spill cleanup.
You may recall how oil clings to fur and feathers. A company figured out how to use that for good – making highly effective oil containment booms and absorption mats out of barber shops’ cast-off hair and fur.
Meanwhile our own local pioneering mycologist Paul Stamets, the inventor of mycoremediation (using mushrooms to clean up pollution), found a strain of oyster mushroom which will happily live in salt water and literally eat oil, digesting it and turning it into more oyster mushroom. We might take a field trip to see an active experiment at Totten Inlet in the southern Sound, if it’s still going.
In the left picture, notice how the oil doesn’t soak all the way into the fungus-infused straw mat. That’s because the fungus is managing its inflow and eating it as it comes.
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