Ultrasound Could Save an Endangered Sea Snail

Ultrasound is one of the safest, easiest, and most useful methods of medical imaging available today. Ultrasound probes emit sound at a higher frequency than you can hear, which echoes off of tissues inside the body, returning to the probe to create an image. It's not unlike a bat's echolocation. Most people associate the technology with pregnancy. However, scientists at UC Davis are taking ultrasound out of the doctor's office and into the ocean to help recover one of our critically endangered sea creatures, the abalone.

Black Abalone, a critically endangered species on the IUCN Red List

Abalone make up several species of flat, spiral-shaped sea snails that live stuck to rocks in the shallow ocean, feeding on algae. They're prized for the iridescent mother-of-pearl that lines the insides of their shells, which is harvested to make jewelry or other decorations, and for their meat, which is a delicacy the world over. They're also major players in marine ecosystems, being food sources for marine mammals and helping to maintain kelp forests and reefs.

In recent years, though, their numbers have dwindled as a result of overfishing and ocean acidification, which erodes their shells with low pH. To aid in their survival and sustainability, scientists and farmers raise abalone in captivity, as in UC Davis's white abalone captive breeding program. However, telling when an abalone is about to spawn is difficult without being able to look inside at its gonads. And that's exactly what the researchers did.

To study an abalone requires prying it off of the rock it sticks to, a stressful experience that can harm the animal. Ultrasound technology, however, is far less invasive. To give an abalone an ultrasound, though, there's no jelly or gender reveal. The abalone is submerged in a tank, and the ultrasound wand is pressed to the outside of the tank, next to the abalone's foot. On a computer, the abalone's gonads show up as a thick dark band. The thicker the band, the more ready the abalone is to spawn. Identifying which snails are ready to spawn is useful for both abalone farmers and conservation experts to know which are going to be best for reproducing. For all the hardships abalone have faced, this is a promising step for reestablishing the creatures throughout the oceans.

Here's an interesting video of an ultrasound being given to an abalone.