Lend your support to the “eeluminium” crowdfunding initiative

7 November 2016: An exciting crowdfunding campaign – “Eeluminium”  – has been launched. Eight researchers from Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Norway (Caroline Durif) are developing a project to look into the effect of aluminum in the decline of the European eel. Once very abundant in European rivers, the eel population dramatically declined by more than 90% so that eels are now considered as critically endangered. The causes of this rapid decline are unknown. Our recent data point to a new possible cause: aluminum.  We need your support for analyzing aluminum content of eel ear bones (otoliths) collected over the last 100 years as to validate this hypothesis. If proved true, this could serve as basis for developing effective means for restoring the eel population.  Any donation, even very small, could contribute to our project, and finance costly analyses using laser-ablation based inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry.

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