Mesmerised brown crabs ‘attracted to’ undersea cables

theguardian.com

7 points·etiam··5 comments

I wish the article would be more nuanced with statements like: "higher levels of electromagnetism caused cellular changes in the crabs". This will just be used as 'evidence' by the electromagnetic hypersensitivity and anti-5G folks.

“We found that exposure to higher levels of electromagnetic field strength changed the number of blood cells in the crabs" - is it the EMF or rather physical inactivity that reduces the cell count?

If EMF or electricity in various forms has an impact on life forms… why is it a problem that people would start to discover it? I think the chance of things being more complex than we think is much higher than the chance that all those “folks” are just imagining things.

Use the example of an imaginary article titled "Animals instinctively avoid nuclear power plants", in this hypothetical the animals flee due to the noise generated by a newly constructed plant.

People will make the assumption that radioactivity is involved and that plus years of superstition surrounding radioactivity damages trust. This affects decisions made by public bodies due to changes in voter behavior. In this scenario there is no upside to publishing the outcomes without investigating causes first.

Am I the only one thinking of fishing with a fridge magnet?

'Fishing' for crabs is usually aptly called 'crabbing'. As a hobby anyway, commercially I don't know, I suppose it's just 'collecting' (traps).

Anyway, I assume you're joking, but for the avoidance of doubt they're not ferrous, not magnetically 'attracted to', so their 'mesmerisation' wouldn't allow them to follow your reeled in magnet.

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