{"id":4976,"date":"2011-04-07T13:58:24","date_gmt":"2011-04-07T17:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=4976"},"modified":"2011-04-07T13:58:24","modified_gmt":"2011-04-07T17:58:24","slug":"outlaw-mussels-invade-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/2011\/04\/07\/outlaw-mussels-invade-the-west\/","title":{"rendered":"Outlaw mussels invade the West"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This post contributed by Adele Conover, a freelance science writer specializing in natural history.<\/em><\/p>\n

On Halloween night 2005, an anonymous trickster left a jar crammed with zebra mussels<\/a> on the doorstep of the Charles M. Russell Wildlife Refuge office in Lewiston, Montana. Dr. Eileen Ryce, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Aquatic Nuisance Coordinator, was stunned. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWe assume that the anonymous someone knew what a threat zebra mussels pose.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

However, there\u2019s been no sign of the zebra invader in Montana waters, or unfortunately the perp\u2019s identity.\u00a0\u00a0 At that point neither the mussel nor its equally notorious cousin, the quagga<\/a>, had crossed the Continental Divide as far as anyone knew.\u00a0 (Today, despite a recent scare in Flathead Lake, Ryce notes, Montana is still free of these mussels).<\/span><\/p>\n

Other western states have not been so lucky.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two years later on January 7, 2007 a sharp-eyed marina employee at Lake Mead<\/a> (which straddles the Arizona-Nevada border) spotted what he thought was a single zebra mussel attached to a cable anchoring a breakwater.\u00a0\u00a0 But, the lone mussel was not a zebra, but a quagga that had slipped into the huge lake with nary a splash. It was the first discovery of an invader mussel west of the Continental Divide. Divers rapidly discovered many more quagga, which soon migrated down the Colorado River into Lake Mojave and Lake Havasu on the California\/Arizona border. The\u00a0California-bound Colorado River water flows out of Lake Havasu via the Colorado River Aqueduct to California. By March 2007, much to the alarm of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, quaggas were \u201ccoursing\u201d down miles of concrete-lined canal surfaces in the California Colorado River Aqueduct system.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cAs a remedy,\u201d says Bob Muir, Public Information Officer for the Water District, \u201cwe shut down major stretches of the 242-mile Colorado River Aqueduct to dry out the system during the last ten days of July 2007\u201d\u2014to little avail.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Now, according to the Metropolitan Water District\u2019s Microbiology Unit Manager, Dr. Ricardo De Leon, <\/em>all the southern California reservoirs, lakes and watersheds receiving Colorado River water are infested. (Periodic shut downs of the Aqueduct continue to be part of the Water District\u2019s efforts to contain the quagga.)\u00a0\u00a0 The Lake Justo Reservoir in Northern California\u2019s San Benito County hosts only zebra mussels. As Lake Justo is not on the Colorado Aqueduct system, biologists believe that this infestation arrived via trailered recreational boats.<\/span><\/p>\n

The mussels, master filter feeders not only roil ecosystems but clog intake openings and other structures of water systems.\u00a0 Officials in the Midwest and Northeast have spent billions to rid the waters of the scourge yet they persist.\u00a0 The invaders also disrupt the aquatic food chain by vacuuming up zooplankton, phytoplankton, and other suspended organisms in the water column leaving little for other creatures such as fish to eat. A spawning female quagga can produce a million eggs a season.\u00a0 Quaggas siphon up more food than they can eat, ejecting the surplus as \u201cpseudofeces\u201d which drop to the bottom and fertilize benthic flora which then overpopulates. \u00a0At the same time, sunlight penetrates the newly cleared waters and aquatic plants such as algae photosynthesize and grow. \u00a0A familiar boom and bust cycle follows.\u00a0 Fish die from lack of food and oxygen, negatively affecting the ecosystem, sport and commercial fishing, boating, and the industries that depend on them, as well as human water supplies and hydroelectric power systems.<\/span><\/p>\n

Researcher David Wong at the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, University of Nevada at Las Vegas, says:<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cQuaggas have settled in Lake Mead.\u00a0 They attack everything including each other and even another invasive, the Asian clam.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Quaggas have also displaced zebra mussels in the Great Lakes<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

Both mussels arrived in the 1980s in the Great Lakes via the ballast of ships from Northern Europe and the Ukraine. Dr. Carol Stepien, the Director of the Lake Erie Center and Professor of Ecology at the University of Toledo, has used genetic analyses to determine the origin of the invaders and the likely path they followed once they arrived in North America. Stepien\u2019s research indicates that zebras come from multiple non-native northern European populations whereas quagga mussels appear to \u201ctrace their ancestry to their native estuaries in the Southern Bug and Dnieper River in the Ukraine.\u201d The quagga\u00a0mussels that invaded Nevada and California probably came from Lake Ontario, whereas the zebra \u201cmarched\u201d west from the St. Lawrence River\u2014both presumably overland via recreational boats.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Foiling their spread has been the aim of The 100th Meridian Initiative<\/a>, a cooperative effort between local, state, provincial, regional, and federal agencies that was established by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. \u00a0Western states plagued with the invaders\u2014Arizona , California, Colorado, Nevada and Utah\u2014now have laws that mandate\u00a0 inspection, decontamination, and quarantine of boats to \u201cStop Aquatic Hitchhikers\u201d as posted signs say. \u00a0\"\"<\/a> Online surveys and outreach to the news media also spread the word.\u00a0 Surveys indicate that awareness among boaters rose from 2003 to 2008.\u00a0 However, as officials at Lake Mead have pointed out, definitions of boat cleaning differ among boaters \u2014some take their boats to a carwash or wipe them down with a cleaner such as Windex , neither of which \u00a0does the trick.\u00a0 What does is hosing down every boat part with scalding water of 140 degrees or more. \u00a0Befouled boats are then required to dry out for about 30 days, depending on their location. \u00a0The mantra is \u201cDon\u2019t Move a Mussel: Clean, Drain and Dry Your Equipment.\u201d \u00a0(This is also a video<\/a> title available on the web.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Utah\u2019s effort is paying off.\u00a0 In 2010 alone, Aquatic Invasive Species officials interdicted 408,683 boats, decontaminating 11,116. They issued 1581 written warnings, and 341 boaters were required to appear in court.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWe wanted to get ahead of this thing,\u201d says Larry Dalton, the state\u2019s Aquatic Invasive Species Specialist, who recently received the 2010 U. S. Forest Service \u201cOutstanding Partner Against Invasive Species\u201d award.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Mussel-free states such as Montana, Idaho, Washington, Wyoming, and New Mexico have mounted a preemptive strike.\u00a0 Their legislatures have also mandated \u201cinspection-stop authority.\u201d \u00a0In Oregon\u2014also mussel free\u2014a similar bill is in the works.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

At the moment the state\u2019s Aquatic Invasive Species Prevention Program<\/a> is voluntary, says Rick Boatner, Invasive Species Wildlife Integrity Coordinator. \u00a0Nevertheless, his \u201cfive roaming teams of two managed to inspect 2852 boats in 2010.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Although watercraft are the usual suspect in transporting these invading mussels from one water body to another, another possible pathway is wildland fire equipment.\u00a0 Fire equipment\u2014tankers, helicopters, fixed wing aircraft, and fire engines\u2014can all harbor invasive larvae.\u00a0 The U.S. Forest Service Intermountain Region now requires that movable equipment be disinfected.<\/span><\/p>\n

Multiple attempts have been made to rid North American waters of the invaders. The only known success is at Millbrook Quarry<\/a>, a\u00a012-acre, 90 foot-deep zebra mussel-infested pond\u00a0in Prince William County, Virginia.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The zebra mussel got there, says Dick Neves, noted mussel expert and professor (emeritus) at Virginia Tech, \u201cbecause an enterprising diver bent on clearing the water probably introduced it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Officials dumped potash\u2014(potassium chloride)\u2014at a cost of $400,000\u2014into the pond. Potash, a water softener, is safe for humans and other animals at certain levels, but toxic to mussels.<\/span><\/p>\n

No one yet knows of a method to eradicate the invaders once they are established in a large water body. \u00a0\u00a0Lake Mead\u2014200, 000 acres, 500 feet deep\u2014is a far cry from Millbrook Quarry pond.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

As one observer quipped, \u201cYou can\u2019t boil a lake.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Adele Conover is a freelance science writer currently based in Sunnyvale, California.\u00a0 Her work has appeared in\u00a0 Smithsonian\u00a0 Magazine, The New York Times Science page, The Nature Conservancy, National Wildlife,\u00a0 International Wildlife,\u00a0 Air & Space Mag., Sports Illustrated, and other publications. <\/em><\/p>\n

Photo credits: Quaggas in Lake Mead, David Kushner, National Park Service; Zebra mussels on boat, David Britton, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service; Billboard, Aquatic Nuisance Species Task Force<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post contributed by Adele Conover, a freelance science writer specializing in natural history. On Halloween night 2005, an anonymous trickster left a jar crammed with zebra mussels on the doorstep of the Charles M. Russell Wildlife Refuge office in Lewiston, Montana. Dr. Eileen Ryce, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Aquatic Nuisance Coordinator, was stunned. \u201cWe assume that the anonymous…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,2],"tags":[524,109,1191,1192,1193,1194,1195,1196,1197],"class_list":["post-4976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecology-in-policy","category-research","tag-great-lakes","tag-invasive-species","tag-lake-mead","tag-millbrook-quarry","tag-quagga-mussels","tag-the-100th-meridian-initiative","tag-u-s-fish-and-wildlife-service","tag-u-s-forest-service","tag-zebra-mussels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4976\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}