Spreading Quagga/Zebra Mussels

He can still use the super-agents. He just can't let them swim free if there are leftovers.

the mussells will get there eventually anyways.

it's just going to be a big pain for all of us until they do.

it's a big excuse for government types to dick us over continually and waste our money.

(yeah, bsteves makes his money from the taxes extracted from poor people,
so I never quite trust his take on things... he always seems to be for more
government and rules...)

somebody should just throw a few handfuls in and get the infection over with...

they still fish in the great lakes and other places with those mussells. something will eventually figure out how to eat them.

the best defense is a good offense and right now all they have is a crappy defense. so lame!

J

(yeah, bsteves makes his money from the taxes extracted from poor people,
so I never quite trust his take on things... he always seems to be for more
government and rules...)

Ouch.. sorry you don't trust me J, but you make me sound like I'm personally stealing from poor people.  I'm simply a scientist that works on invasive species and is employed by the government. 

There are two main types of impacts that the various water authorities making these new rules are worried about if zebra mussels infest their reservoirs and lakes: ecological impacts and economic impacts. 

The ecological impacts are basically the effects that this new species has on all the other species currently living in the lake and those can be summed up as fouling any hard sub-surface structure and filtering the heck out of the plankton in the water.   A trophic cascade usually follows..  Less plankton -> less zooplankton -> less bait fish -> less gamefish   It's a little more complicated than that and the lake will probably still be fishable in the long run.   

I think it's the economic impacts that are really the driving force behind regulations designed to prevent the spread of zebra mussels.  Because these mussels are so good at fouling hard substrates they have a tendency to do things like clog water intake pipes and other infrastructure associated with running a water authority.   The Great Lakes and other areas where zebra mussels know exist have spent billions on cleaning up after zebra mussels so that people can keep access to water.  The yearly cost of running inspections and educating the public is going to be much less than the yearly cost of dealing with the problem once it gets here.   If they can keep the mussels at bay even for a few extra years that seems like money well saved in my opinion.

somebody should just throw a few handfuls in and get the infection over with...

I didn't know you were such a defeatist J.  You might as well sell your kayak and fishing gear now as well because salmon will be closed for a couple years, the MPAs are here to stay, and you can't even fish a lake without cleaning your boat first.   Why bother even trying, right?

they still fish in the great lakes and other places with those mussells. something will eventually figure out how to eat them.

Yes, the Great Lakes are still fishable and something did eventually figure out how to eat zebra mussels (sort of).  A few years after the zebra mussels some gobies (small bottom dwelling fish) from the same general source region as the zebra mussels showed up in the Great Lakes.  They do eat mussels (but not a lot), unfortunately they also eat smallmouth bass eggs from their nests and have almost completely displaced the native sculpins (another small bottom dwelling fish).

Brian

my comment was a low blow...  when I get over the annoyance from how this is handled, I'll feel bad and take it back and apologize. I got a libertarian's axe to grind I think, but I'm not sure I'm actually a libertarian, but if I was one and had an axe to grind I probably don't need to grind it on bsteves in any case.

But historically people side with those that pay them. including government workers and scientists. anyways, enough about that.

as for the economic thing, it's a form of the "public good" style of argument. it won't hurt me personally too bad if they invade. so I don't care about that one. Very typical of a goverment worker to use the public good argument of course to restrict my rights somehow...

for the environmental thing, I really wonder about the invasive species issue at all. People are an invasive species... If those mussels are successful on a biological level, more power to them. If you want to track species dynamics. fine. but  trying to alter them with silly inspections is just too much.

regading the defeatist comment, that shows how conventional your thinking is. I have fished for salmon all of 5 times in my life. to say I'm losing anything would be silly. I'm happy to fish for mackerel.  I bought 4 lifetime fishing licenses, one for each member of my family and I'm pretty sure we'll find a way to use them no matter what even if it's trolling scr for planter trout to the sound of people at the gun range.

My point is that we should not jerk everybody around with boat inspections, etc. And somebody that is tired of being inspected should just throw a handful of mussels into the lake and then there won't be any reason to inspect cause the mussells will already be there.

that is not defeatist, it is thinking outside the box. not sure about the legality of course...

But I am very interested in learning more about these mussells without all the sky is falling rhetoric and actually bsteves, I would very much trust you to tell us that part. Probably nobody better!

and yes, your AOTY software is the best thing on NCKA. we just need to wean you off that goverment money and make an honest man out of you, 

J

Let me ask this then, since we are all for making this thing work at the most economical way. How many of our lakes here in North America are in fected with this mussel and how manu places are not. Doenst it make sence to control the access of the lakes that are infected instead of controlling those that are clean? You have millions of water access points all over the country  of clean waters and a much smaller % of them that are infected. Control the access of the infected waters instead.

We have tournaments in lake havasu that is infected and bass boats are shipped from every location in the country to compete there. Then they go home taking all the mussels with them. Why are we allowing this to happen????

Then we have inspections in Clear Lake but no inspections in the Delta???? Which is the bigger waterway????

If they are going to control this, it has to be nation wide not just one isolated body here and another there. It is insane and a total waste of our tax money!!!

J, yes it would be nice if we didn't need inspections and that everyone simply cleaned their boats after each trip to any lake just to be safe.   I think this is simply a matter where you libertarian views conflict with my liberal views.

Compa, I can't argue with your logic. In California there are only a few infected areas at the moment and it would make sense to concentrate efforts there by inspecting all outgoing boats, setting up cleaning stations at boat ramps, etc..  However, I believe that counties like Lake County that have taken the preventative approach with Clear Lake are being funded locally (taxes and rate increases) to do so.  Politically it's better for them to show the rate payers that they are doing something locally on Clear Lake then to send the extra money away to Lake Mead to set up a cleaning station.

There is by the way an attempt at cooperation between agencies on zebra mussels called the "100th Meridian Initiative" http://www.100thmeridian.org/   Unfortuneatly, they've failed to meet their goal of keeping zebra mussels out of the West (hence the name).

As for the percentage of waterways infected by zebra mussels, it really depends on the state.  Most states in the Great Lakes area have zebra mussels (or the related quagga mussels) in almost of their large lakes and rivers.



There has been some research suggesting that some lakes and rivers are more likely to infested than others and it usually depends on the chemical composition of the lake itself.  Basically, these mussels need a certain level of calcium to build their shells and survive and not all lakes and rivers do.  It's my understanding that Clear Lake is fairly calcium rich.  Here's some further reading on the subject of zebra mussels and risk assessments based on calcium.
http://www.dfg.ca.gov/invasives/quaggamussel/docs/2008-calcium-and-zebras-esa.pdf


Brian

When will they start inspecting the birds?

Zebra mussels are here to stay and will spread whether we nuke our boats between trips or not.

That is just the way it is.

BrewBasser

The primary carriers of mussles are not birds, is fish.

To fish they are a major source of year-round food especially the embrionic stages of the mussles.....and of course the fish carry them in their gut......and therefore mussles spread through out any and all of the branches of any waterspread.

Mussles are an enormous benefit to streams and water-bodys ---- especially TODAY where human pollutants cause "blooms" of plant and microbiologic life ---because those micro forms of life are the very thing the mussles feed upon.   Concentrations of mussles in water bodies ENORMOUSLY cleans and purifies those water bodies.   

It is of course true that mussles produce their own deffication which the non-native-species-haters have been quick to point out would kill-a-cow......if......the cow were to consume a concentrated solution.   But of course THEIR effluent sinks to the bottom....and because it is concentrated into itsy bitsy, you know, turds......it is harmless to all biologic species in the system.    So, the non-native-species-activists manage to tell the truth (that mussel-shit is poisonous) while telling a lie (because in real-life distribution musslel-shit isn't poisonous.)

There's a species of mussel that was recently "found" in Putah Creek (I have forgotten it's name) and the non-native-species-freaks went simply WILD and the creek was closed.....all manner of crazy things were said about "eradication".......where, of course, if anything is found in Putah Creek, a tributary to the Sacramento River, it will also be carried by fish to every other tributary of the Sacramento River ....... and "eradication" ....would simply be a moot issue.     But anyway, they showed a photo of the offending mussle and I saw this photo and my eyes got as big as saucers.....because, although it was just a B&W photo printed in a newspaper.....it looked all the world exactly like what I personally know has been growing in all of the tributaries of the Willamette River in Oregon since I was a "creek-crawling kid".....we called them perrywinkles....And Perrywinkle mussles have been in the Willamette River long long long before I came alone in 1939.

Consider for a moment.....the big whiz about Mitten Crabs.   You will remember quite distincly all the furor about them when they were "discovered" in our Bay Area waterways........and the non-native-species-crazies wigged out and of course enlisted gullible journalists who trotted out their photographers, who of course shot pictures of intake screens just filled with crabs (because a photo-journalists job is NOT to render perspective but to shoot THE MOST RADICAL SCENE that offers itself in connection with anything, be it Mitten Crabs or a Tornado-in-a-Trailer-Park....)........      Well you remember all that hub bub but it's gone & over and the show has done passed and nobody's talking about Mitten Crabs much anymore.  Now why would that be?    The answer I would provide you is:   That Catfish and Stripers and LMBs and SMBs and even mud turtles have discovered that Mitten Crabs are edible.......and Mitten Crab numbers have diminish as other species have included them in their diet(s)....and by-and-large Mitten Crabs just aren't the problem that they were.   And in retrospect it can be seen that it was a mistake to get whipped up about them in the first place.

Now........I don't deny that Mussles.......plug certain intake pipes.
And.........I don't contest that pipe-cleaning carrys economic cost.

But one has to balance THAT cost against the BILLIONS OF POUNDS AGGREGATE !!!!! of micro-pollutant-BIOTICA.....that these little guys filter from the water.     And there IS so much to FILTER, because of human waste-products what we pump into all of our waterways.

Therefore the story that the Non-Native-Species-Crazies are not discussing.....or bringing to your attention so that you can weigh the relative pros and cons.....is that while in the normal way of thinking.....there are two costs here:   A) pipe cleaning, and B) "environmntal cleanup" .......an innovative way of thinking about it......an perhaps elegant and innovative approach to "environmental cleanup".......is to PAY THE PIPE-CLEANING BILL and know......that the pipe-cleaning-costs are, fundamentally, a transfer payment for environmental cleanup....

D'u understand what I'm getting at?

Those little mussles are definitely and undeniably doing a very important water purification job.     And the price we pay.....is the pipe maintenance costs.....

Mull it over.

Judd