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| Zebra (Photo credit: James F Clay) |
I am going to take a wild guess, but most of us, almost all of us would not be a party to the transfer of the Z's. Example...our pontoon has been in the lake for years, pulled out on occasion for repairs (at Venita) and put back in the water the same day. Runabouts get pulled in the late fall, towed to the boat lot where they winter and then towed back to Venita for launch. You might pull your boat each fall, but my guess you store it and then bring it back in the lake...no journeys to Smithville or other contaminated lakes. So no danger to the lake there?
What does that leave us? Members who have what I call fishing boats, they launch to fish and then pull the boat at the end of their fishing day. If they fish in other lakes...that could be a problem. Folks who take their sailboats to other lakes and then relaunch here could be a problem as well (that would include other sail boats which come here for regattas). WLIC knows exactly the type of boats members have, maybe that is the starting point. I suppose it is possible for member to lend a key to a non-member friend to launch a boat for fishing, most of the time this might go undetected...and the boat could be infected with the Zebras. Maybe members shouldn't have keys but make arrangements to have access...just like we do with the boat lot.
Not an easy problem to solve.
6 comments:
We have other species like snapping turtles in and around the lake but we don't worry about them because their population is limited by nature (and cars). We certainly don't chain off the boat ramps to make sure no one brings in any baby turtles. Though in some political subdivisions they build a turtle fence to save them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qizNQKzatXA
Obviously we don't want them in the lake but someone should really do some more research or look at existing research to see how long these things can survive out of the water and if they are even a real problem. It is possible that boats might not even be a transmission vector.
They breathe with gills! Seems like the very act of trailering a boat and drying it out might kill them. Leaving a boat out of the water for 7 days certainly would kill them. This is how long Wikipedia says an adult can survive out of the water. I would have to see one live that long with my own eyes to believe it.
http://el.erdc.usace.army.mil/zebra/zmis/zmishelp4/feeding_digestion_and_respiration.htm
FYI, The ones at Smithville were dead and they found three of them?!
http://mdc.mo.gov/newsroom/invasive-zebra-mussels-confirmed-smithville-lake
It is just possible that they cannot survive in this climate for more than a season or the particular water type/chemistry/temperature range of the lakes around here.
Zebra mussels are filter feeders and need to be in aerated water with a food source and enough calcium to make their shells. I don't think they would live very long at all if you removed them from the dirt/water.
Maybe the dead ones they found at Smithville were some that only survived one season because the environmental conditions killed them. Maybe they only found three because their population is controlled by nature or limited by the amount of calcium in the water or who knows? Three is not exactly an invasion. Maybe they weren't even zebra mussels? If you go dig in the mud in the coves, you will find something that already lives in WL that looks like a zebra mussel only solid brown color. They are just baby freshwater clams (I think?).
On a lighter note, this bird is concerned about squirrels.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb3Gq1gqrYI
and there must have been some magic in that old top hat they found.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeEZigcZxd0
The mussel link you provided is very interesting and provides a lot of good information to consider. However, I do have to say that many of the citations are about 15 years old and are not directly related to MO. While that doesn't unanimously negate it's value, I would suggest we should rely heavily on current and local resources. The MO Department of Conservation has stated unequivocally that they ARE a threat to all Missouri waters based on their research and current observations.
Your other links were good too.
The consensus is that they initially arrived in the great lakes via ballast water in large ships. I hope someone is thoroughly checking process and source of the fish that are stocked into the lake.
As far as small fishing boats are concerned, the only thing like this would be the live wells on some fishing boats and the bilge water on some larger boats. I really can't even imagine them surviving very long in stagnant water like this.
They are noticed especially in places like intakes hydro stations and dams. They accumulate in these places where there is a lot of flowing and aerated water. Most of the papers on them say they prefer flowing water.
I am sure that in our lake oxygen levels drop like crazy in the winter, especially when there is a hard freeze. The lake has existed for decades without any controls. I am not sure if anyone has even checked to see if a small population of them doesn't already exist in the lake. Our lake also contains some of the predators that are known to eat them. Om-nom-nom Zebra Mussels! I like mine over pasta with white sauce!
You could even build a gadget (A Zebra-Mussel-Vacuum-Venturi-Areated-Pipe-Trap - ZMVVAPT - All rights reserved) It would detect them and capture the lavae - that would just be a pipe that aerates and pulls in water via a pump and air from surface via vacuum action and place it in a depth of water where they are known to survive. Make it solar powered pump for extra-green-super-environmental-bonus-points. If you don't want these points, please use loud high powered diesel motor that makes lots of smoke and add some coal oil smudge pots for extra pollution.
All kidding aside...Idea would be to simulate an intake for a water plant or hydro plant. The larve would attach to the pipe and grow to adults. They accumulate in these places because the little griblins like the flowing oxygenated water. This would be a huge waste of time and possibly suitable for a government grant in the millions of dollars. It might be converted into something useful if you made it inject something that would kill the larvae from time to time. You could also just pull it out of the water every so often (or have a solar robot do this) and let the larvae die in the sunshine.
If anyone wants to build this and starts selling it to the government - its fine, just cut me in for twenty percent of the net. Some things shouldn't be built though.
So it turns out there is a LOT of information about ZM's out there. This technical paper (which cites a bunch of other technical papers) has info about temperature and oxygen and other stuff that limits ZM Distribution.
http://archive.org/details/cbarchive_34165_physicalfactorsthatlimitthedis1981
AND it turns out that this paper says warm water is ZM's nemisis. If I am reading this correctly when the lake water temp gets to 86F or 30C it is 100 percent mortality for them. You would need measurements of oxygen, chemistry, etc that I don't have to evaluate the other factors. The stream team should have those measurements charted or be able to get them.
It certainly doesn't sound like they could ever be 'invasive' here in the climate and high summer water temp of our small lake.
The other thing you get from reading this paper is that Russian scientists do research on Zebra Mussels in the cooling pools of nuclear reactors. That sounds like the beginning plot of a bad science fiction movie. Just sayin...
Does anyone else think it's the same person posting under different names? Crowd of one.
The TV does it; so its okay!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlJkgQZb0VU#t=9m25s
http://sockpuppets.ytmnd.com/
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