Irrespective of the agency underwriting the grant, the dollars spent to buy and train a hugely expensive “detection” – read police – dog to sniff out quagga mussels ultimately comes out of the citizens pockets. Detection of the invasive quagga would be justifiable and good if it could be done this way, but it can”t. DFG Officer Lynette Shimek (Record-Bee, July 27) notes that California “… will be the first state to use dogs to detect them, (quagga”s)”.
The reason for this is that wildlife and other professional biologists – Shimek and other F&G wardens are law-enforcement sorts, not biologists – who have studied the invasive quaaga and its first cousin the zebra mussel in the US have developed no better means of detection than recovery of larvae by plankton net from the water column or scrapings off boat hulls. The larvae of the quaaga is microscopic, in the water along with myriad other organic things.
While several of these organics, including cyanobacteria, green algae, and other plankters may, naturally, or by their activity, produce odors, quagga larvae do not. Perhaps Ms. Shimek is thinking about mussels on the menu of a seafood restaurant? The same goes for any tiny adult that might be hanging onto the hull, typically in concert with many different sorts of organisms. How would a “detection” dog discriminate quagga”s from the rest in such circumstances? It couldn”t.
Quagga”s are sneaky. Larvae can be carried in live wells or bilge water on boats or in bait buckets, and adults can attach to boat hulls, trailers, floats and piers. Models for quagga prevention and control involve a concerted campaign of public education and a prioritized system for boat inspections. Inspections could employ legal as well as moral authority, since importation and transportation of nuisance species, including invasive mussels, is against the law in California. For more details readers can refer to “quagga mussels” on any Internet search engine.
Officer Shimek, who has an outstanding record in law enforcement, is commended for her enthusiasm on the Quagga issue, an objective vastly more serious than catching a trout out of season, and as with other law-enforcement officers, she well deserves the services of a K-9 assistant for other duties areas.
However, it is disingenuous to pretend to the public that it is the quaaga scare that drives her funding requests. Shimek and others should be in a rush to implement existing techniques for quagga”s detection and prevention in Clear Lake and leave the K-9 police dogs for other appropriate duty.
Dr. John Brookes
Lakeport
