LAKE COUNTY — The search continues for the invasive quagga and zebra mussels in Lake County”s waterways, according to Lake County Water Resources Program Coordinator Carolyn Ruttan.
Ruttan was out on a rowboat July 16 taking water samples with Portland State University (PSU) scientist and researcher Steve Wells. She said Wells took 24 water samples at high-traffic areas around Clear Lake to detect the microscopic velligers, which are the larval forms of the invasive mussels. The team used a plankton net, which has a very small mesh, to capture water samples from the lakebed to the surface.
“It”s a mess. It”s a very thick pea soup,” Ruttan said, adding that sorting out the algae and other animals and plants in the samples takes hours of laboratory work.
“You do have to separate the algae from all the animals in the water, then you have all kinds of different animals in the water ? various forms of zooplankton, which are plankton of an animal form, and that includes the mussel velligers. Then you separate the mussel larvae from all the other animal larvae, then you get down to the many different mussels, then you try to separate out just quagga and zebra mussels,” Ruttan said.
The quagga and zebra are cousin species that reproduce and spread quickly, clogging water systems, power plants, boats and docks. Since they first appeared in the state in January 2007, the mussels have been found in 11 California water bodies. Once a water body is infested, maintenance costs can be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Water samples taken last summer showed the mussels were not present in Clear Lake, and Ruttan said results from this year”s samples could take a year to get back.
She said PSU is using federal grant money from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to sample high-risk waters throughout California for the invasive species.
In other developments, mussel-sniffing dogs with a nose for the invasive species will show their stuff at a documentary filming Thursday at Library Park, according to California Department of Fish and Game Warden Lynette Shimek.
Huell Howser”s California”s Gold series, a PBS program, will feature the dogs and their DFG handlers as part of a documentary about the invasive mussels and what they could do to California”s waterways, according to Shimek.
The dogs will be tasked with sniffing out samples of the mussels placed on boats. Shimek said at a demonstration in April, humans were pitted against the dogs to demonstrate how much faster the dogs were at detecting the mollusks.
“The dogs find it in less than two minutes. We usually have to call it for people. I think we had six people at one time and we called it at 10 minutes,” Shimek said.
Contact Tiffany Revelle at trevelle@record-bee.com.
