Lake County could become the state model for quagga mussel prevention. Recently the Lake County Board of Supervisors (BOS) replaced the Quagga Mussel Task Force with a new committee called the Lake County Invasive Species Council, which is headed by Kelseyville”s Greg Giusti.
Giusti is a scientist employed by the University of California and has some strong ideas on how to deal with the possible invasion of quagga mussels.
Giusti”s council held its first meeting last week and among those in attendance were a who”s who of the scientific field. In addition to Giusti, there was a scientist from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a scientist from UC Davis, a biologist from Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), and a representative from State Senator Pat Wiggins” office.
Also in attendance were representatives from the county, Lake County Supervisor Denise Rushing, the local chair for the Sierra Club, a member of the Lakeport City Council, the environmental director for the Big Valley Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians, a representative from the Yolo County Water Conservation District, plus several other members of the Lake County community.
By assembling a group of people with such broad experience, Giusti hopes to have a workable plan in place soon. According to Giusti, the council”s first challenge is to come up with a plan for the re-inspection of boats that have left and returned to the county.
“We have a good plan already in place to screen boats coming into the county and to issue quagga mussel stickers, but we need to go to the next step and that is to have a viable working plan to re-inspect boats that return to the county. We also need to closely inspect boats that have recently been in waters that are infested with the mussel,” Giusti said.
Giusti said he is especially concerned with bass fishermen coming from Lake Mead, Lake Havasu and other lakes in Southern California infested with the quagga mussel. In fact, there is an FLW-Outdoors tournament scheduled for Oct. 21-23 on Clear Lake and many of the contestants live near the infested lakes.
According to Giusti, it”s not only Clear Lake that”s a concern to the county. Lake Pillsbury and Indian Valley Reservoir are both remote lakes located in Lake County, and they don”t have the controls in place that Clear Lake does. An infested boat could be launched in either lake and the mussels could get established without anyone knowing about it. The mussels would then have an easy path into Clear Lake.
The good news is that as far as authorities know, the mussels haven”t arrived in Clear Lake. The county and the Department of Fish and Game (DFG) have placed concrete blocks at various locations around the lake. These blocks have a high calcium concentration and attract quagga mussels or their veligers (the eggs of the mussels). The blocks are checked weekly and to date none have had any mussels or veligers attached to them.
There is no question that if the mussels establish themselves in Clear Lake the results would be devastating. Quagga mussels feed on phytoplankton, the primary food for the young bass and other game fish in Clear Lake. They are filter feeders and feed by pumping water through their digestive system. The mussel is small, about the size your fingernail, but each mussel is capable of putting a quart of water through its system each day. When you multiply that by the millions or billions of mussels you can see that they will quickly consume all the plankton in the lake.
What makes Clear Lake so attractive to the mussels is its rich supply of plankton and the calcium in the water, both of which supply the mussel with nutrients it needs.
The mussels also would attach themselves to the water intakes around the lake. These intakes supply water to the local water companies and it would cost millions of dollars to keep them clear. They also would find their way into the intakes of the motors on boats docked around the lake.
Getting federal and state funding is crucial to setting up a boat inspection program, according to Giusti, and he hopes that by inviting state and federal authorities to be part of the council that funding will soon become available.
