Keeping quagga mussels from infesting Clear Lake was one of the primary goals of Measure S, which was rejected by the voters on Nov. 4. To date we have been lucky because despite this being one of the more popular fishing lakes in the nation, the mussel hasn”t yet been discovered here. In fact, the quagga mussel hasn”t been found in any lake in Northern California, at least not yet.
Zebra mussels were found in the San Justo Reservoir in San Benito County last year. The zebra and quagga mussels are close relatives. That doesn”t mean the county doesn”t have to be vigilant. A single boat with the mussels attached and launched at Clear Lake could have dire consequences.
Quagga or zebra mussels can be found in 29 states, including California. The state with the highest number of quagga or zebra mussels is Michigan, where 264 lakes have the mussel. The next highest is Wisconsin with 100 lakes. These states border the Great Lakes where the mussels were first discovered after an ocean freighter from the Ukraine dumped its ballast water in Lake Erie. The ships travel to the Great Lakes to pick up iron ore and use ballast tanks filled with water when the ships are empty. The ballast water often contained invasive species not native to America. The ships are required to dump their ballast tanks 3 miles out to sea but that regulation is often ignored.
Within a few years the mussels (quagga and zebra) quickly spread across country while attached to pleasure boats being trailered from lake to lake. According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), there are now 704 lakes in the U.S. that are home to either the quagga or zebra mussel and that doesn”t include rivers.
California has 25 lakes with the quagga mussel and they are in the counties of Orange, Riverside, San Benito, San Diego and San Bernardino.
Despite years of research on the two mussels, there is still no method to eradicate them from an infected body of water. The mussel is about the size of your fingernail and it can pump a quart of water through its system each day. The mussel has no natural predators in America and they can live as long as four years.
The worry among local officials is that a contaminated boat coming from Lake Mead or Lake Havasu will visit Clear Lake. Once launched, the boat will spread the mussels into the lake. Clear Lake is popular with bass fishermen and many of the boats that come from Nevada, Arizona or Southern California are bass boats. The problem is that these same boats also visit the other popular bass lakes in Northern California and Clear Lake is the only lake with a viable inspection program.
For example, a boat can launch in Lake Oroville, Lake Shasta, Lake Berryessa or Lake Sonoma and no one inspects it. If the mussels get into any of these lakes it will only be a matter of time before they are transported to Clear Lake.
What is needed is a joint effort by all the counties in Northern California to keep the mussels out. Since the state doesn”t want to get involved, the counties must do it on their own. For example, Lake County could team up with Sonoma, Mendocino and Napa counties and create a joint task force to inspect all boats.
Lake County has a good inspection program but it needs to be tested. One test would be to take a boat and put fake mussels all over the outdrive and the hull. In other words, make it obvious that the boat is contaminated. A county employee would then attempt to get the boat certified and even attempt to launch it at the various ramps around the lake. The boat could be taken to each vender that sells the stickers to see if it was properly inspected. It would be a good method of checking out the inspection system and improving it.
Keeping the quagga mussel out of Clear Lake is vital to our community for many reasons. If the mussel ever gets established here the economic impact would be disastrous. Just because Measure S didn”t pass is no reason for the county not to manage our most precious resource.
