I have never heard of a “Zebra mussel” before I read this article. The Zebra mussel is the invasive species that caught my attention because of the immense destruction that it has caused. I was amazed by the deficits on the economy that this species has created. I couldn’t fathom that a mussel could create and cause this much turbulence. The zebra mussel is a thumbnail size mollusk native to the Black Sea that showed up in Lake St. Clair, Ontario, in 1988, Zebra mussels like to attach themselves to a hard surface, and they don’t mind a crowd. Sometimes these mussels will stack on top of each other as dense as 70,000 individual mussels per square foot. I try to picture this in my mind it amazes me how they can fit so many is such a small area of surface. The article assigned stated that within two years these mussels were in the shallows of the Great Lakes. This took a significant tole on surrounding business owners. These mussels will get into pipes, ships’ rudders were jammed. Between the U.S. and Canada lose about 140 million dollars a year in direct result of these mussels.
Zebra mussels negatively impact ecosystems in many different ways. First, they filter out algae that native species need for food and they attach to—and incapacitate—native mussels. Power Plants must also spend millions of dollars removing Zebra mussels from clogged water intakes. There are many current studies going on to better understand its behavior and biology. They have not figured out a solution to prevent and/or control the population of zebra mussels.
There is not a way to eradicate this species yet. There was a documented attempt in Virginia about 12 years ago in a private pond/lake of multiple acres and was successful. They converted it into a saltwater quarry by adding salt. However, there was no outlet to contaminate any rivers. Daniel Molloy, a research scientist at the State University of New York at Albany, created a bacterium that gave way to an environmentally safe pesticide called Zequanox. However, The EPA prohibits treatment of Zeaquanox in open water and “unconfined infrastructure”. This limits this product to very few customers that are legally and efficiently allowed to use this product. Hopefully this will give scientists ideas to innovation to be able to create a product that has lots of potential to help preserve native species and make a good living out of it.
There are many different species that are predators to the zebra mussel. The pumpkinseed sunfish, freshwater drums, redhorse sucker, river carpsuckers, smallmouth buffalos, and diving ducks are some of the many different species that feed on these terrible invasive mussels. Although there is predation that seems to not have been very effective when trying to control the zebra mussel population.