#Zebra mussels recipe full

Native mussels dying outįreshwater mussels throughout the nation are already struggling, and it isn’t helping the situation when zebra mussels come in and take over their food and spawning grounds.

Name an aspect of the boating or shipping industry, and zebra mussels are probably interfering in some way, whether it’s fouling up hulls, motors, docks or marinas. “Any facility that’s pulling water out of the Great Lakes has to deal with the potential for the mussel to be settling in their pipes and somewhere else in their system,” Waller said. One of the more well-known problems with zebra mussels is the way they rapidly coat water intake pipes, which is a problem for drinking water treatment plants, power plants and any other industry that’s pulling water out of the lakes through a pipe. Here’s a list of those effects, both good and bad: Coating pipes

#Zebra mussels recipe full

It’s an issue that has cost Canada and the United States separately billions of dollars.īut while many people know that zebra mussels are impacting the lakes, not many people know what that full range of impact is. The result is a storm of zebra mussels rapidly reproducing and spreading throughout the Great Lakes wherever the water takes them. Zebra mussels mature in a year and release their larvae into the water to develop. Waller studies zebra and quagga mussels at the USGS’s Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center.Ī native mussel can take 3 to 5 years to mature, and they take a while to reproduce because they are parasitic. The problem is that’s about where the similarities between the invasive and native species end.įor one thing, native mussels aren’t as efficient as zebra mussels, according to Diane Waller, a research fishery biologist with the U.S. They were first discovered in the area in the late 1980s, and it has been an ongoing battle to get rid of and control them ever since.īut what’s the issue? Mussels have long existed in the Great Lakes, and the dreissenid zebra mussels and native unionid mussels are both filter feeders.

Zebra mussels are not native to the Great Lakes. Collection 4 – Lesson Plans from Our Monthly PBS Program.Collection 3 – Virtual Field Trips in the Great Lakes.Collection 2 – Threats to the Great Lakes.Collection 1 – An Exploration of the Great Lakes.Beneath the Surface: The Line 5 Pipeline in the Great Lakes.

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