Mussel Beach

From September, 1996 (Update #28)

Twenty-foot-wide piles of zebra mussel shells up to three feet high appeared on the beaches of southern Green Bay this spring. The mounds of shells stretched 25 miles northward from the Fox River on the UW-Green Bay campus to the Sugar Creek boat landing in Door County. The piles of foul-smelling shells, according to many reports, made shoreline residents and recreational beach users very unhappy. Kewaunee County employees were forced to spend four hours in late May removing 17 truckloads of shells from the shoreline at Red River County Park before they could install a dock, according to county patrol superintendent Ed Schneider. Schneider estimated that 340 cubic yards of shells were taken to the county landfill. Most shoreline users, however, were content to wait for the shells to wash back into the bay. By mid-summer, shell piles had begun to diminish at some locations.

ID: 199609-4.

The Zebra Mussel Update was a 4- to 8-page quarterly national newsletter published by the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute from May 1990 through May 1997. The ZMU documented the spread of the zebra mussel -- an exotic nuisance mussel -- through North America's freshwater environments, especially the Great Lakes, and on efforts to control it.