New Sightings

From May, 1995 (Update #24)

ST. PETERS, Mo. - Quagga mussels were recently found in the Mississippi River approximately 60 miles north of St. Louis, according to Mary Furman and Heidi Dunn, biologists with the consulting firm, Ecological Specialists, Inc. Six zebra mussels and three quagga mussels were found on rock baskets intended for sampling benthic invertebrates. S. Jerrine Nichols and Glen Black of the National Biological Service in Ann Arbor, Mich., confirmed the identification. All of the mussels were less than 4 mm long. The baskets were placed around several chevron dikes in a side channel of the Mississippi River as part of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-funded project monitoring invertebrate colonization.

MARION, Ohio - Zebra mussels were found in early March in Killdeer Reservoir, according to Ohio Department of Natural Resources' Ken Paxton. Paxton describes Killdeer Reservoir as an "experimental" pump storage impoundment similar to many reservoirs in northwestern Ohio. The state-owned reservoir was constructed by the Ohio DNR to determine ways to improve fisheries in similar water supply facilities. Zebra mussels have been reported but not confirmed in a similar water storage reservoir, Wellington Upground Reservoir, Paxton said. Such reservoirs are not biologically productive and often supply water that's piped 10-12 miles to a municipal water treatment plant. Killdeer is not used to supply water.

KINGSTON, Ont. - Veligers were discovered last summer in Charleston and Devil lakes, according to biologist Brian Krishka. The two inland southeastern Ontario lakes were sampled as part of a long-term water quality monitoring program. Krishka said that water quality conditions in these lakes are ideal for zebra mussel growth. Krishka also noted that the numbers of veligers found in plankton samples from these lakes were extremely low: two veligers in two separate mid-July samples in Charleston, and one veliger in a mid-July sample from Devil Lake. Devil Lake (1,000 hectares - 400 acres) and Charleston (2,500 hectares - 1,000 acres) both receive overland boat traffic from Lake Ontario and the nearby St. Lawrence River. Small numbers of zebra mussels have been found in several lakes monitored by Krishka in the nearby Rideau Canal system. The only large concentration of mussels in this system, he said, has been found near Ottawa, where a tug with attached mussels was dry-docked in the early 1990s. The Rideau Canal system connects Kingston to Ottawa. Rideau Lake is the highest elevation in the system, and water flows downstream to both Ottawa and Kingston. Krishka said Ontario does not currently have a "pro-active" zebra mussel monitoring program, but he hopes to implement one. His current plankton and substrate monitoring efforts cover only inland Ontario lakes that are part of a long-term monitoring program initiated in the early 1980s.

ID: 199505-1.

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.