UW Sea Grant Awarded Zebra Mussel Grants

From July 15, 1993 (update #17)

The National Sea Grant College Program (NSGCP) has awarded more than $200,000 in competitive grants to UW Sea Grant for research and outreach projects on zebra mussels. UW-Superior Professor Mary Balcer was awarded a $106,473 grant for a two- year research project to determine whether zebra mussels are capable of surviving, growing and reproducing under the prevailing pH, calcium and water temperature regimes in the Duluth-Superior harbor. "This project will provide valuable information on the success of zebra mussels in colonizing areas where environmental factors are limiting," Balcer said. The NSGCP awarded a total of $107,382 to UW Sea Grant investigators Allen H. Miller, Clifford Kraft and Stephen Wittman for an outreach project that includes: * Marketing Sea Grant-generated zebra mussel information to inland regions of the nation recently invaded by the mussel; * Continuation of UW Sea Grant's Zebra Mussel Watch, a program of monitoring the state's Great Lakes harbors and providing water users and resource managers with information on whether zebra mussels are likely to reach nuisance fouling levels in specific areas; * Continuation of UW Sea Grant's program of training observers from inland Wisconsin utilities and industries with water intakes on how to sample for and identify zebra mussels; * Continuation of a statewide public education effort regarding zebra mussels; * Support for hosting the 4th International Zebra Mussel Conference in March 1994 in Madison, Wis.; and * Monitoring of commercial fishing equipment to determine whether zebra mussel fouling has occurred.

ID: 19930715-11.

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.