Regional Sea Grant Zebra Mussel Outreach Project Approved

From April 30, 1991 (update #7)

SILVER SPRING, Md. - The National Sea Grant College Program has approved and forwarded for funding a $500,000 Great Lakes Sea Grant Network proposal for a coordinated, cooperative outreach effort to help Great Lakes resource users deal with the zebra mussel. Among other things, this special outreach funding has enabled Wisconsin Sea Grant to continue its Zebra Mussel Watch and this Zebra Mussel Update newsletter for another year. The Great Lakes Sea Grant Network plans a three-pronged effort to improve access to existing literature as well as develop and distribute new information on methods of zebra mussel control:

1) The New York Sea Grant Zebra Mussel Information Clearinghouse will expand its geographic scope to include information on zebra mussel-related research from throughout the region and create a computer database with toll-free telephone access;

2) Michigan Sea Grant will create a regional loan library of photographs, videos and other graphic materials on zebra mussels and other exotic nuisance species, and

3) Network programs will coordinate production of a full range of information on zebra mussel controls for power plants and industry, water utilities, harbor authorities, shippers, marinas, boaters, commercial fishers, lakeshore land-owners, government agencies and the public.

This outreach funding will also enable the network to support annual international exotic species research conferences like the one hosted by Ohio Sea Grant last December in Columbus (the 1991 conference will be hosted by New York Sea Grant; Wisconsin Sea Grant will host the 1992 conference). The Great Lakes Sea Grant Network is comprised of the Illinois-Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio and Wisconsin programs and employs more than 40 field agents, campus-based specialists and communications professionals.

ID: 19910430-10.

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.