Very good read. Wish they could "fast track" zequanox. Lake Ray Roberts looks to me like it is clearing quickly. Every shoreline that has rocks has zeebs on it.

�The lessons learned from the zebra mussel infestation in the Great Lakes tells us that over the next few decades the zebra mussels will deplete the nutrients in Belton Lake which will ultimately cause a decline in the abundance of fish and native freshwater mussels,� Sanders said. - http://www.forthoodsentinel.com/story.php?id=13234

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oApwoMXo2dI

details on test trial in Lake Minnetonka. Summary - they have made samplers that zebra mussels and aquatic insects will inhabit. Once a community has been established, they seal the sampler off and experiment on application procedures to kill the mussels. They also will do a safety study. Apparently they want to see if non-target species are affected both in survival and in reproduction. They want to make sure the treatment doesn't effect spawning.

so, it seems like they are moving forward but very cautious. I am glad they are not just diving into deep water without first checking for debris under the water.

Also, they say that treatment is going to require a couple of hours of treatment. It will be interesting to see the application procedures that would be used to treat an entire lake, or if this is just to be used in targeted areas such as beaches and water intake areas. Based on what I am hearing, it seems like it could be a good product, but using it in a lake instead of a small laboratory setting is very different and could pose problems in treatment strategies. It doesn't sound like you can just use an airplane to spread pellets over a lake. It sounds like treatment may be a difficult process.

So it seems like they may have found something. Now they have to figure out how to get the product to the mussels for a duration of a couple of hours which could be a daunting task when you are talking about an entire lake. But before that, an efficacy study and a safety study, to find the effectiveness in a lake setting and potential harm to non-target species in both survival and reproduction.

I agree ,I don't think there is a remedy all we can do is slow the spread with the new rules.. What about the wet carpet runners on the boat trailers after launching or loading ,how we gonna keep them from spreading by hitching a ride in the wet carpet after launching or loading..

It has to air dry. Makes that tougher for people that get into the water a lot. You can only do what you can do.

This looks to have some promise. It won't eradicate the zebra mussels, but if a product can be manufactured that uses this premise, you could coat certain surfaces with a special paint that would prevent the mussels from attaching. Could be a great solution for water pipes, the outside of boats, docks, bouys, etc. UNT is heading the project.

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/UNT-Res...-224151741.html

Here is a new research development of a substance that will kill them.
zequanox

http://www.minnehahacreek.org/project/usgs-zebra-mussel-zequanox-study

Earlier I posted a reseach study that was underway with Zequanox. The original study (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oApwoMXo2dI) was going to happen in 2012. Apparently the test towers have been placed in Lake Minnetonka in August of this year and now they will be looking at treatment strategies and efficacy studies. They want to make sure two things occur.

1) In order to kill zebras and quaggas with zequanox, the samples have to be treated for several minutes, something that is easy to do in the confines of a beaker, but much different in anctual lake where volume, depth, and current can all come into play. They will obviously be dealing with the problem of dilution in the large bodies of water.

2) They will be making sure the insect populations on the samplers are not effected. They have also been doing studies on fish populations in test ponds to see if it causes survival issues with fish both in the parent generation and subsequent generations (spawning)

I am pretty sure these test towers are sealed so the zequanox can not leach into Lake Minnetonka. That is good in case there unforseen problems with the treatment, but this does create a problem with treatment strategies. In essence, this just makes a larger beaker where the treatment can not escape. When that barrier is removed, the injections will be subjected to other variables such as current and wave action.

It will be interesting to see if methods can be devised to treat an entire lake, or if it will be more suited to particular areas such as intake valves, beaches, etc.

As far as I can find, the effectiveness of Zequanox in a real lake setting has not been documented. Those results should be forthcoming pretty quick. If anybody else has found a lake that has been successfully treated with positive results, please post.

As far as I can tell, here is where we are with Zequanox

1) It works
2) We have to figure out how to expose the mussels to the treatment for several minutes in a real lake setting. This could be the difficult part.

"Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District's (MCWD) Aquatic Invasive Species (AIS) Program requested Zequanox treatment from MBI after discovering zebra mussels near the public boat launch. The non-chemical product approved for use in open water was applied to a 50 by 60 foot containment area with an average depth of 2.5 feet. Before treating, there were approximately 5,000 live mussels in the enclosure. The treatment began on September 8 and eleven days later results showed 100 percent mortality of the zebra mussels in the treatment area."


This is very promising. Efficacy studies have also been promising. Since the bacteria is dead, there is no risk of the bacterium spreading and as advertised, toxic to zebras. I am still interested to see if it is possible to treat an entire lake - (both physically possible and financially possible). 3000 sq feet of 2.5 feet water is a pretty small treatment area, but still very promising.

And for those that have been defensive about fisherman spreading the mussel, notice the treatment area was a boat ramp. Obviously it must have been birds that are responsible for the transplant

I hate to bring all this back up but ....water runs downhill ......so guess what most lakes infested are uphill from other non-infested waters ....so it is just a matter of time .....plus you also have lakes connected together with pipelines .....they are pumping water out of trinity river into Richland-Chambers <I wonder if they have a zeeb filter on that setup> You cant tell me that a big ole pelican with a mouth big as a 5 gallon bucket makes sure he completely drains and dries before he flies from lake to lake .....come on!!!!! oh another thing ...how many boat trailers are square or rectangle tubing ??? you know the drain holes in those trailers get clogged up and they stay half full of water ....that's why they rust out too from the inside.....You should drain your engine and bilge and livewells but for other reasons like freezing and rot etc. but to make a law too make u do it is just BS!!!

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

The funny thing is we will never get an apology, nor will the people who have to pay fines get their money back, when it is proven that these silly laws don't work and the fishing isn't affected. Some pipes and buoys will have to be replaced early and the water will be slightly clearer. That will be it.

From the US Government's summary:

"Conclusive negative impacts on natural populations of fish, however, have yet to observed (see Raikow 2004)."

The sky actually is falling.

Zebra mussels are not going to kill all fish, but they will cause a shift. Some species will win and others will lose. What they will do is clean the water up. That means your pelagic fish like sandies, stripers, and shad are going to have to adapt as their food source will move to the bottom of the lake. Aquatic worms, crustaceans, and other bottom dwellers will find new habitat. Weeds will be able to inhabit deeper water as the light will penetrate further. Catfish and bass should be fine and they may even benefit. But as their populations go up, other poplulations will go down. So it may be a doomsday for some species and a jackpot for others. If there are any pollutants in the lake, they will become highly concentrated in the filter feeding zebra mussels, and any fish that resorts to eating zebras will also see those pollutants in their tissues. A lot of those PCB's that are buried by sediment will be returned to the food chain. Bad news.

But, you will always be able to catch fish. But it isn't just about fishing. It is about being able to walk on a beach without cutting your feet on broken shells. It is about being able to keep the pipes clean that we count on for our water supply. It is about keeping the darn things off of our boats and motors. Etc, etc, etc.

Ask somebody that lives in the Great Lakes if they are the best thing since sliced bread or something they would love to get rid of. You will find the ladder.

From the EPA

"Zebra mussels continue to profoundly affect the Great Lakes ecosystem. This prolific mollusk filters microscopic algae from the water column, diverting nutrients from open water to lake bottom systems, thus favoring bottom-feeding fish (and their predators) over those such as alewife and smelt (and their predators) which feed in the open water. Aquatic rooted plants (macrophytes) and their communities (e.g. large mouth bass) thrive in water cleared by zebra mussel, while habitat is reduced for species adapted for turbid waters (e.g. walleye). Zebra mussels, accidentally transported by recreational boaters, are now turning up in inland waters in all eight Great Lakes States. Municipalities and larger industries in the Great Lakes each pay, on average, $360,000 per year to control zebra mussels, with documented cumulative basinwide costs of $120 million from 1989 to 1994"

Not good. If we can slow the spread it could save the economy millions of dollars. Drain your boats, but they will eventually inhabit the connected waters as Texas unfortunately is a bunch of connected water ways, and water and the zebra mussel youngsters both will travel south, and there isn't anything we can do about it. But, boats spread them much faster. That is why boat ramps are always areas that have high concentrations in the northern lakes. That isn't a coincidence.

Thinking I might start making citizens arrests on all the herons, cormorants and ducks I see carrying this from lake to lake. Or I can just relax and let our fine bureaucracy take care of the problem.
Yeah right!

"Every soldier must know, before he goes into battle, how the little battle he is to fight fits into the larger picture, and how the success of his fighting will influence the battle as a whole."
Bernard Law Montgomery

Blaming the birds is just a smoke bomb. The mussels like other invasives are here because of man, and they will continue to spread because of man. We are the cause, and to think we are the solution is a far reach, because one bad soldier can do a lot of damage in this fight that is not going anywhere. Draining your boat is no different than picking up a piece of litter. We do it because we love our outdoors. We are in this together.

When ever you are trying to stop or slow an infection, you identify the vectors and you do your best to hunt them down in an effort to slow the spread. There is no denying that human-kind is a vector in the spread of zebra mussels. It would be completely ignorant to ignore that knowledge and not at least try to do something about it. I am a fisherman. I have no problem draining my boat, and I have no problem picking up a piece of litter that somebody left behind.

Fighting zebra mussels is no different than fighting an epidemic. You find the vectors (source of transmission) and you start there . With diseases, you have education, vaccination, treatment and quarantine. Hopefully education works because quarantine sucks. We have some treatments that are emerging. No true vaccinations yet.

We all know that boats are the major vector in the transmission of these mussels. It is not the only way they spread, but it is the fastest way they spread. To ignore that would be ignorance. My guess is there would be a lot of complaints from people that love the outdoors if there was zero effort to stop the spread by boats. It is so ironic that when there is an effort, people still complain. It is with everything. Making everybody happy is impossible even in the presence of common sense. That is why sometimes you have to do what is right instead of what is popular.

Asking people to drain their boats is the right thing to do. Everybody knows it, even those that don't like it. Unfortunately, please and thank you doesn't always work in the world today, so you get legislation. Some times the only way to get everybody to cooperate is to make a law. That is why we have laws. If everybody would cooperate we wouldn't need laws. And of course laws don't always work, so we need consequences. The domino effect. Utopia isn't reality unfortunately.

sad news

Just a picture of some zebra mussels removed from a water intake pipe. They are somewhat of a problem for municipalities and water suppliers.

Good filtration for the water though.