Invasive Mussels

The current spread of “non-native mussels” in the Great Lakes has caused “massive, ecosystem-wide changes.” Lake Michigan and Huron being the two most affected, because they are “two of the world’s largest freshwater lakes,” according to University of Michigan-led study. The two muscles in charge of this disturbance are the zebra and quagga. They are “stripping the lakes of their life-supporting algae, resulting in a ecological transformation.” One of the serious side effects off this is that, the fish are not able to stay alive and then the lakes will lose all of their once fishing ground worth multibillion dollars.

The shocking part about all this being how big the changes really are just from the two mussels. “These are astounding changes, a tremendous shifting of the very base of the food web in those lakes into a state that has not been seen in the record history of the lakes,” said Mary Anne Evans. Because of these enormous changes there needs to be something done, and ASAP. It’s hard to imagine how many mussels are needed to cause something like this, but the quagga mussel “can thrive from shore in mud bottomed waters. Each fingernail-size quagga mussels filter about a quart of water a day, and billions of them blanket the bottoms of Lake Michigan and Huron down depths of nearly 400 feet.” The biggest problem is trying to figure out how to stop this issue and worrying about how big the quagga population will get before it is too late.

This problem relates to Ecology because it has to do with a lifecycle in the environment and is causing big changes in the environment too. Ecologists would probably look into this and try to find different ways to remove a lot of the zebra and quagga populations and in the mean time stop the fishing in the great lakes while they replenish. Otherwise there will eventually be nothing left in the great lakes because once the mussels are eating everything else’s food and once the mussels run out of algae they will die because there will be no food for them.

I think this is interesting because this is a huge problem that needs to be taken care of right away but it doesn’t seem as though anyone is doing anything about it. And the public should be made more aware because people who live around the lakes might be able to help the best they can.

University of Michigan. "Invasive mussels causing massive ecological changes in Great Lake."

ScienceDaily, 17 Apr. 2011. Web. 18 Apr. 2011.

http://cdn-5.psndealer.com/e2/dealersite/images/vsmarine/zebra-and-quagga-mussel190.jpg (PHOTO)