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Quagga infestation of Lake Michigan hurting fish population and fouling shores

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 6, 2008 at 6:58 am

Is this in our future? From the Chicago Sun Times:

On summer days like these, Lake Michigan sparkles in the Midwestern sunshine. But beneath that beautiful blue expanse, an environmental war is raging, born of a quadrillion life-sucking little critters — quagga mussels.

Twenty years after the zebra mussel arrived in Great Lakes, experts now say the quagga mussel — a creature the size of a thumbnail that has quietly spread until it now carpets the depths of Lake Michigan — is proving to be even more disruptive to the ecosystem.

“A lot of people have never heard of them,” said Tom Nalepa of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But Nalepa says the number of quagga mussels more than tripled between 2005 and 2007, to 1,000,000,000,000,000, a quadrillion.

The effect of the quagga invasion can be seen in fewer and thinner fish, clogged intake pipes at power plants and clearer water. While the latter might be misinterpreted by casual observers as a sign of Lake Michigan’s health, more sunlight beaming deeper into the water is causing growth of a slimy, smelly plant called cladophora, which is washing up on beaches such as those in the popular Chicago getaway, Wisconsin’s Door County.

Read the full text of this article from the Chicago Sun-Times by clicking here.

July 6, 2008 · Filed Under Invasive Species

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