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Re: Aquatic Plants Digest V3 #1358
Living in the Great Lakes region I can tell you zebra mussels suck! We are experiencing
large die offs of most of the Great Lakes fish at the bottom of the food chain. The zebra
mussels filter out the plantonic food that fry and the critters at the bottom of the food
chain survive on. Now the damage has reached the top of the aquatic food chain----Lake
Michigan has suffered severe damage and many of the salmoniods caught this year have shown
signs of stress and starvation due to lack of prey items---which have been out competed by
zebra mussels. In some circles there is talk that the warming of the Great Lakes due to
increased water clarity may have some affect on the lowered water levels this year. The
lowering of the thermoclines (due to increased water clarity) in the lakes is also suspected
in altering spawning, migration, and other biological processes of both animal and plant
life. The changes nonnative species cause are frequently negative, look what damage
nonnative species of fish have done to our native fish--pupfish, shiners, dace, to name a
few, are disappearing at an alarming rate across their natural ranges, all because of
unintentionally or purposely introduced carp, molliies, and gambusia. Freshwater clams and
mussels are also disappearing at an alarming rate--often due to zebra mussels. This week had
a slew of articles about it in publications such as the New York Times, the Ann Arbor News,
scientific journals, and the wire services, our temperate native species are disappearing at
a rate exceeding the rate incurred in the rainforests-----with out the attention and notice
that the rainforests extinctions get. Purple loosestrife in the botanical world is having a
simular affect. Drying up wet lands, out competeing native species that provide food and
cover for wetland wildlife. All at a critical juncture of the food chain and the water
cycle. Another invasive non native species causing damage and extinctions (our local
amphibians are at severe risk in Michigan).
While you appear to be witty, urban, and serious about your experimental procedures,
please consider the fools who released the english sparrow and carp felt the same way about
themselves-- beware of hubrus! Do you have the necessary training, skill, and equipment to
prevent biocontamination? True, zebra mussels may be in your local waters, but are they in
your sewage and storm water systems? Do you know how much damage they will do in those
systems? Being a plumber, an attorney, and a scuba diver let me tell you. In the Great Lakes
we have seen shipwrecks over a hundred years old covered with mussels in a matter of a year
or two-Before they could be fully researched, recorded or studied--what a waste. In confined
storm water or sewage systems the mussels will fill the whole drain up very quickly. In our
masssive water intakes for our potable water systems for Detroit and other large Great Lakes
cities, mussels have completely filled them. We are talking about 10-15 foot intake pipes.
Divers must yearly remove a foot or more accumulations of mussels from intake pipes-- even
with biocides being added during the mussels larval stages to prevent these accumulations.
Small diameter drain and sewage pipes will clog easily, but will not be able to be cleaned
by divers. They will have to be replaced or dug up--hope you don't mind paying for special
assessments for sewers and roads when they are dug up. You may not mind but I think your
neighbors will. It should be simple to trace the point of contamination to your drains--you
will have the worst problem diminishing down stream as it spreads--people up stream should
be relatively unaffected. Make sure you see an attorney to protect your assets and remember
---intentional torts are not discargeable in bankruptcy-- I'll be glad to be a witness
against you I've archived all these posts. You don't have the training, the permits, or the
foresight to be messing with this. Leave it to the professionals who do--and trust me they
screw up more than I care for. Ask some folks at the Nevada nuclear test sites during the
fifties-- if they haven't died of some type of cancer. Brighten up chum--you are wrong-- and
the damage you cause can go way beyond your worst nightmare. Sorry for being so nasty but
you need to wake up.
R3--Ray Ravary, Jr.
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