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Invasive mussel confirmed in Utah's Electric Lake (Zebra mussels)
AP on Yahoo ^ | 11/20/08 | Mike Stark - ap

Posted on 11/20/2008 10:52:25 AM PST by NormsRevenge

SALT LAKE CITY – Trouble-making zebra mussels have arrived in Utah. But not where they were expected to show up.

Electric Lake is Utah's first body of water where the damaging, nonnative mussels have been confirmed, state wildlife officials said Wednesday.

The officials said they were surprised the fast-spreading mussels appeared there first because it's a high-elevation lake with relatively few boaters. It is boaters who sometimes unknowingly transport the mussels from lake to lake on their crafts.

Most expected the mussels to show up first at Lake Powell.

The mussels "showed up in one of the least-expected places," said Larry Dalton, aquatic invasive species coordinator for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. "That's how bewildering this little devil is."

Zebra mussels and their cousins, quagga mussels, were inadvertently introduced into the Great Lakes about 20 years ago. They reproduce and spread rapidly, threatening food sources for fish and clogging machinery and water pipes.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events; US: Utah
KEYWORDS: confirmed; invasive; invasivespecies; mussel; quagga; utah; zebra
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To: thackney

A guy I graduated HS with up in Michigan became a professional diver, their company made a fortune cleaning out the Cook county nuke plant intake pipes over in lake Michigan, and the intake pipes near Detroit were an almost continuous contract for them. A few years out of HS and he had a house, new car and was doing really well, all thanks to those little buggers.

One of the biggest problems with zebra mussels is they clean the water so well that seaweed and grasses explode from the sunlight getting down so deep, a major problem in itself when the shorelines start looking like the Sargasso sea.


21 posted on 11/20/2008 11:02:50 AM PST by Abathar (Proudly posting without reading the article carefully since 2004)
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To: NormsRevenge

They are a big problem in the Great Lakes Region.


22 posted on 11/20/2008 11:03:00 AM PST by Ptarmigan (God Hates Bunnies. God Loves Ptarmigans)
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23 posted on 11/20/2008 11:04:05 AM PST by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer)
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To: NormsRevenge

These little bastages clogged and messed up the water intake on my sailboat. They spread like wildfire and multiple like free-lovin’ liberal hippy rabbits on steroids. There is no death too wicked for them. Die you little bastages, DIE!


24 posted on 11/20/2008 11:04:14 AM PST by FreedomFerret
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To: NormsRevenge
We have them in our local reservoir. Great place to fish, but you can’t launch your boat unless it is quarantined for 10-14 days. Darn lake is 5 minutes from my house, but I have to drive almost an hour to get to places that aren’t even as nice as the local lake if I want to use my own boat.
25 posted on 11/20/2008 11:04:43 AM PST by BallyBill (Serial Hit-N-Run poster)
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To: thackney

They may be a blessing in disguise. When the Famine Times come, they will be very welcome.....................

26 posted on 11/20/2008 11:05:30 AM PST by Red Badger (Never has a man risen so far, so fast and is expected to do so much, for so many, with so little...)
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To: GulfBreeze

One more time, in English.


27 posted on 11/20/2008 11:06:53 AM PST by uglybiker (1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d 2 g3t l41d)
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To: Red Badger

Yup.

Most can’t even imagine how it would be if they went four or five days without a meal.
By then, they’d be ready to eat shoe leather boiled with a couple onions.
I guarantee if I had about a quart of them things, I could make a very, very tasty soup or stew.


28 posted on 11/20/2008 11:07:17 AM PST by djf (The harsh reality of life is that reality is harsh.)
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To: NormsRevenge

Let’s find something that eats them and turn a bunch of that loose in the lake.


29 posted on 11/20/2008 11:08:18 AM PST by A knight without armor
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To: thackney
These guys can be tough on power plant cooling water intakes.

Are these heat seeking mussels?

30 posted on 11/20/2008 11:09:08 AM PST by weegee (Global Warming Change? Fight Global Socialist CHANGE.)
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To: Red Badger

Beat me with the pic by a minute!


31 posted on 11/20/2008 11:09:25 AM PST by djf (The harsh reality of life is that reality is harsh.)
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To: thackney

Batter fry them and leave the crunchy “shells” on.


32 posted on 11/20/2008 11:10:12 AM PST by weegee (Global Warming Change? Fight Global Socialist CHANGE.)
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To: A knight without armor
Let’s find something that eats them and turn a bunch of that loose in the lake.

I guar-ron-teee that cajuns will eat any'ting!


33 posted on 11/20/2008 11:12:14 AM PST by weegee (Global Warming Change? Fight Global Socialist CHANGE.)
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To: GulfBreeze

Are you drinking?


34 posted on 11/20/2008 11:13:10 AM PST by verity ("Lord, what fools we mortals be!")
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To: brooklyn dave
Too bad they’re too tiny to be eaten. Are they edible anyway?

Nothing is too tiny.

Make a paste...


35 posted on 11/20/2008 11:15:28 AM PST by weegee (Global Warming Change? Fight Global Socialist CHANGE.)
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To: djf

A local Chinese restaurant serves a clam soup with clams in shells about the same exact size of those mussels.......


36 posted on 11/20/2008 11:17:30 AM PST by Red Badger (Never has a man risen so far, so fast and is expected to do so much, for so many, with so little...)
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To: A knight without armor

“Let’s find something that eats them and turn a bunch of that loose in the lake.”
Hey! Yeah! Let’s ;et the Lampreys back in! Really, we should genetically modify them to grow huge, and solve the World’s food shortages.


37 posted on 11/20/2008 11:18:11 AM PST by Dr. Bogus Pachysandra ("Don't touch that thing")
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To: weegee
Are these heat seeking mussels?

LOL!!!............. They are apparently Stealth Cruise Mussels!.............

38 posted on 11/20/2008 11:19:33 AM PST by Red Badger (Never has a man risen so far, so fast and is expected to do so much, for so many, with so little...)
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To: brooklyn dave

They eat by filtering the water. They are so effective that if the body of water they are in is at all polluted they become concentrated depositories of the pollutants that they absorb.

Too small to make a harvestable meal for anything but the few smaller species that feed on them, many of which are poisoned.

They entered the Great Lakes from ballast water of overseas vessels.

I don’t really know if they are less of a problem overseas due to natural predators, but here they really impact lakes and waterways and will be a problem for power plants, boats in those waters, sluce gates and locks and existing vegatation. They encrust themselves on anything as shown by the photos above. Got a bilge pump or cooling water intake on your boat, it will get clogged and it is something that requies chisels to remove.


39 posted on 11/20/2008 11:20:04 AM PST by KC Burke (Men of intemperate minds can never be free...their passions forge their fetters.)
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To: Dr. Bogus Pachysandra
...we should genetically modify them to grow huge, and solve the World’s food shortages.

WIKI says they can get up to two inches in size! That's eaten size!................

40 posted on 11/20/2008 11:20:41 AM PST by Red Badger (Never has a man risen so far, so fast and is expected to do so much, for so many, with so little...)
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