The small but destructive striped striped mussel species

Kneeling on the edge of the dock, Wen Baldwin pulled a plastic rope under Lake Mead. In turn, strange objects appeared from the greenish green water: a bottle of water, a piece of concrete, a pair of cardboard and a steel anchor. All of these things are covered with a thick layer of small boys.

Mr. Baldwin, 70, a retired design engineer and volunteer at the national park, said: 'The environment here is ideal for mussels'.

The pile of rubble covered with mussels is an unmistakable evidence of a silent event with a huge scale beyond our eyes - the Colorado River colonization event made by the mussel mussel - the animal Eurasian bivalve bivalves are just the size of a fingernail with incredible sexual development orientation and a reputation for destroying the economy as well as the ecosystem.

Like the zebra mussels, the zebra mussel can adhere very closely to hard surfaces such as those of hydropower plants that supply water downstream of the Colorado River.

Gary L. Fahnenstiel - an ecologist working with the Ho Lon Environmental Research Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - said: 'They will stick to all the pipes and all. water intake point. They are terribly destructive. '

The zebra mussel has covered Ho Lon, quickly replacing zebra mussels. Its invasion of the Colorado River, which took place after crossing the mountains on yachts on trailers, anticipated heavy devastation not only for the public service industries but also for the whole. ecosystem of the river downstream.

By squeezing out nutrients and microorganisms in the water, they can cause serious damage to many species, including small invertebrates, fish and birds. Dr. Fahnenstiel said: 'They are very dangerous. The worst case scenario is to destroy the entire food chain '.

Lake Mead mussels mussels are close to Boulder, Nevada.(Photo: Isaac Brekken)

 

It is hardly surprising that the mussels cheated on Colorado. For nearly 10 years, catastrophic destructive consequences are often warned if the mussel donkey crossed to the west.

In 1998, a group named The 100th meridian initiative gathered biologists, wildlife experts, water managers, ecologists and others with the goal of preventing invasive species. comb through the 100th meridian - the historical boundary separating the east and west of the United States. For 7 years, Mr. Baldwin was the manager of Lake Mead in the group.

In 2001, Mr. Balwin - then president of Lake Mead Boat Owners' Association - heard a biologist's talk about stopping zebras. They invaded Great Lake from Ukraine in the 1980s, quickly flooding the main rivers and over 800 other lakes.

Mr. Baldwin lobbied Lake Mead National Recreation Area officials to conduct more tests for yachts that carry mussels in bottom-row pumps as well as fish compartments. He distributed leaflets and widely propagated the risk.'I began to search and perform some programs, trying to get people to care. Some people do. But most don't. '

He even built management stations on the pier around the lake, but found nothing. However, in January 2007, Mr. Baldwin received a phone call from a maintenance worker saying he had seen a suspicious looking son clinging to the steel rope under the Big Lake dock. It is a mussel donkey. The investigation then quickly discovered an empire that inhabited the lake, in a much deeper area than a zebra boy.'We are in the process of controlling zebra mussels, but the mussels are lurking right below.'

At Lake Mead - a narrow water reservoir, but hundreds of miles deep, created by the Hoover dam, the donkey donkey has appeared and gradually dominates.

Kent Turner, head of park services management in the entertainment district, said: 'Within a year of searching, we realized they were around the lake in tremendous numbers.' The lake bottom inspection revealed the density of concentrated mussel boys with the rate of thousands of children per square meter.

Wen Baldwin conducted field research on zebra mussels.(Photo: Isaac Brekken)

Like zebra boys, mussels and mussels breed outside. They form veliger clouds that are very small free-swimming larvae that can float for 5 weeks before landing on a surface that appeals to them.

Ignoring the flow, the mussel larvae drift upstream for hundreds of miles. The adult mussel was discovered as far away as the Imperial Dam near the Mexican border.

But they still haven't stopped there. In the Havasu Reservoir located on the border of California and Arizona, there are giant step pumping stations that supply millions of gallons of water per day to cities and farms. Pulled into the Arizona River Colorado plumbing and Project Central canals, the larvae traveled a long way east to Phoenix and Tucson, west to San Diego.

Alexia Retallack - California Entertainment and Fishing spokesman said: 'Although the river takes them anywhere, they will go there.'

With the infiltration of the Colorado River, a great challenge arose for the water system that had suffered a record drought. Las Vegas is particularly dependent on the river, 90% of drinking water comes from Lake Mead.

Metropolitan Water District Department of Water Supply for 26 southern California cities often has to ask divers to remove boys clinging to the tube to get water from Lake Havasu. To kill mussels larvae must use up to 9,000 chlorine cans, equal to 2 tanks of trailers, pouring into the Colorado river water pipe every day. Ric de Leon - the microbiologist who directs the control program of the donkey mussel here - said: 'What we want to do is limit them. So far, things have gone well. '

California authorities also began conducting rigorous boat inspections, even using professional dogs to find a mussel donkey. Retallack said: 'We had the first dogs to search for mussels on the planet.'

Surrounded by dams, reservoirs, canals and pipes, Colorado is more like a giant plumbing project than a natural river that gives mussels a very good opportunity to harm. David Pimentel, an ecological professor at Cornell, is also an expert in the study of the economic consequences of invasive species - saying that the costs of control and maintenance can reach 'billions of dollars by boys. has appeared in the eastern region '.

More alarming for some people is the potential ecological consequences. Dr. Fahnenstiel considers the boom of the mussel to be the most serious ecological destruction in the history of the modern Great Lake.'It is a huge worry. Surely that is true '.

At Lake Michigan, the fish populations were reduced when the boys took away the nutrients in the water. Tom Nalepa, a research biologist collaborating with the Great Lakes laboratory, said: 'The fish are affected by the lack of food for them. All the food in the lake was taken by the boys. What we are seeing is that fish in the lake are replaced by boys'.

Thanks to the water filtration mechanism, zebra mussels can make clearer water, increasing the amount of light that promotes the growth of algae and algae; instead caused the recently discovered 'starved zone' of oxygen in the 'dead zones' on Lake Erie. Accumulating toxins from the water, the boys contribute to increased botulism.

Dr. Fahnenstiel said: 'In Big Lake, we found that the poisoning of meat in the birds has reached a serious level. A large number of gavia diving birds have died. It is one of the most popular birds here. '

On the Colorado River, two species of indigenous fish, bonytail goby, and pointedback are the weakest species to compete with mussels. Meat poisoning in birds also threatens the life of white eagles around Lake Mead.

Scientists warn that disease-causing organisms hide behind the widespread development of mussels, to the Great Lake via ocean-going transport boats and to the west through yachts, likely to be caused by species Another potential harm. An estimated 180 strange species grow in populations in the Great Lake every year. Recently, hemorrhagic virus septicemia - a European virus that can cause many fish to die has spread to three Lake Huron, Michigan and Ontario of the Great Lake.

Dr. Fahnenstiel said: 'North Americans need to monitor which species appear in the Great Lake. No more systems are geographically separated. All are connected together. '