Mussel mania

Dr. Conrad had mentioned in class about a volunteer
opportunity in saving mussels in Lake Banook. So on october 23, which was a chilly, windy day, I borrowed a pair of totally awesome hip waders from Dr. Conrad, dressed myself in my warm manitoba gear and headed down to the lake. For some reason I expected there to be a lot more people because of all the classmates who had expressed interest in volunteering. I guess that just meant more mussels for me to catch! There were approximately 12-15 people. After a brief background on mussels and why we were doing this, we suited up, got our onion bags to hold our catch and ventured out. At first we were positioned in lines approximately a foot or two a part, and from there we slowly combed the waterbed. Because it was quite windy, the rippling water made it difficult to clearly see the bottom, and our walking so close together stirred up the floor which made the water opaque. We eventually discarded that process and as you can see in thte photo, we are randomly placed. The waterproof gloves we were given didn't hold up to the deeper waters as the water rushed in from the top anyhow, so many of us went bare handed. We found the most effective way of finding the most mussels was simply to keep our catching arm under water, and scour the lake bed with our fingers. It got to the point that having our arm in the water was warmer than taking it out, and since we lost feeling in our hands anyway, we continued on. We caught about 150 mussels in just over an hour. Once we had finished, the mussel-filled onion sacks were attached to empty bottles that would act as buoys and canoed them to deeper parts of the lake.

It was interesting to find out the lake had approximately 15 species of mussel and some of them were between 150-200 years old!

The mussels had to be moved because the lake is being partially drained to install a sewage pipe and because the world canoe championships are being held on the lake next year, certain construction needs to be done before then. As you can see, the lake is being dammed up beneath the highway bridge as water is being slowly drained into Sullivans duck pond. This decrease in water volume also decreases oxygen in the water, which is why the mussels are stored in the lakes deep parts. The coordinator said that mussels only move approximately 10 feet a day, so they wouldn't be able to keep up with the draining. It is important to save them because Mussels are filter feeders. They eat tiny animals (protozoa) and plants (algae) that they filter from water passing across their gills. Mussels are good for the environment because their filter feeding helps make water clear. They are also an important food resource for muskrats, raccoons, river otters, and some fish.


Here you can see the water has dropped quite a bit. But the more intense draining was to occur on the weekend. Clean NS was planning on returning as the water dropped to do some more mussel saving as well as clean up the exposed lake bed of garbage. They would probably need a lot of volunteers for that event! (hint, hint). I definitely had a good time and met a lot of great people, and though we joked about taking our onion sack of mussels home for dinner, it was nice to help out in this small way.