Nothing that I mentioned previously came from links on the internet.

Just anecdotal information gleaned from many conversations with

NYS DEC wildlife biologists over the last twenty years.

My work along Lake Ontario puts me in situations where we find many

shoreline fish & wildlife victims of Botulism and VHS washed up on our beaches.

Zebra mussels, and round goby are the bio-accumulators

most often fingered as the culprits in these scenarios.

w

In other words-no proof at all.

So the words of New York State's fish & wildlife professionals backed up

By Cornell University, and Syracuse School of Environmental Science

& Forestry carry no weight ?

I don't have to read about it on the Internet to accept it as truth.

What I said has been settled Science since at least the 1990's.

If we stocked zebra mussels and round gobies into the Lakes

in and around James Bay, you'd get a dose a

reality in a big hurry.

In the interim, you'll just have to remain an ignorant Canadian.

w

You believe some yuppie university lefty lib?LOL.
They will tell you anything and it sounds like you swallowed it.-Gullable.

Don't worry BOCO,

I'm not impugning your intelligence.

Ignorant doesn't mean you are stupid.

It simply means you don't know what you don't know.

w

Kinda like you guys did to save our fur market back in the 80's?

You keep on believing what those yuppie university libs tell you walleyed,lol.

the baldeye and bobo show lives on.how bout that war of 1812.

I guess I should have enrolled at The Canadian National Railroad University in Northern Ontario

for an advanced degree in fish & wildlife management like BOCO.

w

I fished Pickerel in Sandusky.
Good fishing.Nice clear water.
Not like when the river in Cleveland caught on fire.

I'm not Bald pcr2.

I've got a full head of hair going on.

Can't speak for the BOCO.

w

I got hair where people don't have skin.

T.M.I !!!!

w

Walleyed and Boco take a breather.(actually some of walleyed comments do have some truth to them)( but not his version of 1812-14)
Living on the edge of Lake Winnipeg which is going on 5 years with zebra invasion you get to see some of the reprocussions.
filtering nutrients out is one thing they do, and when you have so much calcium load they grow 3 times faster than the Great Lakes ones did.
you are right about algae blooms because of their feeding.
They effect native clams because they build on them and the clams can not move about to feed, even the snails they grow on and they can not burrow to hibernate and die.

You guys keep fighting that war and ya just might win it sometime! lol

All I can tell you about zebra mussels is the filter the water so good that the water is so clear that the sun can penetrate further in to the water and the weed will grow in deeper water.

Yep, Saginaw Bay is proof of that.

I'd be very surprised is Muskrats were actually eating Zebra Mussels as Zebra mussels are typically attached to hard structures by byssal threads that make them nearly impossible to remove without a hammer or pry bar. They also have very sharp edges and fit together tightly making it tough for a critter with delicate front feet like a Muskrat to open them for eating.

In my experience (18 going on 19 years as a freshwater mussel biologist and researcher), many folks that think or say Zebra Mussel are really talking about Asian Clams which are a little bit of a different critter. I've spent a lot of time on rivers with good Zebra Mussel populations and pretty good Muskrat populations and have yet to see Zebra Mussels laying in Muskrat middens. Have found countless middens with native mussels and Asian Clams mixed in them. In the absence of native mussels, Muskrats will eat the heck out of Asian Clams.

Asian Clams sort of just exist just about everywhere in North America although they were likely introduced in the late 1800's. They probably don't do much harm but could really help species like Muskrat or some fish that eat them. Like Zebra Mussels, they don't require a host fish and give birth to free living young. Unlike Zebra Mussels, the Asian Clams survive without attaching to anything hard such as pipes, rocks, native mussels, etc. There has also been some research done on the diets and the Asian Clams are more restricted on the sizes of algae and bacteria that they can filter whereas Zebra Mussels can filter just about any size algae. Some estimates from the early 2000's suggested that the density of Zebra Mussels in Lake Erie was so high that they could filter the entire contents of the lake in 7 days. This unfortunately has bad consequences for larval fish that eat the zooplankton that feed on the algae that Zebra Mussels are filtering.

The only positive that I have hear about Zebra Mussels is from recreational divers that introduced them into an old quarry to clear the water so they could see better when they went SCUBA diving.