Invasive Mussel Monitoring at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area

Water Laboratory

Jamie Pejza and Sasha RohdeGlen Canyon National Recreation Area

Mussel Background:

- Introduced to N. America in the late 1980s through the St. Lawrence Seaway in ballast tanks in cargo ships

- Rapidly spread through waterbodies in the Great Lakes region, Mississippi drainage

Infestation has a detrimental affect to:

• Recreational opportunities• Fishing, boating, recreating on the beach

• Environment:• Dead smelly shells on shore• Mussel mats on the slick rock walls

• Economy• Local businesses, costs to taxpayers to

keep infrastructure clear (dams, cooling pipes), boat engine damage

Once you get mussels, it is almost impossible to get rid of them!

• No natural predators in N. America• Human control efforts have only been effective on small scale treatments

• Use of poison in very small reservoirs, or draining of reservoir

• Lake Powell is so big, that it would take the world’s 1 year supply of potassium permanganate (poison that binds to the gills of aquatic life) to treat an area the size of Wahweap Bay, and it would take almost ¾ of a year to get it all transported here.

What we do at Glen Canyon NRA to prevent Lake Powell from mussel infestation

Lake Powell does not have invasive mussels, so why are we monitoring for them?

• Mussel Interdiction Program• Vessel inspections• Decontaminations• Quarantine

• Mussel Monitoring Program• Sampling for early detection of

mussels

Glen Canyon National Recreation Area Mussel Monitoring:

• Monitor high use areas monthly for early mussel detection

• Look for the juvenile form of mussels (Veligers)– free floating, likely found earlier than attached adults• Lake Mead mussel population found by a diver in 2007; based on the size of the

population, it is thought mussels were introduced in 2005.

• Increase chances of early detection, providing opportunity for eradication of possible small-scale infestation

Glen Canyon National Recreation Area Mussel Monitoring: Methods

Plankton and substrate sampling

Microscopy & FlowCAM

DNAanalysis

http://www.aslo.org/photopost/data/509/medium/8Zooplankton_sampling_Lake_Powell.jpg

Cross-Polarized Light Microscopy (CPLM)

• Mussel veligers exhibit unique characteristics under CPLM

• Care is necessary in order to discern between veligers and other organisms

Cross-Polarized Light Microscopy (CPLM)

Imaging Flow Cytometry - FlowCAM

• Takes pictures of particles (sample) as they move through the flow cell

• Selects images of particles that show birefringence under cross-polarized light and displays them in a collage

Imaging Flow Cytometry - FlowCAM

DNA AnalysisPolymerase Chain Reaction (PCR)