Invasive Mussel Monitoring at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area Water Laboratory Jamie Pejza and...
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Transcript of Invasive Mussel Monitoring at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area Water Laboratory Jamie Pejza and...
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)