Zebra Mussels found at the Conowingo Dam

[Steve Wdz]

Zebra Mussel Found In Susquehanna River
Mussel Found At Conowingo Dam In Maryland

POSTED: 12:00 pm EST November 25, 2008
UPDATED: 12:27 pm EST November 25, 2008

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection said a zebra mussel has been found for the first time in the lower Susquehanna River.

One has just turned up at the Conowingo Dam in Maryland just over the Pennsylvania line.

Zebra mussels can disrupt the underwater food chain, clog water supplies and cause problems for boaters.

"They're about half an inch, but they can colonize, and they can block the water intake structure," said Teresa Candori of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. "This can cause motors to overheat. Any kind of industry that uses water from rivers, that pulls water in from rivers can be damaged."

Zebra mussels often spread by clinging to the bottom of boats.

Controlling the mussels has cost more than $1 billion since they were first discovered in the great lakes 20 years ago.

[DoubleG]

A real pain in the butt for cooling nuke plants.

[marco]

i was just thinking about conowingo, do they still let you fish the warm water discharge at the nuke plant. also is that parking lot & boat ramp still open by the plant.

[dixie noormiss]

i was just thinking about conowingo, do they still let you fish the warm water discharge at the nuke plant. also is that parking lot & boat ramp still open by the plant.

conowingo is a hydroelectric dam, not nuke. I think you are referring to Peach Bottom.

About Conowingo, you can fish the discharge side, there's a parking lot and water access by foot. the ramp is closed.

[marco]

sorry, i did mean peach bottom and thier warm water discharge. i refer to the whole lake as conowingo. thanx

[Settinthehooks]

You can fish Conowingo though.

[Uncle Flueger]

Dudes i love musseles specially da ones that are striped white and black. i is going to da river to catch me some musseles for the baricue man. I love does zebra mussels dudes. thanks for da info man i gots my bucket

[DoubleG]

There goes the neighborhood:please:

[Ohana]

I had an invertebrate zoology professor in college who worked on the zebra mussel problem. The one thing he found which disrupted their breeding was LSD. Obviously there might be issues with dumping a couple hundred gallons of acid in a lake but it did work.

[albiewhore23]

can i have the numbers for that lake please

[Ohana]

can i have the numbers for that lake please

Seeing as the professors nickname was Dr. Bong, I'm sure he happened to "spill" some on himself.

[Steve Wdz]

It would be hard to eat then sucka's since they are only the size of your fingernail:rolleyes:There goes the neighborhood:please:

[Uncle Flueger]

I went caught a bucket of does zebra musselles. they was good man my lady freind made it wit some nice garlic sawce and it was good dudes. thanks for lettin me know of this i is going out again on saturday to get me some more of them musselles.

[boseafish]

i was just thinking about conowingo, do they still let you fish the warm water discharge at the nuke plant. also is that parking lot & boat ramp still open by the plant.


I work at the Nuke plant. You can fish the intake and the warm water discharge. The only thing that has changed in the last few years is that you cannot drive onto the site and drive down the discharge berm. The boat launch/parking is still open and free to the public. There have been some reports of some really nice stripers seen at the plant. I haven't seen them myself but others have.

[Aloha Dick]

i had an invertebrate zoology professor in college who worked on the zebra mussel problem. The one thing he found which disrupted their breeding was lsd. Obviously there might be issues with dumping a couple hundred gallons of acid in a lake but it did work.

dude!!! Whats the name of that lake!!!! :d

[Rootie]

Zebra mussels are a nuisance and should be eliminated but they are responsible for one good deed. When their numbers became enormous in the Great Lakes they were filtering so much water that turbidity in the lakes decreased dramatically and the water became clearer than anyone could remember.

[Uncle Flueger]

dese musselles are awesome my lady made zebra musselle hoagies with garlic and uniones. they was good dudes thanks fo this i is goin to get more tommorrow wit my bucket

[Frogman]

Just read they found some at Muddy Run Lake,a manmade lake just east of Holtwood Dam.(the dam upstream from Conewingo) They pump water into the lake from above the dam at night,then discharge to below the dam during the day when they can are paid more for the electricity.

[Captn Joe]

Zebra mussels are a nuisance and should be eliminated but they are responsible for one good deed. When their numbers became enormous in the Great Lakes they were filtering so much water that turbidity in the lakes decreased dramatically and the water became clearer than anyone could remember.

Maybe the upper Chessy can use a dose of their filtering, ( Zebra Mussels)
I am not sure at what point they die out in in the mixed Salt/Fresh water.

I have read and heard they did help clean up the Great Lakes, and water Grasses are growing there once more, due to the fact light penetrates the water better.

No question the Chesapeake Basin, is missing the vast shoals of Oysters Beds that filtered the water there. Back around 1900 they said the Oysters in the Bay filtered the entire body of water there every 2 & 1/2 days.

Captn Joe

[fishincrazy]

Zebra mussels now infest Susquehanna

http://images.townnews.com/paoutdoornews.com/content/articles/2009/01/08/top_news/news02.jpg



By Ad Crable
Contributing Writer

Wednesday, December 31, 2008 8:14 AM CST
Lancaster, Pa. - Zebra mussels have finally shown up in the lower Susquehanna River, potentially threatening the river's prized smallmouth bass and other game fish.

If they get established here the way they have in the Great Lakes, Mississippi and Ohio rivers and numerous lakes around the country, the economic impacts and disruption to the Susquehanna's ecosystem, including game fish, could be severe, state officials warn.

If the mollusks infest the river as they have the Great Lakes, beginning in the late 1980s, they could eventually severely harm game fish in the river, impacting everything from tourism to bait and tackle shops, warned Bob Morgan, a biologist in the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission's natural diversity section.

"We definitely are worried," he said. The agency is scrambling to alert the public on ways to stop the spread of the threat.



The highly invasive fingernail-sized mollusks from Eastern Europe have been found in low numbers in the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers in western Pennsylvania and in reservoirs in the upper Susquehanna drainage near the New York state line. They have also been spread by divers to quarries in various parts of the state.

Officials actually have been expecting zebra mussels to show up in the lower Susquehanna for 15 years.

Now they have.

A lone adult zebra mussel was found by a shad survey team in an intake pipe at the Conowingo Dam on Oct. 30. A search was launched and another was found on a boat pulled out of the water on Nov. 25 at the Glen Cove boat launch in Harford County, Md.

The next day, searchers for Normandeau Associates, a consulting firm hired by utilities on the river, found four zebra mussels along the shoreline of Exelon's Muddy Run pumped- storage reservoir above the river near Holtwood, Lancaster County.

Experts caution that it is too early to tell if the entire Susquehanna will become infested by the dreaded pests. They say it's encouraging that it has taken so long for them to arrive here and that there are no signs of massive colonization in the upper Susquehanna and in western Pennsylvania.

Perhaps habitat in the Susquehanna is not ideal.

"We would expect that the population would grow, but it's a different situation in every stream," said Ann Faulds of the Chester office of Pennsylvania Sea Grant, a program funded by the state, federal government and utilities.

"Nobody knows what's happening," said Sarah Whitney, Pennsylvania Sea Grant's assistant director for the Susquehanna River watershed.

But the most likely places they will spread to first are the slow-moving reservoirs in the river, such as the Conowingo Pond, Lake Aldred and Lake Clarke, all in Lancaster County, officials say.

"I don't know what the time frame is going to be, but I think we will start seeing more of them next summer," said Steven Adams, a fisheries biologist with Normandeau Associates.

"It's really a shame we are finding them so far downstream so close to the Chesapeake Bay," said Faulds. She says this because one scourge of the zebra mussels is they filter water. That makes the water clearer but allows light to penetrate deeper, causing huge, destructive algae blooms that deplete oxygen needed by fish and aquatic organisms.

The mussels pose such a threat to game fish in the Susquehanna because they filter plankton and microscopic algae needed by bait fish that the river's larger fish depend on.

They are dreaded by power plants and anyone else that withdraws water from the river because they float on top of the water into pipes and equipment. Then they colonize on top of one another.

As many as 700,000 zebra mussels have been found in one square yard of surface on boats, pilings and pipes.

They first got established in the Great Lakes after ballast was released from ocean-going ships. Game fish there, especially lake whitefish, have declined. Zebra mussels have no nutritional value for fish. Scientists also believe they concentrate harmful bacteria, such as Type E botulism, a disease that has resulted in large die-offs of birds and fish in the Great Lakes.

Zebra mussels have no natural predators. Utilities have tried chemicals to control the mussels that clog their pipes, but mostly have had to physically scrape shells from pipes.

For now, state officials are gearing up for a massive public education effort to try to get anglers, boaters and divers to thoroughly dry out equipment before moving to another body of water. The mussels can survive for up to five days out of water.

It's not good:mad: These things could ruin the watershed as we know it!:mad:

FC:mad:

[Captn Joe]

From what I read they are not harmful, but helpful in Phosphorus rich
waters, other than that, there is a ton of negative things out there about them.

Besides redctions in polluted water entering the bay, they are missing the filter feeders the bay's health depend on.

Dermo & MSX, habitat destruction and overfishing has wiped out 96% of the Oysters in the Bay.

No question the states bordering it have been very poor stewards of the biggest Marine Estuary in the world.

Arghhhh!
Captn Joe

[Brian E. Mullaney]

they definitely cleaned up the great lakes - Erie probably has the best smallmouth bass fishing in the world now thanks to the zebra mussles.

[philjam]

Definitly made the water crystal clear in the Clayton area of the 1000 islands NY. Zebras took hold in the late 90's. The group I fish with (since 1989) considered quitting because the first few years the fishing (catching) tailed off. But we adjusted to the new patterns and it just gets better every year. :thumbsup:The clarity breaks are visible even to my less than hawk vision. I would like to dump a truckload of Zebras into the Green Lane resevoir/cesspool, but fear that would be cruelty to the mussels.:rolleyes:

[Steve Wdz]

Same in the Lake of the Isles area, we've been going up since 1986. At fisrst is was a curse but once you figured the patterns out it was just as good, In some area's you can see down 30' easy and see the fish you are going after. Stopped going 2 years ago when I sold my bass boat

[philjam]

Same in the Lake of the Isles area, we've been going up since 1986. At fisrst is was a curse but once you figured the patterns out it was just as good, In some area's you can see down 30' easy and see the fish you are going after. Stopped going 2 years ago when I sold my bass boat

We rented a pontoon boat one year and it was a good fishing platform in Eel Bay. It was bad because it was so comfortable we wouls take naps instead of fishing.
One guy in our group got divorced, and bought a bass boat. He hit a rock the first time out on the St. Lawrence. He never came back.

You need to go back the week after Memorial day. It has been very, very good - pike, SM, LM, big spawning channel cats hitting our plugs, bowfin, submarine carp (some we harpooned) and great panfishing - crackers, BIG googles, endless yellow perch, crappie, and bullheads. Also tried to lasso a big gar but it broke off.

[Steve Wdz]

That's when we would go up the first week after Memorial day, the holiday crowds would be gone and the kids would still be in school. We always went with a bunch of guys from Bristol, Bensalem area. Did most of our fishing in The Lake of the Isles, fished Eel bay when we stayed in the cabin colony but eventually got houses on the water in the Lake of the Isles. I miss going up there :(, most of them guys still go up.:)

We rented a pontoon boat one year and it was a good fishing platform in Eel Bay. It was bad because it was so comfortable we wouls take naps instead of fishing.
One guy in our group got divorced, and bought a bass boat. He hit a rock the first time out on the St. Lawrence. He never came back.

You need to go back the week after Memorial day. It has been very, very good - pike, SM, LM, big spawning channel cats hitting our plugs, bowfin, submarine carp (some we harpooned) and great panfishing - crackers, BIG googles, endless yellow perch, crappie, and bullheads. Also tried to lasso a big gar but it broke off.