Once you have zebra mussels, you have them. Contemplating poisoning and banning diving/boating/fishing is silly pseudo-science hubris. They spread by a number of vectors and can not be controlled on more than a very local basis, poison them to your hearts content and they will return. Get used to them.
There are about a billion articles detailing how calamitous zebra mussels are. There is also a strong corrolary between the age of the article and the distance from any actual zebra mussels and how panic stricken the article is. The closer the author is to a place where there actually are zebra mussels or the more recent the article, the less the author tends to sound like Chicken Little. Try and find something scientific written within the past couple of years in a high-impact zone - there isn't much because it ain't nearly as big of a deal as we were told to expect.
We've had them here in the Chicago area for more than a dozen years. Here's a laymans perspective:
The only constant is change, this change has a bigger impact than most. You can try to fight it, but you'll lose. Oh, well. Frankly, ask almost anybody who uses the lake what the biggest problem is the past couple of years and they'll tell you it's the water levels. The mussels are way down on the list of "issues" anymore.
There are about a billion articles detailing how calamitous zebra mussels are. There is also a strong corrolary between the age of the article and the distance from any actual zebra mussels and how panic stricken the article is. The closer the author is to a place where there actually are zebra mussels or the more recent the article, the less the author tends to sound like Chicken Little. Try and find something scientific written within the past couple of years in a high-impact zone - there isn't much because it ain't nearly as big of a deal as we were told to expect.
We've had them here in the Chicago area for more than a dozen years. Here's a laymans perspective:
- They're a fu**ing mess on the bottom and on the wrecks. In some places a few years ago they would be layered on top of each other six inches thick. The population seems to be crashing the past couple of years, but the little buggers are sharper than a knife and need to be avoided.
- The visibility is ten times better. Literally.
- Seaweed, loooong gone from the southern basin of Lake Michigan, is staging such a comeback that they're having to mow or poison the stuff in the harbors. That's what happens when sunlight can penetrate more than the top 5 feet of water.
- Algae, for many years only a planktonic bloom, is being re-established in a filamentous form on the bottom in water nearly 100 feet deep. Good cover and food for everything.
- Fish populations were hurt but seem to be recovering. Burbot, bass and round gobies are thriving, whitefish and salmon seem to be holding their own and perch and smelt, which took a very hard hit, are at least showing signs of not tanking any further. We still had a mass die-off of alewives last year, though - ugh! By the way, of the seven species I just listed, how many are native? My guess is that the water used to be so murky that it was it's own cover, once cleaned up there wasn't anyplace for fry to hide. Now that the seaweed and algae are starting to return, the problem seems to be correcting itself.
- Boaters have problems with clogged intakes and hull encrustations. Honestly, though, have you ever known a boater that wasn't constantly crying about something? They're like farmers, it's either not raining enough or raining too much or it might not rain enough or it might rain too much and if a wind should come up... God bless them, but scrubbing hulls just isn't that big of a deal.
- They're actually removing more than just dirt from the water - they concentrate some nasty toxins and have made the water cleaner in fact as well as appearance.
The only constant is change, this change has a bigger impact than most. You can try to fight it, but you'll lose. Oh, well. Frankly, ask almost anybody who uses the lake what the biggest problem is the past couple of years and they'll tell you it's the water levels. The mussels are way down on the list of "issues" anymore.