KATIE ERICKSON
Stewardship Assistant, Christina Lake Stewardship Society
With boating season in full swing, the fight to stop invasive zebra and quagga mussels from reaching B.C. is even more important.
The mussels, native to Russia and Ukraine, were brought over to the Great Lakes in the late 1980s in contaminated ship ballast water. They can produce up to 1 million eggs per season and once hatched, they spend the first month as free-swimming larvae that are too small to see with the naked eyes.
These mussels have no natural predators; and they attach themselves to everything; they are a threat to aquatic ecosystems, salmon populations, water quality, hydro power stations and other infrastructure. Once infested, there is no way to eradicate the mussels from a water source.
Economic costs are estimated to be $43 million just to control the mussels. B.C. is entering the third year of the invasive mussel defense program with mandatory boat inspection sites located at major entry points to the province. Last summer, 24,100 boats were inspected, 673 of those coming from high risk areas. Seventeen of those boats had confirmed adult mussels present.
All boaters are encouraged to follow the “Clean, Drain, Dry” approach. Clean all visible vegetation and dirt or debris from the watercraft, equipment and trailer, drain all storage compartments, wells and bilge areas on the watercraft, equipment and trailers, and allow all moisture to dry completely. It is also important to properly clean pets, waders, footwear, life jackets and any other items that may have been in contact with contaminated water.
The Christina Lake Stewardship Society (CLSS) along with the Boundary Invasive Species Society, is providing public education. They will be setting up a voluntary boat inspection site at the Texas Point boat launch on Fridays throughout the summer, to educate boaters on preventing the spread of aquatic invasive species.
The (CLSS) has also been setting up five substrate samplers in high usage areas of the lake. The substrate samplers provide substrate for the mussels to attach to and allows us to monitor the lake for any infestation and have found none to date. Leo Morand donates his time to collect samples for water quality testing in two high usage areas, at the south end and the north end of the lake, following the government regulated protocol.