Page 17 - Flathead Beacon // 12.7.16

Flathead Lake.
GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
Gordon Luikart, professor of conservation ecology and genetics with the University of Montana, listens to questions from students before conducting research along Midvale Creek near East Glacier last summer. BEACON FILE PHOTO
positive detections in Canyon Ferry.
As water temperatures drop into the 50s, Lemon said the risk of mussel larvae persisting in the water column is greatly reduced, which in uenced the state’s decision to explore other risk-mitigation strategies before enforcing restrictions. FWP also formed an interagency task force to contain the mussel introduction, while deploying divers and mussel-sni - ing dogs to search for adult mussels in the
contaminated waters.
“I think hindsight might provide some
clarity, but we didn’t know then what we know now,” Lemon said. “We are com- ing into a season where the possibility of transmission is very, very low because of the water temperatures.”
Caryn Miske, executive director of the Flathead Basin Commission, was critical of the lag time between detection in the water samples and action by the state, noting that Glacier National Park and the Blackfeet Indian Reservation
responded immediately by closing all waters to boat tra c until the risk was better understood.
“The prudent thing to do when the state found out would have been to fun- nel all boat tra c in and out of Tiber and Canyon Ferry reservoirs and require full decontamination,” Miske said. “Instead they let boats traipse around the state to God knows where, fouling who knows how many other water bodies.”
Researchers at the Flathead Lake Bio- logical Station also took swift action, deploying the station’s 30-foot Jessie-B research vessel and a team of scientists, who plied the frigid water of Flathead Lake with a renewed sense of urgency, employing tow nets to scan for an aquatic adversary they’d long hoped to keep at bay.
Samples from more than 30 sites across Flathead Lake are now being tested by Bio Station Research Profes- sor Gordon Luikart, a world leader in
emerging eDNA (or environmental DNA) techniques, a revolutionary technology that can detect the presence of targeted invasive species more quickly and e - ciently than conventional measures.
“At the Bio Station, we didn’t have to worry about what the state was or was not doing, and while we are glad that Gov. Bullock declared a state of emergency, we began sampling immediately, before that was announced,” Shawn Devlin, assistant research professor at the station, said. “The fact that they are a three-hour drive from Flathead Lake is very alarming, and even though we are cautiously optimistic, it does not bode well.”
Aquatic invasive species are not new to Montana waters, but the most damaging to aquatic ecosystems, such as quagga and zebra mussels, have not yet been found in the state until now.
Zebra mussels were rst discovered in this country in the Great Lakes in the 1980s. The rst documented infestation
west of the Rockies came in 2007, in Lake Mead in Nevada, with quagga mussels.
Both zebra and quagga mussels are l- ter-feeders, and can decimate a shery’s food web, a ecting entire populations of sh.
“Essentially, what zebra and quagga mussels do for a living is eat phytoplank- ton; they lter it out of the water column, which leaves little food for the zooplank- ton,” Devlin said. “If there is no zoo- plankton, there is no food for other sh to grow, so all the nutrients and energy that was going into phytoplankton and zooplankton and bigger sh now goes into the mussels. It completely clears the lakes, and turns the trophic cascade into a dead end.”
Although they’ve never taken root here, invasive mussels have arrived for years at check stations, carried by unas- suming boaters hailing from infested waterways, a lesson in vigilance that underscores the need to bolster the
DECEMBER 7, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM
17