On Sunday, 26 May, at the
Tamworth Library, the Friends of the Salmon
River assembled, and proposed to help with our survey of the freshwater
mussels of the Salmon River watershed. While mussels are relatively
easily identified to species, they're overlooked by most naturalists as just “clams,” and the distributions of the species are poorly known.
Our small independent research institute, the Bishops Mills Natural History Centre, has been sporadically making collections on the Salmon River since 1996, and in the course of these
we've discovered the two officially Endangered Species known from the watershed.
We set out this year to initiate a volunteer citizen science survey of the mussel fauna, to both document distribution and abundance and to increase
appreciation of these subtly beautiful creatures, our largest
invertebrate animals.
Up until a few days before the 26th, it had been a pretty dry spring, but rainy periods, and then heavy rain, began, which brought the water up to levels where it wasn't practical to search for mussels. To further delay the project, Aleta & I have been busy in various places, from New Brunswick to British Columbia. With the addition of Goats and Chickens at home in Bishops Mills, and between one interruption and another we've only now gotten the blog established. So we have September to survey, hoping water levels go down. It's been suggested in e-mails over the summer that we continue next year if this year's water levels don't allow us to do an adequate job. As an aside, this business of unanticipated high water also occurred in 2010, the one year when Conservation Authorities in eastern Ontario had funding to search for mussels - by the time water levels were down to where the surveys were possible, the water temperatures were too cool for the protocols they were to follow.
Jack Green has made a start with a team of students, on 12 August, when, despite high water...
...mussel collection went well. We collected shells from parts of White Lake, three areas of Beaver Lake and Sheffield Lake. I will hopefully have time this evening to begin the process of identification of the Shells. One early observation though - on Beaver where there were lots of zebra mussels there were much fewer mussels than on Sheffield where there were piles everywhere. The three youths who assisted in the collection were a joy to work with - nice kids who worked hard at the day's tasks.[The situation at Beaver Lake is that the Zebra Mussels wiped out the native Unionids, as they have taken out all the known eastern Ontario lake populations of the endangered Ligumia nasuta, including that in Beaver Lake.]
The next post to the blog will be a revision of the protocol I sent out earlier by e-mail, but it is important to remind everyone that the primary procedure is to gather bagfulls of shells, dry and sort them to the observers' best ability, report the findings by e-mail <bckcdb@istar.ca>, and then bring them to the final meeting in the fall. Photos can be taken of living mussels. Volunteers will be operating independently through the summer and fall, based on this protocol. There will also be more summer and fall visits by us, as well as constant e-mail contact and this blog.
From the Protocol: "To become the local Unionid expert, or 'musselhead,' you search shores and bottoms of streams, and shores and shallows of lakes, concentrating on clear-water habitats and on riffles, and especially on streams right below dams and lake outlets, where phytoplanktonic food that grows in still water flows by filter-feeders like a perpetual buffet. Some species are wedged into the mucky banks of streams. Muskrats accumulate shell piles beside stumps and rocks on the bank, which you'll find easily once you begin to think like a Muskrat. Otters scatter shells, and Beavers cover big areas of the bottom and the banks with shells. Flood waters concentrate shells at the foot of bars, or in eddies. It's important to examine lots of animals and collect lots of shells, because many species are superficially hard to tell apart. But they're no harder than fall Warblers or Damselflies. And since you can collect dead shells without harming the populations, it's possible to gather material documentation of the occurrence of species, and their variation."
We are also documenting the distribution of Zebra Mussels, which are the main threat to native fresh water mussels. Just today in the Mississippi River near Carleton Place, we were pleased to find surviving Elliptio mussels persisting in the face of a decade of increasing Zebra Mussel abundance.
So I hope that over the holiday, and coming weeks, folks can get out and look for shells. Send copious e-mails on what you find or don't find, and I'll respond and post findings to the blog. If you want to tell everyone, RE:ALL to the notification e-mail, otherwise post comments here, or write to me <bckcdb@istar.ca>, and to Tony Downs <atdowns@aol.com> if it's an organizational question.
good luck and think like a Muskrat,
fred schueler <bckcdb@istar.ca>
