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Students study gar with Dularge fisherman

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Graduate students at Nicholls State University watch as gar fisherman Ricky Verrett cleans an alligator gar Friday at his dock in Dularge.
By Nikki Buskey
Staff Writer

Published: Saturday, August 28, 2010 at 6:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, August 27, 2010 at 9:36 p.m.

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DULARGE — Gore splatters the plywood of Ricky Verrett’s makeshift dock on Bayou Dularge as the science gets under way. Verrett fishes for a living, but his expert knowledge of local garfish hotspots and how to pull the fish in efficiently have made him an invaluable partner to researchers from Nicholls State University, who are studying the fish’s biology and lifespan.

“We know how to catch the fish, but we’re nowhere near as efficient as Ricky,” said Allyse Ferrara, a Nicholls biology professor, “We can’t sell and use the fish when we’re taking them for our projects.”

By partnering with Verrett, she said, the students can make sure the huge alligator gar they take for their research don’t go to waste.

The alligator gar is the largest of seven species of gar found in North America, Central America and Cuba. The reptilian-looking gar is an evolutionary success story that has been around for more than 150 million years. The largest ever recorded came from the Rio Grande River in Texas, weighing in at 279 pounds. Some estimate the fish can grow to 10 feet and 350 pounds.

Gar can flourish in poor water quality and can adapt to high salt levels, Ferrara said. Because of a specialized swim bladder that resembles a primitive lung, they can survive out of water for hours and breathe air from the surface in the hot summer months.

The gar once had a range that spread across most large river systems and tributaries from the Gulf of Mexico to the Ohio River Valley. However, outside of Louisiana, populations are below historic levels and could be declining further, Ferrara said.

Verrett used to work as a shrimper but said he’s been fishing alligator gar for 15 years and will keep doing it as long as the money’s good.

He catches the fish on a float line and cracks their large toothy heads with a claw hammer. The students draw volumes of blood from the fish, tag the head, weigh and measure it, and let Verrett hack away.

“This is blood-and-guts biology,” Ferrara said.

Cleaning them involves chopping with hatchets and machete-like knives. Verrett saves the meat for himself to sell to buyers from Shreveport and elsewhere, and the bony, arrowhead-shaped scales for a family member who makes them into jewelry.

During the Lenten season, when devout Catholics forgo eating meat on Fridays, the demand for fish is high, and there are few other local fishermen hunting the gar, Verrett said. But right now the price for the large slabs of meat runs between $1.50 and $2 a pound. Little of what Verrett catches goes to waste. The guts and other organs are saved for crawfish bait.

The students take the dorsal fins and the heads back to the lab, where they’ll research different ways of gaging the fish’s age. They also take the livers to examine whether toxins in the water from the oil spill or other pollution have changed hormone levels in the fish, feminizing them.

So far, Nicholls students working in the Biosphere Research Lab, which focuses on the local ecosystem, have undertaken five master’s degree theses and numerous other projects that deal with gar.

Graduate student Justin Merrifield is using the blood to study garfish immunities and compare them to human immune systems. He also wants to check the fish for antimicrobial peptides, a component of immune response that are considered the future of antibiotic medicine.

“They’re a trash fish, so discovering something like that could add value to something that was once perceived as worthless,” Merrifield said.

Graduate student Kent Bollfrass said he came along on the trip to get familiar with the beastly fish before he begins raising larval garfish for the university’s aquaculture program.

Ferrara said she’s taken a handful of different students out with Verrett over the last five years to catch the monster alligator gars for research.

“It’s fun,” Verrett said as he ripped the scales from his latest gar catch. “I got me some free help.”

Verrett has provided so much knowledge and aid to the university that he was declared an honorary member of the research lab earlier this year during an international garfish meeting at Nicholls in May. The International Network for Lepisosteid Fish Research and Management, or “Gar Network,” meeting brought garfish researchers from Canada, Mexico and Costa Rica to Thibodaux to share knowledge.

With their fearsome visage, garfish have often been perceived as a predatory nuisance.

“But as a top predator, they play an important part in the ecosystem,” Ferrara said. “They keep things cleaned up.”

The fish have been listed as a vulnerable species by the American Fisheries Society. Ferrara said the fish are threatened by continued erosion of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands and bays, but despite small declines in their historic populations, they still have a strong presence in Louisiana waters. She’s hopeful that a resurgence of interest in the gar as a sport fish means its reputation will improve.

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“Merging Our Deeper Currents”

AFS 140th ANNUAL MEETING

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

12-16 September 2010

http://secure.fisheries.org/afsevent

Join AFS or renew for 2010 at www.fisheries.org/afs/membership.html

The rise and gall of bluefish catfish in Virginia rivers

Video:

Biologists study progress of blue catfish on the James River.

(Brian Clark)

1 of 5 photos:

Thousands of catfish surface after a team from the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries sent an electric pulse through the water of the James River near James City County. The team was counting and measuring the fish. (Hyunsoo Leo Kim | The Virginian-Pilot)

View all 5 photos |

By Scott Harper
The Virginian-Pilot
© August 30, 2010

JAMES CITY COUNTY

Up close and in person, blue catfish are gruesome creatures. They grow big and ugly and gray. They croak like pigs. And because they have no scales, they are especially slimy, even as fish go.

They also are aggressive and gluttonous. Big ones that reach up to 80 pounds have been compared to underwater vacuums, sucking up whatever gets in the way of their pouty mouths – crabs, worms, other fish.

They are not native to Virginia, but were brought here from the Midwest, from the Mississippi, Ohio and Missouri rivers. Wildlife managers in several Southern states started importing blue cats in the 1970s, stocking them in rivers and lakes as a way of creating lucrative sportfishing venues.

It worked. Today, there are catfish clubs and catfish tournaments and catfish guides with Internet sites that advertise the thrill of hooking one of these powerful beasts, a monster, and reeling them in.

The experiment has worked almost too well, especially in Virginia. The freshwater transplants have started taking over entire habitats, in places such as the James and Rappahannock rivers. They now are expanding into salty, tidal waters, as far east as Hampton Roads at the edge of the Chesapeake Bay.

Also troubling is their food, which includes some of the same species that wildlife managers are trying to save and restore – the blue crab, American shad, American eel, river herring, menhaden.

So what to do?

No one is quite sure.

Bob Greenlee (AFS member, ’94) , a veteran biologist from the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries with a deep voice and grizzled beard, has been studying catfish for years. He rejects complaints from watermen and others that blue cats are key reasons why crabs have declined so much in the Bay in recent years, and why efforts to revive shad and herring continue to fall flat.

Still, Greenlee says the population boom – which has carried blue cats to every tidal tributary in the state, even spilling into neighboring North Carolina and Maryland – is “a real concern” that should be closely watched and better understood.

“The densities are so high, you can’t believe it,” Greenlee said during a research trip last week on the James River. “There are a lot of big fish out there. When they come into an area, the numbers of competing fish – the white catfish, the channel catfish – just plummet.”

Alarmed by the trends, fishery managers across the Chesapeake Bay region have decided to work collectively to handle the deluge.

Tom O’Connell, director of fisheries for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, said experts from his state, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and the Potomac River Fisheries Commission agreed this month to devise a coordinated strategy to manage blue cats – not to exterminate them, he insisted, but to “keep them from devastating our shared resources.”

“Right or wrong, blue catfish are here to stay,” O’Connell said. “We just have to figure out how to contain them.”

Maryland, for example, makes it illegal to transport live blue cats to other waterways in the state, in hopes of curbing their spread. North Carolina maintains no limits, no seasons, no restrictions on catching the bulky species in coastal waters.

“We’re concerned,” said Mike Loeffler, a biologist with the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries, based in Elizabeth City, “especially when you look at what’s going on in the James River.”

Storms threatened overhead on a recent morning as a team of six scientists and technicians from the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries prepared for a day of surveying blue cats on the lower James, just off the Chickahominy River, in James City County.

The unshaven crew, wearing ball caps and coveralls, would be shocking waters at various locations in order to stun any blue cats swimming nearby. The shock waves affect only catfish, and the blue cats of varying sizes bubble to the surface in droves.

The researchers scoop up the dazed, floundering fish with hand-held nets, toss them into tanks aboard three work boats, count them and measure them – all the while shouting out the results while an aide writes down the lengths.

“26!… 31!… 44!… 29!”

They also “sacrifice” a few fish by cutting into their heads and removing their ear bones with a pair of tweezers. Greenlee, the team leader, is an expert at this surgical procedure, which tells scientists how old the cats are.

The oldest blue ever found on the James was 15 years old, Greenlee says. A beast weighing 92 pounds, recovered from Kerr Lake in Southside Virginia during sampling a few years ago, was 11 years old, he recalled.

The largest blue cat ever caught in Virginia waters, at 102 pounds, 4 ounces, was recorded last summer in the lower James, snagged by an angler just south of Richmond.

“They can get pretty big, pretty quickly,” Greenlee said. “They hit a certain age and really take off.”

It’s these big ones, about 1 percent of the blue cat population, that are renowned for gobbling up crabs and other fragile aquatic species. Worse, they also are tainted with toxic PCBs, a chemical byproduct linked to cancer, which can be passed on to people who eat them.

The state Department of Health instructs the public not to eat any blue catfish that are longer than 32 inches and caught from the James River east of Interstate 95 – basically, anything south of Richmond.

The health department also advises that seafood lovers eat no more than two meals a month of blue catfish less than 32 inches long and taken from this same swath of the James. The warning also applies to smaller blue cats caught east of I-95 on the Rappahannock River, and on the Dan River and the Roanoke River.

Because blue catfish are top predators at the head of the food chain in Virginia rivers, PCBs tend to accumulate in their tissues, becoming more and more toxic along the way.

Still, there is a growing seafood market for blue cats, especially the smaller, less-toxic ones. Some watermen want the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, which oversees saltwater species, to assume control of blue cats. Currently, the Game and Inland Fisheries department manages them.

John Wyatt, president of the Independent Watermen’s Association, who himself nets blue cats in the lower James, argues that the game department favors sportsmen over watermen. In a pinch, Wyatt argues, the game department might greatly restrict commercial harvesting. Currently, the department has just one rule regarding commercial blue cat fishing: watermen can keep just one fish per day over 32 inches.

“We’re at their mercy,” Wyatt said. “They could pull the plug on us tomorrow, and we’d be out of business.”

Wyatt said blue catfish have “completely altered” the environmental dynamics of the James River – for the worse: “We’ve got a great recreational fishery, but it’s cost us a lot; they’ve done a tremendous amount of damage.”

The game department conducts its painstaking population research each year, mostly bouncing between the James and Rappahannock rivers, trying to calculate how blue catfish stocks are growing, spreading, changing.

On a humid morning earlier this month, team members had already been going hard for three straight days on the James, through rain and storms, surveying areas from Richmond to Newport News. The early results: further dominance and increasing presence – blue cat abundance has increased every year since 1988, according to the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.

Researchers joked, kidded and needled each other for hours, as fish flew about the boats, water splashed and blood oozed. Robbie Willis, a young technician, was responsible for wrestling the big cats out of the tanks and onto a measuring scale. It was exhausting work, but Willis hung tough.

His hands became chapped and raw from grabbing catfish by the body and mouth and doing battle all day. He spread duct tape over minor wounds on his palms, where blue cat spines had punctured the skin.

“It’s not too bad,” Willis shrugged when asked about the pink abrasions. “It doesn’t help much when meeting girls, though.”

At the last stop of the day, an incredible froth of blue cats came to the surface after an electro-shocking just outside Upper Chippokes Creek on the James. Big, small and medium-size cats were seemingly everywhere.

“Look at the fish!” shouted Chad Boyce, a usually laid-back biologist driving one of the research boats. “Look at the biomass! Jeez! I don’t think I’ve ever seen something like this before.”

Greenlee just smiled and steered his boat toward more froth ahead of him. “Wow,” he said.

The rain began to fall, but more work lay ahead. As they catalogued their findings, the silence of the river echoing their voices, the team began to talk about their favorite fish movies and where to eat that night.

It had been a long day.

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com

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“Merging Our Deeper Currents”

AFS 140th ANNUAL MEETING

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

12-16 September 2010

http://secure.fisheries.org/afsevent

Join AFS or renew for 2010 at www.fisheries.org/afs/membership.html

Science Blog Scince Blog: Science news straight from the source

Climate change implicated in decline of horseshoe crabs

by bjs on 30. Aug, 2010

LEETOWN, W. Va. — A distinct decline in horseshoe crab numbers has occurred that parallels climate change associated with the end of the last Ice Age, according to a study that used genomics to assess historical trends in population sizes.

The new research also indicates that horseshoe crabs numbers may continue to decline in the future because of predicted climate change, said Tim King, a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey and a lead author on the new study published in Molecular Ecology.

While the current decline in horseshoe crabs is attributed in great part to overharvest for fishing bait and for the pharmaceutical industry, the new research indicates that climate change also appears to have historically played a role in altering the numbers of successfully reproducing horseshoe crabs. More importantly, said King, predicted future climate change, with its accompanying sea-level rise and water temperature fluctuations, may well limit horseshoe crab distribution and interbreeding, resulting in distributional changes and localized and regional population declines, such as happened after the last Ice Age.

“Using genetic variation, we determined the trends between past and present population sizes of horseshoe crabs and found that a clear decline in the number of horseshoe crabs has occurred that parallels climate change associated with the end of the last Ice Age,” said King.

The research substantiated recent significant declines in all areas where horseshoe crabs occur along the West Atlantic Coast from Maine to Florida and the eastern Gulf of Mexico, with the possible exception of a distinct population along the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico

These findings, combined with the results of a 2005 study by King and colleagues, have important implications for the welfare of wildlife that rely on nutrient-rich horseshoe crab eggs for food each spring.

For example, Atlantic loggerhead sea turtles, which used to feed mainly on adult horseshoe crabs and blue crabs in Chesapeake Bay, already have been forced to find other less suitable sources of food, perhaps contributing to declines in Virginia’s sea turtle abundance. Additionally, horseshoe crab eggs are an important source of food for millions of migrating shorebirds. This is particularly true for the red knot, an at-risk shorebird that uses horseshoe crab eggs at Delaware Bay to refuel during its marathon migration of some 10,000 miles. Since the late 1990s, both horseshoe crabs and red knot populations in the Delaware Bay area have declined, although census numbers for horseshoe crabs have increased incrementally recently.

“Population size decreases of these ancient mariners have implications beyond the obvious,” King said. “Genetic diversity is the most fundamental level of biodiversity, providing the raw material for evolutionary processes to act upon and affording populations the opportunity to adapt to their surroundings. For this reason, the low effective population sizes indicated in the new study give one pause.”

These studies should help conservation managers make better-informed decisions about protecting horseshoe crabs and other species with a similar evolutionary history. For example, the 2005 study indicated males moved between bays but females did not, suggesting management efforts may best be targeted at local populations instead of regional ones since an absence of enough females may result in local extinctions.

“Consequently, harvest limitations on females in populations with low numbers may be a useful management strategy, as well as relocating females from adjacent bays to help restore certain populations,” King said. “Both studies highlight the importance of considering both climatic change and other human-caused factors such as overharvest in understanding the population dynamics of this and other species.”

USGS provides science for a changing world. Visit USGS.gov, and follow us on Twitter @USGS and our other social media channels.

Subscribe to our news releases via e-mail, RSS or Twitter.

Background on Horseshoe Crabs

Horseshoe crabs are not crabs at all — in fact, they are more closely related to spiders, ticks and scorpions. While historically horseshoe crabs have been used in fertilizer, most horseshoe crab harvest today comes from the fishing industry, which uses the crab as bait, and the pharmaceutical industry, which collects their blood for its clotting properties. While the crabs are returned after their blood is taken, the estimated mortality rate for bled horseshoe crabs can be as high as 30 percent.

The research, Population dynamics of American horseshoe crabs — historic climatic events and recent anthropogenic pressures, was published in the June issue of Molecular Ecology and was authored by Søren Faurby (Aarhus University, Denmark), Tim King, Matthias Obst (University of Gothenburg, Sweden) and others.

The 2005 study, Regional differentiation and sex-biased dispersal among populations of the horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus), was published in the Transactions of the American Fisheries Society and authored by Tim King, Mike Eackles Adrian Spidle (USGS) and Jane Brockman (University of Florida).

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“Merging Our Deeper Currents”

AFS 140th ANNUAL MEETING

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

12-16 September 2010

http://secure.fisheries.org/afsevent

Join AFS or renew for 2010 at www.fisheries.org/afs/membership.html

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Natural Resources Bulletin – August 31, 2010

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In This Issue:

1. Hurricane Katrina 5 year anniversary

2. America’s Great Outdoors Comment Period

3. Congress returns in 2 weeks

1. Hurricane Katrina 5 year anniversary

This past weekend marked the 5 year anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina and the levee breaks that flooded New Orleans.

Five years after Hurricane Katrina, communities in New Orleans are still on their knees – trying to recover from the complete devastation of a man-made flooding disaster.  We know that we need restoration on both sides of the levee to fully recover.  Restoring the coastal wetlands that protect our communities from storm surge is key to a resilient, sustainable New Orleans.  We need the nation’s support – and with oil in our marshes, now more than ever – to restore our coast and protect New Orleans – an American treasure. 

Opinion piece from Hip-Hop Caucus President, Rev. Lennox Yearwood, and NWF President Larry Schweiger: <http://huff.to/aAdkht>

2. America’s Great Outdoors Comment Period

This Thursday marks the final Obama Administration “Listening Session” for America’s Great Outdoors.  With over two dozen listening sessions this summer, CEQ, Dept. of Interior, Dept. of Agriculture, EPA and even the Dept. of Health and Human Services have been busy gathering information on what Americans want to see from America’s Great Outdoors and learning how conservation works at a local level.

These agencies will collaborate on a report to the President to be issued in November.  In the meantime, there is an open comment period that runs until September 30^th.  Add your comments at:

<http://www.greatoutdoorsamerica.org/campaign>

Learn more about the America’s Great Outdoors campaign at: <http://www.greatoutdoorsamerica.org/>

Or register with the Dept. of Interior website, and add your two cents by “promoting” or “demoting” ideas on how to protect America’s Great Outdoors: <http://www.doi.gov/americasgreatoutdoors/>

3. Congress returns in 2 weeks

Congress will stay on their summer recess through September 13^th.  Many will be hosting Labor Day events and/or attending parades, picnics, ball games, etc.   PLEASE ask them to pass clean energy and climate legislation and protect natural resources.  A thirty second conversation with a constituent during recess is one of the absolute best ways to get a member to pay attention to an issue!  Doesn’t matter if your Representative or Senator is in 100% agreement, 100% opposition or the critical in-between category, it’s good for them to hear what you care about.

Derek Brockbank

Conservation Funding Campaign Manager

National Wildlife Federation

Bountiful salmon run reminds us we know little about the fishery

Vancouver SunAugust 27, 2010

If there is one word that defines the science that underpins the way we manage our salmon fishery, it is “unexpected.”

After watching this key contributor to life in British Columbia for more than a century, we still don’t know what to expect when the fish return from parts unknown every year after an epic sea journey. This month our best experts are dumbfounded by the largest return since the days when fishermen still used rowboats.

Last year the Fraser River sockeye run all but collapsed. Just over a million fish returned, one-tenth of the number expected. In response, the federal government announced in November the Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon on the Fraser River, headed by B.C. Supreme Court Justice Bruce Cohen.

Now that the Cohen commission is holding hearings, another surprise. Call it a shocker. Millions of sockeye started showing up on their way to the Fraser, leading to the expectation that the run this year will be the largest in almost 100 years — and the astonishing complaint by some that too many fish will be able to head up the river and compete for room in the spawning grounds.

While we would like to take this monster run as evidence that happy days are here again in B.C.’s wild salmon fishery, the fact that it was as unexpected as the disastrous run last year gives no confidence that it is a signal that our worries are over.

It does suggest, however, that all of the apocalyptic warnings about the effect of global warming, pollution and sea lice from fish farming on our wild salmon have been somewhat premature.

The Cohen commission has already been beset by controversy over whether the scientific advisory panel it put together was too closely associated with the federal department responsible for managing the fisheries. After the resignation of one of its members, the panel was abandoned in favour of what is being called peer review.

Now Cohen will be faced with the problem that one of the key assumptions on which his inquiry is based — that the sockeye populations have collapsed — is untrue.

It is true, however, that one good year does not mean a comeback. Concerns over the health of the sockeye population are based on a steady decline in the productivity of adult spawners since the early 1990s.

If there is a lesson for the Cohen commission in this year’s phenomenal Fraser River sockeye run, it is that any management decisions based on what we think we know about what benefits or harms these fish must be taken in full awareness that there are significant gaps in our knowledge.

That means treading carefully. Until we know more about why one million fish are returning one year and 25 million the next, we have to admit that we are engaged in a reactive management system rather than one that can accurately forecast how many fish can be taken without harming future returns. It also means that for all our focus on habitat enhancement during the spawning portion of their lives, there are clearly conditions during the salt water phase that make a huge difference in how many fish return to spawn.

The massive class of 2010 has created for the first time in years an opportunity for fisheries scientists to study success. This opportunity for new research may be as important to the future of the salmon as some of the tired arguments that the Cohen commission will hear over the coming year.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

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“Merging Our Deeper Currents”

AFS 140th ANNUAL MEETING

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

12-16 September 2010

Join AFS or renew for 2010 at www.fisheries.org/afs/membership.html

NOAA, SeaWeb Partner to Communicate the Value of Coral Reefs Three-year agreement supports projects totaling $1.7 million

NOAA and SeaWeb have entered into a partnership to enhance understanding of the nation’s valuable but increasingly vulnerable coral reef ecosystems in the Caribbean, Florida, Hawaii and the Pacific Islands.

Sometimes referred to as the ‘rainforests of the sea,’ coral reefs provide services estimated to be worth as much as $375 billion globally each year.

The three-year agreement will dedicate $850,000 in NOAA funding and $865,000 in matching funds from SeaWeb to help the U.S. coral jurisdictions identify initial priority areas for building a foundation for social marketing and strategic communications campaigns. Campaign strategies will be designed, carried out and evaluated within target areas, with the aim of increasing public dialogue on coral conservation, protection and management. The partnership and agreement are the result of a competitive selection process following a request for proposals issued by NOAA in early 2010.

“The decline and loss of coral reefs has significant social, cultural, economic and ecological impacts on people and communities in the United States and throughout the world,” said Kacky Andrews, program manager for NOAA’s Coral Reef Conservation Program. “Coral ecosystems are at serious risk due to a variety of human activities; protecting and conserving them is an urgent issue that must be addressed with engaged communities taking part in developing and implementing the solutions.”

Working with the seven U.S. states and territories that contain coral reefs (American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Florida, Guam, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands), NOAA and SeaWeb will identify initial priority areas for the outreach campaigns.

“Communicating the intrinsic value of corals and their reefs to diverse audiences in multiple locations will be a truly worthwhile endeavor,”

said Dawn M. Martin, president of SeaWeb. “As we’ve demonstrated before, sparking a social movement within individual communities – showing people why doing right is best for them and their own surrounding environments – is the most effective way to cause positive change. At the end of the day, it really is up to each of us to change our behavior and preserve our precious corals.”

NOAA and SeaWeb staff will meet twice-yearly to develop individual work plans, funding priorities and allocations for specific projects. Each year staff from the states and territories will work with NOAA and SeaWeb staff to review work plans and ensure needs and priorities are being addressed. Once detailed work plans are submitted and accepted by the NOAA and SeaWeb staffs, funds will be released through SeaWeb to implement the agreed upon work.

SeaWeb is an international nonprofit communications organization dedicated to creating a culture of ocean conservation. SeaWeb works collaboratively to inform and empower diverse ocean voices and conservation champions in strategic, targeted sectors to encourage market solutions, policies and behaviors that result in a healthy, thriving ocean. SeaWeb transforms knowledge into action by shining a spotlight on workable, science-based solutions to the most serious threats facing the ocean such as climate change, pollution and overexploitation.

Grants Respond to the Spread of Invasive Mussels in the West

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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that nearly $600,000 will be awarded to nine projects targeting three of the highest priorities from the Quagga-Zebra Mussel Action Plan for Western U.S. Waters (QZAP).

“As quagga and zebra mussels spread to the Western United States, they can have devastating ecological and economic impacts as already seen in the east and central United States. We must address the spread of these invasive aquatic species, which threaten our Nation’s natural resources, water delivery systems, hydroelectric facilities, agriculture, and recreational boating and fishing,” said Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior.

Invasive species are among the primary factors that have led to the decline of native fish and wildlife populations in the United States and one of the most significant natural resource management challenges. A paper published in 2005 in the journal Ecological Economics estimated the cost of invasive species impacts to be approximately $120 billion each year in the United States. We continue to face enormous economic and environmental consequences as a result of invasive, nonnative species spreading in our waterways and on our lands.

Once established these invasive mussels can clog water intake and delivery pipes and dam intake gates. They adhere to boats, pilings, and most hard and some soft substrates. The mussels negatively impact water delivery systems, fire protection, and irrigation systems and require costly removal maintenance. The spread of quagga and zebra mussels across the West brings the potential to extend devastating impacts into a geographic area already challenged with severe water-related problems.

The QZAP provides a common sense approach to guide collective efforts of those fighting the westward spread of quagga and zebra mussels. Efforts funded in this round of grants include:

*    Early-detection monitoring programs for quagga and zebra mussels;

*    Developing a manual describing containment activities in infested water bodies;

*    Refining hot water decontamination methods for watercraft;

*    Refining decontamination methods for wildland firefighting equipment;

*    Pilot laboratory testing program for the early detection of larval mussels;

*    Invasive mussel early detection monitoring methods and quality assurance workshops;

*    Creating and implementing uniform minimum protocols and standards for watercraft interception and decontamination programs; and

*    Developing standard and effective equipment (non-watercraft) inspection and decontamination protocols.

The Service also has provided support for quagga and zebra mussel efforts through regional projects under the 100th Meridian Initiative (www.100thmeridian.org <http://www.100thmeridian.org/> ), a cooperative effort between local, state, provincial, regional, and federal agencies to prevent the westward spread of zebra/quagga mussels and other aquatic nuisance species in North America. In addition, the Service through the Aquatic Nuisance Species Task Force, has funded implementation of State and Interstate Aquatic Nuisance Species Management Plans. These plans describe detection and monitoring efforts of aquatic nuisance species, prevention efforts to stop their introduction and spread, and control efforts to reduce their impacts. More information is online at: http://anstaskforce.gov <http://anstaskforce.gov/> .

For a full list of the QZAP projects and for more information on aquatic invasive species, please visit: www.fws.gov/fisheries/ans.