![]() ![]() Just as some optimists hail global warming (heating bills will go down), reports appeared suggesting thatĭreissena polyorpha was actually providing a service to mankind, by vacuuming up some of the pollutants clogging the Great Lakes. Some researchers speculated the population would peak and taper off.Īnd then came an even more radical departure from conventional thinking. The colder water of the more northerly Great Lakes proved less hospitable than Erie and Ontario. There were sporadic reports of treatments - both natural and chemical - that might eradicate the mussels, and evidence that they would thrive only where the bottom was rocky. (Who can forget the encrusted "mussel car" pulled from the Detroit River in the early 1990s?)Īnd then, abruptly, the risk appeared to fade. ![]() The invasion was covered heavily for years. Early cost estimates to unclog power-intake pipes, dredge harbours of shells and absorb the loss to Ontario's fishing and tourism industries ran in the billions of dollars. Female zebra mussels were capable of producing 40,000 eggs a year and would carpet the Great Lakes, eradicating countless native species. Hebert's words, "an explosion."įirst came a barrage of apocalyptic predictions. Shortly after being discovered, the first generation spawned and the invasion became, in Prof. ![]() The creatures were all the same size, and the researchers deduced that they had been hatched from larvae dumped from a ship in the fall of 1986. Within two months, his team had found mussel densities as high as 200 per square metre. ![]()
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