Mussels on SUP in less than 48 hours w/photos

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Pegasus

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At APM, I put my inflatable SUP in the water Thursday June 14 at 11 a.m. and pulled it out of the water Saturday June 16 at 8 a.m. - it was in the water for 45 hours.

I set it on its side to dry and noticed many little black specs on the bottom of the board - about 20 easily visible specs. I thought they were just wood specs from the water. But picked several off of the board and they were mussels with a shell formed - probably 1-2mm size. You can see one in the photos below, but look closely and you can see when I zoomed in on the larger mussel in the second photo, a much smaller mussel - probably .2mm - just below it and to the right in the photo that was invisible to the eye without magnification. With the knowledge that the .2mm little black spec is a mussel also, I'd say the SUP had hundreds of mussels attached to the bottom in various stages of development! After only 45 hours in the water.

This tells me, and hopefully is informative to all of us, that mussels are on EVERYTHING we pull from the water - ropes, anchors, SUP, tubes, wakeboards, hulls, engines/outdrives, swimsuits, etc, even if you can't see them, thus the importance of abiding by the clean/drain/dry NPS rules at all times and following decontamination rules for boats launching anywhere besides LP if out of the water less time than required. -Doug

p.s. - to me this shell looks more like a snail than a mussel, but I've never seen snails in LP, so I assume the look is just part of mussel life-stage development.

p.s.s. - updated comment - if these are some sort of snail, I still had over 20 of them on the bottom of my SUP in 45 hours, and likely hundreds more smaller ones that looked like specs visible under magnification. If they are snails, maybe even more than mussels I'd like a response from someone with knowledge of this!

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I think you are right that mussels or at least the veligers are in, or on, anything wet removed from the lake. Having said that I think your PS is correct in that these look to be some kind of fresh water snail. Quaggas are a bivalve. As veligers the bivalve aspect, prior to shell development, actually gives them their swimming mobility.

Maybe someone can confirm?
Goblin
 
Three boats had to be turned away in northern Utah because they had mussels on them. Luckily they caught them, but I’d bet some infected ones have already gotten through the “process” this year.

Launched last Saturday at jordanelle on free fishing day, we launched at about 6:30am, two dozen boats had already launched, no one at the park entrance booth, or at the top of the ramp. It’s a joke.
 
I am very concerned about the spreading of mussels. But the article on Deer Creek is more than 3 years old and Deer Creek has passed its quarantine period and is now declared mussel free.

Those look like snails, but still that's crazy and I would assume quagga mussels have just as much capability to swim and attach (if not more) and they may be microscopic (essentially can't see) for some time.

Even if they are snails this is totally a worthwhile post.
 
If those are quagga, and they really can attach to anything, I think it will be not much short of impossible to keep them from spreading.
 
snail; gastropod, using gas bag? or trapped air to float around and attach to things (I'm gonna research this more)

quaggas have a few week period where they do the same..float around and look to sprout roots. bivalve Molusk

I wish I paid more attention in marine biology
 
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