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AJC.com > Metro > View from the cop > Archives > 2007 > October > 24
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Pulling mussels from their shells
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The reason my boat drags the bottom of Lake Lanier is because I’m doing my part to save the freshwater mussel. I don’t mind doing that but I can’t figure out how the freshwater mussel affects me other than taking all the water out of Lake Lanier. I did some research on freshwater mussels and here is what I found:
Freshwater mussels (several allied families, the largest being the Unionidae) and saltwater mussels (family Mytilidae) are not closely related at all—if any, only by marriage or by bad decisions during family reunions.
Unionidae is a family of freshwater mussels, found world-wide living buried in mud, silt or sand in rivers, streams and lakes. The shell is described in big words, at least four to five syllables, and when one visualizes it, the word gross comes to mind. Basically they lie half-buried in the sediment and pump water and oxygen in and out— much like my Uncle Randolph used to do when he got drunk on his “special medicine” delivered every Friday evening from Dawsonville, Georgia.
To reproduce, mussels do things like “eject sperm from a mantel cavity” through the “male’s excurrent siphon,” which some mussels refer to as “Little Elvis.”
There’s more. The female takes it into her mantel cavity through the incurrent siphon; all the while listening to the male’s mating noises sounding remarkably like Barry White singing “Can’t get enough of your love, babe.” The fertilized eggs eventually move to a host fish, also known as dumb fish who don’t know something is hanging off their gills, until they are juveniles at which time they drop to the sediment and do what most teenagers do—which is mostly nothing.
According to the Chattanooga Times Free Press (October 15th), the Corps of Engineers has been asked to reduce the water flow to these areas. The Corps contends the water flow is needed for two species of federally-protected freshwater mussels in Florida and a coal-fired power plant. Instead of decreasing the flow, they increased it. They are pumping 37,400 gallons of water into Florida every second, the equivalent of an Olympic-size swimming pool every 20 seconds. Last week the Corp released an average 1.5 billion gallons a day. On Thursday, the Corps released more than nine times as much water downstream as entered the lake by rainfall or feeder streams.
Aside from my selfish reasons of not wanting to tube in the mud, it seems like the Corps of Engineers need to sit down and look at some of the solutions proposed. If for no other reason, we don’t want the lake to dry up exposing all those bodies dumped in it over by the dam. (I know nothing.)
Another reason is the certain impending doom to dozens of goobers with their metal detectors looking for money and valuables eaten by the evil man-eating, fast-evolving giant carp and catfish, which live down at the bottom of the dam and probably ate those bodies I know nothing about. (Note to goobers: My car keys are about fifty feet into the cove off Charleston Park. My wallet is close by.)
What if these freshwater mussels become extinct? Other things have become extinct and we’re OK with it. Fortunately for us the dinosaurs were here before us. What if it were the other way around? What if we went to all this trouble back when and actually saved the dinosaurs? What a mess that would be. Sooner or later we would try to domesticate them and that means house-training them and taking them for walks (talk about a big poop-bag) and just how are you going to teach them not to hump your friend’s leg before someone gets killed?
