While sampling a restored stretch of Raccoon Creek in Paulding County the other day, biologists were ecstatic to find a live female Southern rainbow mussel (Villosa vibex) — the first live mussel to be documented in the creek's watershed in more than 30 years.
Freshwater mussels are bivalve mollusks, similar to their saltwater clam and oyster cousins. They live in the sand and gravel bottoms of streams and rivers and need clean, flowing water and stable stream channels. Like their marine kin, mussels filter algae and other food bits from the moving water.
The finding of a live mussel in Raccoon Creek, a tributary of the Etowah River, bolsters hope that wildlife will return to a once badly degraded stream that is restored and protected from further harm, said biologist Katie Owens of the Nature Conservancy of Georgia, one of several groups leading efforts to make the creek healthy again.
Freshwater mussels, she explained, are the “canaries in the coal mine” in rivers — more vulnerable to declines in water quality than fish. When mussels start disappearing, it’s a warning that the waterway and the fish and other species living in it also are in jeopardy.
On the way to its confluence with the Etowah south of Allatoona Dam, the 21-mile-long Raccoon Creek flows partly through Bartow County but mostly through fast-growing Paulding.
Although the stream winds through state-protected Paulding Forest and Sheffield wildlife management areas, development, agriculture, dams and mercury pollution (from former gold mining) have caused increased sedimentation, runoff pollution and altered flows in long stretches of the stream.
One such mile-long stretch is near Dallas in Paulding County. In a multiyear effort, the Nature Conservancy and state and federal agencies have worked to restore the stretch to ecological health by establishing a 30-foot streamside forest buffer, removing a fish passage barrier and stabilizing eroding stream banks.
In addition to the mussel, biologists also found several species of tiny fish known as darters, including the federally endangered Etowah darter.
IN THE SKY: The Leonid meteor shower reaches a peak this weekend of about 15 meteors per hour, said David Dundee, Tellus Science Museum astronomer. Look to the east from about 2 a.m. until dawn.
The moon will be full on Sunday — the “Trading Moon,” as the Cherokee peoples called November’s full moon. Mercury is very low in the east just before dawn. Venus is in the west at dusk and sets about three hours later. Mars rises out of the east about four hours before dawn. Jupiter rises in the east at dusk and is visible all night. It will appear near the moon on Thursday night, Nov. 21.
