Dr. Russell Cuhel and Dr. Carmen Aguilar, Principal Instigators UWM Center for Great Lakes Studies (Great Lakes WATER Institute) presented a discussion and slide show at November's GLSF Mebership Meeting titled;
Invasion of the Quagga Mussels
The 'absent minded professor' style of delivery added humor, and intrest, to an incrediably informative and thought pervoking topic. The under water movie sceans, and the hands on demonstartions 'clarified' the real thret that the Quagga mussels present to Lake Michigan.
A few of the main points that I took away for the meeting are:
5 years ago the invasion of the Zebra mussels invoked cries that the "sky is falling", and yet only 3 years later all most all of them have disapered from the lake.
The Quagga's are only slightly larger than the Zebra'a, but they can filter many more times the amount of water than their little cousins.
30% of the bottom of Lake Michigan is covered with the QM
The water has been clarified down to 200 feet deep, to the point that the cam-corder movies were taken with no artificial light, and yet you could still see about 100 feet straight out in front of the camara.
For those of you who missed this wunderfull presentation, Dr. Cuhel has created a slightly abreviated version of his slide show. The only slides he left out were some of the technical graphs and raw data that required his explaination.
