100th Meridian Initiative: Lake Powell

On April 6th, 2002, I had gone to Bullfrog (a marina area about halfway up the lake) to give a presentation on zebra mussels to concessionaire employees. At the end of the presentation, they got to thinking and said that they had launched a boat from Wisconsin a few weeks before. I asked them to show me the boat. We went down to the docks and the boat looked very clean, but closer inspection revealed small (<1cm) zebra mussels attached to the trim tabs. We contacted the owner and found out that the boat had been out of the water for 9 months and had experienced freezing temperatures before being launched on Lake Powell. We pulled and washed the boat anyway. The most troubling parts of this story are just how close it was. The only reason the boat was out of the water for all that time, according to the owner, was because the weather conditions were not good for painting when it was first pulled out of the water in Wisconsin. The owner was moving to Grand Junction and wanted to have his boat on Lake Powell. He knew he had zebra mussels and so wanted the hull sand blasted and repainted. He told the people doing the work that he wanted all the zebra mussels removed, but, as you have heard, there were still shells on the trim tabs when it was launched in Lake Powell. This visitor had done everything that we could hope for someone to do to not transport zebra mussels, but we were still not safe.

-Mark Anderson, Aquatic Ecologist
Glen Canyon National Recreation Area
National Park Service




Lake Powell Invaders (Images below)
On April 6th, 2002, I had gone to Bullfrog (a marina area about halfway up the lake) to give a presentation on zebra mussels to concessionaire employees. At the end of the presentation, they got to thinking and said that they had launched a boat from Wisconsin a few weeks before. I asked them to show me the boat. We went down to the docks and the boat looked very clean, but closer inspection revealed small (<1cm) zebra mussels attached to the trim tabs. We contacted the owner and found out that the boat had been out of the water for 9 months and had experienced freezing temperatures before being launched on Lake Powell. We pulled and washed the boat anyway. The most troubling parts of this story are just how close it was. The only reason the boat was out of the water for all that time, according to the owner, was because the weather conditions were not good for painting when it was first pulled out of the water in Wisconsin. The owner was moving to Grand Junction and wanted to have his boat on Lake Powell. He knew he had zebra mussels and so wanted the hull sand blasted and repainted. He told the people doing the work that he wanted all the zebra mussels removed, but, as you have heard, there were still shells on the trim tabs when it was launched in Lake Powell. This visitor had done everything that we could hope for someone to do to not transport zebra mussels, but we were still not safe. -Mark Anderson, Aquatic Ecologist Glen Canyon National Recreation Area National Park Service
(Above) Wisconsin Boat in Lake Powell (Above) Boat Came from Racine, Wisconsin (Above) Dead Zebra Mussel Shells Found on Boat (Above) Dead Zebra Mussel Shells Found on Boat (Above) Dead Zebra Mussel Shells Found on Boat (Above) Artificial Substrate for Zebra Mussel Monitoring

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