The golden mussel’s appearance in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is its first confirmed detection in North America — and it has the potential to clog major water supply pumps.
Brazilian researcher Marcela Uliano da Silva shows samples of the golden mussel at the Carlos Chagas Filho Biophysics Institute in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2015.If you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less.From the glittery bling of its name, the golden mussel sounds like it could be California ’s state bivalve.
Its appearance in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is the mussel’s first confirmed detection in North America, according to a news release from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.It’s also very possibly just the beginning of a long battle ahead to slow its spread. The top concerns at the moment include potential impacts to the environment and to the Delta pumping stations that send water to 30 million people and millions of acres of farmland.
But if such efforts fail, it could become a major problem for native species that the mussels outcompete for food.“The species poses a significant immediate threat to the ecological health of the Delta and all waters of the state, water conveyance systems, infrastructure and water quality,” staff officials wrote.The Department of Water Resources is already conducting vessel inspections in the hopes of preventing spread of the mussels.
“If we’re lucky, and we stage a real eradication effort in the area where it’s presently found, it might not be too costly and would be worth it.”No one can be certain how the mussels got to California, but sources suspect they arrived the same way they are believed to have traveled to South America — in the bowels of commercial ships, where ballast water used to stabilize vessels at sea is often drained in the port of arrival.
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