I just found a 1/4" zebra mussel attached to the rocks at Redgranite Quarry. It might suck having them all over the rocks, but at least we will get some cleaner water and maybe less terrorists running around. This morning, viz was around 10'.
The water looks cleaner in Winnebago.
This should be a good reminder to clean off your gear after diving in infested waters.
Last week when I was on a dive charter the subject of Zebra mussels came up. One of the guys we were diving with said that someone had placed some Zebra mussels in a quarry that he dived in many times. The water became clearer for a short tiem but then the mussels all died and the algee and wahtever that resulted from the massive die off made the quarry almost impossible to dive. It stank and the vis went to under two feet. Don't know how factual this is, but if this is all true it could spell trouble for an otherwise good quarry.
Makes me wonder about the calcium level in Redgranite. If it's low enough the mussels won't be able to make shells for very long before it's used up. This might limit the problem. At least it's not a limestone quarry. Does anyone know if there are any springs there? Or is everything just drainage? If it's just drainage, calcium may be real low.
With all the kids using it, I wonder if it might be best to chlorine bomb it just for sanitary reasons. (E-coli, ect.) But at 250 million gallons that's a tall order.
Red Granite is totally a seepage lake. All of the calcium would have to come in with the ground water.
Doug
good news with zebra mussels is they clean up the water, bad news they clean it so much the feeder fish have nothing to eat so they die off and the food chain becomes broken killing off the bigger fish. Also they like to grow on anything once they get a good start they can cover an entire object in one summer with an inch think coat of mussels. Also because they clean the water so good more light reaches the deeper depths and algue grows very rapidly and in large amounts. We are starting to see all of this in big cedar over the last 2 years.