Thread: Troubled Waters
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Old December 22nd, 2004, 07:31 PM
B J Conner
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Default Troubled Waters

The smallmouth were introduced, probably by amateurs or from locomotive
tenders. The Walleyes may have been purposely introduced in Lake Roosevelt
or by homesick midwesterners. . I was just pointing out that it's been going
on a long time.
None of the oysters on the West Coast are native. The native ones have been
gone a long time. If you go to Dan and Louies and order oysters they are all
Japanese varieties.


"asadi...." wrote in message
nk.net...
For smallmouth bass and walleye to be in bilge water...wouldn't that mean
the filled in Lake
Erie and then sailed around the horn to your water's?

john

"B J Conner" wrote in message
news:NzKxd.2332$_62.1577@trnddc01...

"Wolfgang" wrote in message
...
The lead story on the front page of yesterday's Milwaukee Journal

Sentinel,
titled "Sea of Change", chronicles an environmental disaster in the

making.
The zebra mussel, just one of over 180 non-native species that have

become
established in the Great Lakes, has been implicated in a host of

problems
that include the cataclysmic drop in populations of diporeia (tiny
crustaceans that "for thousands of years been the primary foundation

of
the
Lake Michigan food chain"), increased water clarity resulting in

explosive
algal blooms......which in turn lead to incalculable masses of rotted

algae
washes up on what used to be popular beaches...., and the

proliferation
of
botulism-causing bacteria. There's a whole lot more.....in addition

to
the
problems caused by all those other invasive species.

There's more.....lots more.....four full pages. The bottom line is

that
much money is being spent on research, but precious little is being

done
to
solve the problems. New species are currently being introduced into

the
Great Lakes at the stunning rate of about one every eight months

primarily
from the bilges of foreign freighters coming through the Saint

Lawrence
seaway. Legislation requiring such vessels to pump bilges before

entering
the seaway is largely ignored.

I have no idea what can be done about it (the material in the paper

didn't
help)......nothing, in all likelihood. It's probably too late. Just

a
heads up.

Wolfgang
and yeah, it can happen there too.......and it IS.


Out in the far west the Columbia River gets a new species every 5

months.
There things like Japanese Eel Grass, Mitten Crabs, Mud Snails, The

asian
clam, the purple clam, the European crab, Walleye,, Smallmouth bass,
...The list gos on and on and on.
Wall Mart is to blame. If those ships were bringing all the Chinese

stuff
here they wouln't be pumping the ballast water ( and oily bilge water)
into the river..