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Saturday, Nov 21, 2009 08:07:15 PM |
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      MIGHTY MUSSEL 
Janet Clayton/DNR Biologist "Before I ever learned them, I was like everybody else-they all look alike, but this one is smaller and round." Some of these mussels can live to be 100 years old, and here's why. It's so hard to tell them from the rocks in this stream. By the way, this one's the mussel. Hard to recognize out of the water and even harder once these guys dig themselves into a nice, cozy home on the bottom of a river bed. They look like rocks, only this little slit gives it away. Janet Clayton/DNR Biologist "There are species that don't move at all, you can go year after year and find them in the same spot. There are species that will actually move. I've gone into a stream and seen a trail in the sand." "They have one big mussel foot and they get that dug down a little bit and just start pushing along." These animals can be determined and that shows in its reproductive cycle, too. The larvea must be attached to fish in order to survive and grow into adult mussels. The females have figured out a way to lure the host fish close enough for the baby mussels, or glochedia, to find a home. Janet Clayton/DNR Biologist "It's modified edge on it will extend out of the mussel, wave and it looks like a minnow. It may have an eye spot and a line down the side, so it will mimic a minnow waiting for a fish to come down and chomp on that minnow. When it chomps on that minnow it gets a face full of glochedia and so they attach for a period of time." Only a few of the thousands of eggs will survive to become adult mussels. And don't get them confused with their better tasting cousins you see in restaurants. Janet Clayton/DNR Biologist "I've always had people say can you eat them. Well, all indications are they're tough as shoe leather and they're filtering all the contaminants out of the water so I don't know that I'd want to eat them." Remember, it's illegal to harvest mussels in west virginia. If you see anyone picking them up and taking them away, contact the Division of Natural Resources law enforcement officers. Links to learn more Freshwater Mussels. Pictures of Endangered Mollusks Endangered Freshwater Mussels. The Tubercled-Blossom Pearly Mussel WCHS-TV8 Online brings you the current Fishing Conditions Report updated every week. |
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