Fundraiser launched for tech to keep invasive mussels from entering B.C. waters
Global News
Many waterways across the United States and Canada are already infested, including the Great Lakes and Lake Winnipeg, according to reports.
They may be small, but invasive quagga and zebra mussels pose a huge threat to the environment and economy.
“Mussels will destroy the water chemistry. They will destroy the beaches. Tourism will go away,” said Blair Ireland, chair of the Okanagan Basin Water Board (OBWB).
“You know, we’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars in impact.”
Many waterways across the United States and Canada are already infested, including the Great Lakes and Lake Winnipeg.
Now, efforts to prevent them from spreading into B.C. are ramping up with a fundraising campaign to accelerate groundbreaking mussel-detection technology being developed at UBC-Okanagan.
‘It’s for detecting boats that were in mussel-infested waters,” said Dr. Michael Russello, a geneticist with UBC-Okanagan who is leading the project. “They may not have obvious signs that they were in those waters.”
Known as environmental DNA or eDNA technology, it involves a portable, suitcase-sized lab that can detect microscopic mussel larvae attached to boats, invisible to the human eye.
“Imagine a handheld, wet/dry vacuum, but modified to have filters that will bind DNA, all DNA that’s on the surface,” Russello explained.
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