They
love the dark areas of a lake or structure. Divers at Lake
Mead found the very first adult mussels under small ledges and in
cracks along the lake floor. They were often covered with silt
and hard to pick out. Bryan the Biologist at Mead was doing a
training session with 10 groups of divers. He showed them the
mussels, explained to them what to look for and educated them on where
to look, out of the 10 groups of divers only 2 groups brought back
Zebra Mussels. Utah is home to several native mussels that are
much larger then the Quagga Mussel, so they can be hard to
Identify. Another good place to look is under rocks. They
range in size from a 1mm to the size of a penny like I showed you in
the picture. On a boat haul they can feel like sandpaper on the
surface. So you can see the challenge in detecting them.
