3-24 IAT Quagga Hotwash

3-24 IAT Quagga Hotwash

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Hot washes for boats infected with quagga mussels. a large boat that was being transported from Lake Powell over in Arizona, and on its way to Seattle was intercepted near the town of Burley, Idaho recently. We are all very much aware of the severe economic and environmental damage that quagga's can produce, so boats are intercepted, inspected and de-infected. It is a fascinating process as I found out from Idaho State Department of Agriculture spokesperson Lloyd Knight. "We gave it a hot wash at the roadside. What is a hot wash? What we normally do when we have a fouled boat come through one of our stations, or even a high risk boat, we will usually try to at the very least do a hot wash. If it is a boat that we can hold on a state hold order, we do at times detain boats for long as 30 days. We do a full decontamination on it. Because this boat was commercially hauled on an oversize permit, we were not able to hold those kinds of boats. The hot wash, we go with high pressure 140° water and our staff will wash that boat at the roadside. It is not a full decontamination because we do not have a dry out period attached to it, so we try to get all physical evidence of those mussels off of the boat to make sure that nothing will fall off and get into the water whenever that boat gets put back in the water somewhere down the line.
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