Quaggas

Ran into a member of the auxiliary coastguard at an outdoorsman show. His name's Ron Fritz and his issue was fouling our waters with quagga mussels.These mussels, came in through the St. Lawrence.

Tell me that. Again, my understanding is that they came in off of merchant ships that were using ballast water and this kind of thing from Europe. And then they dumped the ballast water and pick up cargo. And so what happened then was the they infested the St. Lawrence Seaway, and they worked their way west through the Great Lakes. And you can see from the brochure that into the Mississippi River and things like that.

So I am looking at an Idaho license plate that goes on a car and it is absolutely covered with quagga mussels. Correct. And where was this? How did this happen?

Where was this license plate? Department of Parks and Recreation told me they sent these license plates down to Lake Mead and put them in the water for six months. Well, we'd have something to show the folks back here.

And this is what came back, just to give you a visual description to the listeners on radio. It's a license plate that is completely covered front and back with quagga mussels. You can't even see the license plate. That's true. They spread pretty quickly.

They're a nightmare. By the way, Ron was not talking as an official from the Coast Guard. He's a member of a group that is very, very concerned about this problem.