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As he drives along the Clinch, Richard points out all the ways in which the river is suffering. There’s the changing climate, which could be giving the mussels heat stress. But Richard believes a bigger factor is logging, which robs the streams of the large hardwoods that provide shade and cool the water. Not only does heat itself stress mussels, which may make them more susceptible to disease, but also the increased temperatures can negatively affect the species on which mussels depend for food.
“This is what an extinction looks like. It has brought a population to its knees,” says Richard. “Can’t these guys catch a break?”
Give mussels a chance
Regardless of what is causing the mass die-offs, there’s no question a river without mussels has huge ripple effects on the river’s inhabitants, as the University of Oklahoma’s DuBose discovered.
When the mussels die, their decomposing bodies spur a brief pulse of productivity, followed by a steep decline in species diversity as rivers become cloudier and darker without mussels to filter the sediment. It’s a phenomenon Agbalog and Richard have seen along the Clinch.
“It’s not just mussels. Freshwater streams are declining in general,” says Rachel Mair, a biologist with the Harrison Lake National Fish Hatchery in eastern Virginia, who previously worked on the Clinch. “It’s very upsetting that mussels might not be around for future generations.”
Figuring out what’s going on with the mussels can help biologists like Mair develop a plan to propagate the remaining mussels in hatcheries and eventually release them back into the wild.
But finding the funds for such an endeavor won’t be easy, especially for a species that many people aren’t even aware of. But they should be, Richard says.
“What’s the worst that could happen if we care? We’d have a cleaner river.”
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