Volunteers work together to tag 3,500 mussels for release into the Cedar and Wapsipinicon Rivers. - Photo by Lyndsey Anderson

Adult volunteers assist Boy Scouts in placing mussels into the Cedar River. - Photo by Lyndsey Anderson

The old adage, "Many hands make for light work," was proven when 31 volunteers from the Waterloo, Iowa, turned out to assist the Genoa National Fish Hatchery, Hartman Reserve Nature Center, and Iowa Department of Natural Resources in mussel restoration efforts on the Cedar River in eastern Iowa, August 8.

Volunteers included local residents, a Boy Scout troop and students from Hawkeye Community College who eagerly assisted in tagging the mussels and placing them in the Cedar River. 

The mussels for this restoration effort were cultured in cages floated in Dubuque, Iowa's Ice Harbor in a 2005 joint effort between Genoa NFH and the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium.

The mussels were harvested from the floating cages in the fall of 2005 and placed back into submerged cages in Lake Pepin, Minnesota to overwinter below the ice.  With assistance from Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the mussels were harvested from Lake Pepin in June and transported to Genoa NFH. 

At Genoa NFH, the mussels were scrubbed to remove any zebra mussels, and then quarantined for 30 days to insure no zebra mussels would be transported to the Cedar River. 

A total of 3,500 mussels of two species, the plain pocketbook and the black sandshell were tagged and released.  The mussels were divided into three equal groups, with beds being established upstream of Waterloo, at Palisades-Kepler State Park, and a third site on the Wapsipinicon River near Central City. 

This mussel bed will be used as a control site to compare survival and growth with those in the Cedar River.  The mussel beds will be monitored for the next several years to answer questions about the low densities of mussels in the Cedar River.