Volunteers assembling clam cages

Zack Brown and a camera crew of Channel 19 news, LaCrosse, Wisconsin, spent the better part of a morning gathering information for a morning news feature on the Genoa National Fish Hatchery.  It was very fortuitous timing, as volunteers from a 4 state area gathered to assist in our annual clam cage assembly.  Clam cages are used for the confinement of host fish, which carry hundreds of Endangered Higgins Eye and Winged Mapleleaf mussel larvae on their gills.  Roughly 25 of these fish carrying approximately 250 mussel larvae apiece are placed in small aluminum framed cages and set over suitable mussel habitat that houses few or no zebra mussels.  The exotic zebra mussels contributed to rapid declines in native mussel populations by colonizing on the shells of freshwater mussels and causing suffocation and the inability of the mussel to siphon feed.  Roughly 80-100 cages are built each year, requiring a large work force of volunteers to help complete the project.  Zach also helped wrestle a lake sturgeon while he was at the station, another species of concern reared at the Genoa station.  The station's ongoing lake sturgeon restoration strategies were discussed as well.  Another benefit to the program was that the hatchery had plenty of coaster brook trout and rainbow trout fry on hand.  Coasters that hatch out this year will be held to the following spring and stocked at roughly 9-10 inches in length in Lake Superior tributaries as part of ongoing restoration efforts for this species.  Through the storyline, a unique opportunity to share a conservation message was passed on to the greater LaCrosse (WI) broadcasting area.