Service Diver Jorge Buening returns to the boat after excavating a quadrat - Photo Credit: USFWS

Service volunteer Danelle Lloyd takes data on mussels from an excavated quadrat. - Photo Credit: USFWS

The final week of August saw biologists from Genoa NFH conducting a quantitative mussel survey of the Whiskey Rock Essential Habitat Area. The Whiskey Rock EHA is a long term monitoring site for the Higgins’ eye restoration program. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has monitored the site on a five year cycle, with the last event happening in 2009. As the focus of the Higgins’ eye restoration program shifted from propagation to monitoring over the last few years, Genoa NFH has become more active in monitoring activities with regional partners. While hatchery mussel biologist have been participating in monitoring efforts for over 10 years, this survey was the first long term monitoring survey that was conducted exclusively by Genoa NFH personnel.

The Whiskey Rock EHA is located roughly three miles downstream of Lansing, Iowa along shore adjacent to the Mississippi River navigation channel. The week-long survey consisted of excavating 200 1/4M2 quadrats and conducting a series of timed searches. Initial results of the survey indicate that at least 23 species of mussels currently occur there at a density of 16.36/M2. A total of 10 Higgins’ eye were collected in the quadrat sampling comprising 1.2 percent of the collection and representing a density of 0.05/M2 numbers that are high enough to continue to consider the location an EHA under the guidelines set forth in the recovery plan for the species.

The survey represented a big step towards a larger role in the monitoring of Higgins’ eye populations, which Genoa NFH had previously been tasked with augmenting. This survey took advantage of the station's dive boat, which had been designed with surveys of this sort in mind. With the significant amount of effort required to complete the survey, special thanks is due to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the La Crosse Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office for providing volunteers to help complete the survey in a timely fashion. This winter all of the survey results will be summarized in a report prepared for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Results of this effort will be compared back to results from areas where Higgins’ eye have been stocked to help determine if restoration efforts are recovering populations faster than natural recovery methods.