Photo by SCUBALUNA

Merely the size of a fingernail, with a striped pattern on their shells, zebra and quagga mussels have a powerful grip. They make their way into new bodies of water by clinging to the hulls of boats and ships. Once they invade a water body, they attach themselves to native mussels, causing them to suffocate. They can also cause diseases for other aquatic life that may eat them, decrease water quality, and clog any infrastructure they come across, like pipes and docks.

All invasive species are a kind of poison. But zebra and quagga mussels are particularly dangerous. These mussels, which are native to Eurasia, encrust everythng they come in contact with. They filter algae out of water that local species depend on for food, devouring it all for themselves. They can completely kill off native mussel species. And now, it seems to be an inevitable reality that they’ll soon colonize British Columbia’s freshwaters.

When quagga mussels were found in the Idaho Snake River last fall, the Idaho State Department of Agriculture had to block off over 25 kilometers of the river from the public and dump 116,000 liters of Natrix, a copper-based pesticide, in an effort to eradicate them. The whole procedure cost $3 million and ended up killing six to seven tonnes of fish. Whether or not they were actually able to rid themselves of the unwelcome molluscs remains an open question.

With the Idaho Snake River a mere 10 hour drive from B.C., and connecting to the province’s bodies of water, conservation groups are ringing their alarm bells. “The threat is closer than ever,” says James Littley, deputy administrator of the Okanagan Basin Water Board (OBWB), an organization that identifies and resolves critical water issues in the Okanagan Valley.

More funding to combat this problem is needed immediately. Yet each government agency that used to provide financial assistance to infestation prevention has slashed their contributions over the past few years, leaving very little to protect B.C. wildlife and ecosystems from this now-imminent threat. Without the necessary funding, B.C.’s freshwater ecosystems could face drastic changes, impacting aquatic life and water quality, and costing the province millions.

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Research by the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in the Hudson River showed that zebra and quagga mussels which invaded the waters in 1991 and 2008 respectively had caused environmental damage in a magnitude similar to acid rain. In both cases, phytoplankton populations decline. This can cause a ripple effect, lowering populations of other aquatic life, too.

In Michigan, the mussels were responsible for the deaths of thousands of migratory birds through a cascading food chain issue. These mussels accumulate toxins in their body up to 300,000 times greater than what’s in the surrounding water. As a result, the birds died from a particularly deadly type of botulism that worked its way up the food chain from the mussels to fish. When this happens, birds, including endangered species like loons, are unable to fly and often wash up dead on shores. Scavengers that may feed on them could also ingest the toxins and die. Even after the mussels die, their razor-sharp shells wash up on beaches, making it impossible for people to walk barefoot or go swimming.

Invasive mussels were found in the Great Lakes in the 1980s after ballast water was discharged into them from European ships, and they’ve spread through parts of Eastern Canada and the U.S. since then. Just last year, they were found in New Brunswick and Manitoba. While Manitoba has used a chlorine treatment to control growth in hydroelectric generating stations, New Brunswick is focusing on doing more boat and watercraft cleanings.

B.C. shouldn’t feel safe from this issue, and neither should other provinces and territories. In B.C., there are two lines of defence around mussel infestation: prevention and monitoring. Prevention is accomplished by careful inspections of any vessels coming into the province that are deemed to be high risk. In 2023, the province’s Invasive Mussel Defence

Program (IMDP) included six inspection stations and two roving inspection crews that checked watercrafts entering the province that could potentially be transporting the creatures. Many factors can contribute to a watercraft being high risk. For example, if a boat was in a state or province that has a known or suspected case of zebra or quagga mussels, or if it’s dirty or slimy, it is high risk. In these cases, the boat is thoroughly cleaned, drained, and dried at the inspection station, and then it’s quarantined for 30 days. While this program sees high compliance, the current inspection stations do not cover every border crossing, and they do not operate 24 hours per day.

The 2023 provincial watercraft inspection station report, released annually by B.C.’s Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship, stated that “155 watercraft were identified as high risk, 66 decontamination orders were issued, and 36 watercraft were issued quarantine periods to meet the required drying time.” The ministry estimated in 2023 that if these mussels were to invade the province’s water bodies, it would cost anywhere from $64 to $129 million annually to manage the impacts. And Littley says that number is grossly underestimated.

Despite this, funding from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) for invasive mussels prevention in the province dropped from $475,000 in 2022 to nothing in 2023/24. Fortis BC, a provincial utilities provider, dropped their funding from $250,000 per year from 2017-2021 to a $50,000 donation in December 2023, and nothing yet in 2024. And B.C. Hydro, which gave $1.25 million in 2020, also dropped their funding to $350,000. Reduced funding will likely mean significantly reduced protection for the province’s waterways.

None of these government agencies made someone available for an interview. In an email to This Magazine, the DFO cited that they have allocated $43.8 million over five years and $10.8 million ongoing for aquatic invasive species management. However, these funds are for aquatic invasive species management all across Canada and for every type of aquatic invasive species, not just invasive mussels. They also stated that the $475,000 in the 2022-23 fiscal year was “an additional one-time investment” and that the province is “fully responsible for decisions on how to direct this funding.”

As a response to the calls to action from many local conservation groups, the DFO announced in February that they will commit $8.75 million to the national Aquatic Invasive Species Prevention Fund over five years and up to $540,000 over three years from 2023 ($180,000 per year) to the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation (HCTF), a conservation-focused provincial nonprofit. But these are not new funds; they are merely re-announcements of previous funding.

Littley says that this amount of funding is insufficient and just another funding opportunity that conservation groups have to apply to. “It would take at least $4 million just to get back to where we were in 2019, just for invasive mussels defence,” says Littley. “So for the feds to come to the table with $180,000 is just a pittance compared to what’s needed.”

Further, this funding is intended for lake monitoring through water sampling in the province to check if invasive mussels are detected—it won’t help to prevent the mussels from entering the province in the first place. The monitoring efforts are done partly by the province through the IMDP as well as local conservation groups like the Columbia Shuswap Invasive Species Society (CSISS), a non-profit that prevents the spread of aquatic invasive species in the Columbia Shuswap region. The society has been doing monitoring work for almost a decade, reporting their findings to the province’s defence program, and also educating the public about the risks of invasive species.

According to Robyn Hooper, executive director of the CSISS, a focus on monitoring alone is not good enough. “When it comes to invasive mussels, yes, we can do monitoring, but that’s kind of a later step. Really, the most important facet of this is inspecting boats before they come into the province,” she says, adding that that’s where funding is needed most. “All it takes,” she says, “is one watercraft.”

B.C. is still an invasive mussels-free province, and it’s not too late to save the freshwater bodies and the species who live there. But in order for that to happen, different levels of government and local conservation groups need to coordinate to work efficiently at prevention. And the DFO needs to provide consistent and sufficient funding to the province’s defence program, which is its main preventative tool.

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Not everyone is relying on the government to come up with solutions in its own time. Alongside CSISS’s efforts, conservation groups like the OBWB have been advocating to senior levels of government to address gaps in invasive mussel prevention in B.C for over 10 years. They also run public outreach campaigns to educate the public on the risks.

Still, there is a gap in public understanding of the real threat of invasive mussels, and the threat is bigger than many of us realize. Unfortunately, Anna Warwick Sears, executive director at the OBWB, says that communication with the feds has been mostly one-sided. “It feels like they’ve completely given up on Western Canada,” she says, adding that she feels there’s a level of magical thinking in the federal government, and perhaps they think invasive mussels will simply decide not to visit the region.

“It’s a national issue,” says Hooper. “We have invasive mussels in the East and they’re spreading West, and so it’s not all about B.C. and protecting our water bodies. It’s the work of Canada to prevent the spread.”

The threat of invasive species can often be easily overlooked, especially when it’s a problem that’s not quite visible. But we need to understand their pervasive impact. Their presence means environmental devastation, huge economic costs, and underlying social impacts to recreation and tourism.

Though Canada is a large country, its lakes, rivers, and freshwater bodies are all connected. Their health is vital for the well-being of the surrounding ecosystems, and for life itself. As cases of invasive species and aquatic diseases are popping up across the country, there is a real need for well-funded prevention programs that can detect a potential threat and push it out before it wreaks havoc.

Our water depends on it.