APHETI

   
   

Association for the Protection of Hammersley, Eld and Totten Inlets

   

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 Biological Invasion-South Sound Inlets

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  This boat was in the water for five months at East Bay Marina, contaminated with mussels and tunicates.  Very few barnacles.  We have no science to back up our observations, but it does seem that where mussels go, the tunicates follow.

 

Colonization of Gallo mussels on oysters at Walker Flat, Totten Inlet.  This never occurred prior to installation of the rafts. June 1997.

 

Single shell oysters grown in plastic mesh bags, a newer method of growing.  Inside the bags, mussels have attached to the oysters-escapement, colonization. June 1997

 

Mytilus galloprovinciallis mussel, a Gallo, being held in the very large hand of an APHETI member in 1997.  This is larger than the native and current science indicates it has already hybridized with the native, yielding an even larger mussel.

 

Colonization of Gallo mussels on a moorage line in Totten Inlet (1997).  Clam farmers in Hammersley Inlet complained that the mussels had attached to their clam netting.

 

Mussels displaced barnacles on boat left in water for one year at Carlyon Beach, 1997.

 

 

 

Same boat, different view.  Boat repair companies report that the mussels enter fresh-water intake system as spat, then attach and grow inside , causing expensive repairs.  October 1997.

 

Club and colonial tunicates (Styela clava and Didemnum species) on the back of a boat in Hammersley Inlet.

 

 

Gallagher Cove- Tunicates and mussel clusters removed from a floating dock.  Both compete for the same food source.  These tunicates have become a huge problem in Hood Canal; They smother what they cover and are now in the South Sound Inlets.

Another view of mussel and tunicate colonization.  None of this occurred prior to 1997.

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