Posted: November 29, 2005

GUTTENBERG - Genetic tests have confirmed what fisheries biologists from Iowa and the Genoa National Fish Hatchery had hoped. The mussel found in the Wapsipinicon River, near Central City in Linn County, was, in fact, a Higgins-Eye Pearly mussel. It is the first live Higgins-eye found in interior Iowa waters in more than 80 years.

Finding the mussel is the culmination of a project that began in 2001 by the Iowa DNR, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to re-establish the endangered Higgins-eye.

Biologists at the Genoa National Fish Hatchery would inoculate the gills of walleye and smallmouth bass fingerlings with mussels in the larval stage and release the fish in the Wapsipinicon, Cedar, and Iowa rivers, and in the Mississippi River.

The larvae stays attached to the gills from anywhere from a few days to months until it reaches a stage where it drops off and begins living as a free mussel. Biologists must wait for years until the mussels grow large enough to be found. And where the mussel drops is only a guess. "It's like finding a needle in a haystack," said Scott Gritters, fisheries biologist with the Iowa DNR.

The 3-inch long Higgins-eye appears to have dropped off a walleye that had been inoculated. Biologists will return to the Wapsipinicon next summer see if other Higgins-eye Pearly mussels are in the same area.

Gritters said the mussel was found this past summer during the weeklong mussel survey on the three interior Iowa rivers.

For more information, contact Scott Gritters, at 563-252-1156, or Tony Brady and Roger Gordon at the Genoa National Fish Hatchery at 608-689-2605.