Sarah McRae- Hi I am Sarah McRae.
I am an aquatics endangered species biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Raleigh,
North Carolina.
Today, I am working with the Tar River spinymussel, which is a freshwater bivalve mussel found
in the Piedmont streams in North Carolina.
It’s found nowhere else on earth except for the Tar River Basin and the Neuse River
Basin.
Freshwater mussels live in streams and to eat and to breath they filter water.
They siphon in water and particles to gather food and they clean our streams.
Like the streams behind me, where we collected these individuals, they are cleaning the system.
The Tar River spinymussel is a very rare, critically endangered species and we believe
that it was almost extinct in the wild and we captured a few and brought them into captivity
and we are working with the NCWRC (North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission) and North Carolina
State University (NCSU) to figure out ways to propagate the species and put more out
into the wild.
Rob Nichols, Eastern Aquatic Wildlife Diversity Research Coordinator, NC Wildlife Resources
Commission- In 2008 we surveyed different locations for Tar River Spinymussel to collect
adult broodstock.
We then took those adults to our hatcheries - in a project that we are collaborating with
the USFWS and the NCSU- to see if we could grow them out.
Our overall plan in the future is to restock these animals back into the wild to try to
restore ecosystem services such as clean water.
Sarah McRae- I am at the Conservation Aquaculture Center at the NCWRC’s Fish Hatchery in Marion,
North Carolina.
This is where we are propagating and growing Tar River spinymussels that are been fed by
water pumped into the building from the pond behind me.
Chris Eads, biologist with the North Carolina State University -The purpose of this project
in Fishing Creek and Little Fishing Creek is to determine how propagated mussels will
fair once they are stocked back into the wild.
We took two year old mussels and put them in wire mesh cages in each of these two streams,
back in April of 2012 and monitored those cages through the year.
Today, we have come to the streams to pull the cages from the water and assess the mussels.
From there we will measure survival and also how much they’ve grown over the course of
a year, and that will tell us the relative health of the mussels and whether they are
growing.
We want to know that the mussels will grow and thrive once they are placed into the streams.
Preliminary results suggest they are doing well, they have grown, and that is good news.
Sarah McRae-The biggest threats to these mussels as well as many other aquatic species that
live in Piedmont Streams in North Carolina are habitat degradation from:
Sedimentation, which is basically dirt running off the land into the creeks from development
or agricultural fields coming straight up to edge of the streams.
Or when cattle access streams, when it rains the dirt washes into the stream and it can
suffocate the mussels.
Impounding caused by dams that we put up for water supply.
That is a big threat because it changes a riverine environment into a lake environment
and the mussels that need the fast flowing water cannot survive in that.
Water quality issues from pollution, from discharges into the river or pollution washing
off the roads into the streams.
Water quantity, we have a lot of low flow issues with droughts, and
Manipulating - with all of the dams we tend to manipulate the flows and that can impact
mussels as well.
We are working with our partners to try to prevent these threats and help the Tar River
spinymussel get off the endangered species list.