A River Runs Through Them

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Craig Springer, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Left to Right: Pistol Grip, Purple Wartyback, and Mucket tagged with
floating fly line attached to aid in relocation. Photo Julie Devers/USFWS

Everything I knew about West Virginia, I learned from John Denver. For Mountain State folk, the song may be trite and tired, a bromide worn smooth like a round creek cobble tumbled downstream. But the song's sentiments are real for Dr. Catherine Gatenby, the manager of the White Sulphur Springs National Fish Hatchery.

Gatenby oversees important conservation work --- unique work in a unique place. Gatenby's hatchery is on the leading edge of freshwater mussel conservation and is a cornerstone in maintaining robust rainbow trout stocks in the US. The hatchery is one of four primary trout brood stock hatcheries among the 65 national fish hatcheries throughout the country. While tucked away in the rural Blue Ridge, literally in downtown White Sulphur Springs, the hatchery's work with rainbow trout ripples waters across the entire country.

Photo Craig Springer

Gatenby and her staff spawn the rainbow trout. When the fish eyes are visible through the eggs they're transferred --- about 9 million of them --- to other national fish hatcheries and hatcheries operated by state DNRs to be raised and eventually stocked for sport fishing. Their quality rainbow trout are stocked anywhere from New England to New Mexico. Careful management of the brood stock ensures a quality fish. Moreover, their rainbow trout are certified disease-free thanks to the careful monitoring of the captive stocks by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's Lamar Fish Health Center. The retired brood stock --- the biggest, oldest, fattest fish --- are stocked in West Virginia and Virginia waters.

Freshwater mussels are beneficiary to scientific expertise at the White Sulphur Springs facility. The hatchery has had a consistent and reliable source of water since it was built in 1900. The good water makes for a good place to research and culture imperiled freshwater mussels. What's in their names speaks to their looks and their habitats: Threeridge, Purple Wartyback, Mucket, Riffleshell. Mussel conservation is important for the service they provide to other animals --- and eventually to people. Literally, a river runs through them.

Northern Riffleshell. Julie Devers/USFWS

Freshwater mussels make a living in a complex way. Fertilized eggs are incubated on the female's gills, then they're released into the water. These larvae called glochidia latch on to very specific fish hosts to complete the next phase of their life. While riding their host fish, living as a parasite, they morph into juveniles, and drop to the river bottom where they will spend the rest of their days --- some living up to 50 years. It's there they pay back their host and benefit people, filtering river water and silt, gleaning tiny plankton, fecal matter, and fragments of biological matter called detritus. Remarkably, a bed of mussels 10,000 in number will filter 60,000 gallons per day, free of charge.

"Freshwater mussels are the keystone species in streams and rivers," says Gatenby. "Mussels improve water quality by filtering particles, and converting organic matter coming down the pipe into forms useable by microbes that decompose waste. That benefits aquatic bugs, and in turn, fish. It's no surprise you'll find more bugs and fish around mussel beds; when you restore mussels, you restore streams and fisheries and economies."

But the very way of making a living in flowing water, makes freshwater mussels vulnerable to habitat alterations and pollution. Dams have altered stream flow and inhibited the natural dispersal of host fish species. Dredging and channelization displace mussels to poor habitat and increased suspended sediment and silt challenge freshwater mussels. Invasive zebra mussels pose a serious threat to native mussels by encrusting them and out competing them for food and space.

But Gatenby and her staff are on the leading edge of mussel conservation. Using common species, they have developed captive rearing techniques. Last October they salvaged 14 mussel species from the Allegheny River associated with a bridge replacement project. Two of the species are considered endangered. They will be held on the hatchery, propagated and released when the silt load from construction subsides and the river bottom has returned to its normal self.

Gatenby is in the middle of a joint project with the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources and the US Army Corps of Engineers, to augment native mussels in a navigation pool on the Kanawha River. The purpose is two-fold. A common species of mussels will be propagated and released in the Kanawha River simply for their ecosystem services that they provide ? an important step in restoring habitat. The propagation techniques learned along the way with these common mussels will serve as surrogate technology for when the time comes to bring endangered species into the hatchery.

Rivers are conduits --- liquified watersheds, expressing in their content the character of land and how that land is treated. Poor land use practices are manifest in the presence, or absence, of aquatic life forms, like mussels. Habitat conservation, coupled with leading-edge science will ensure that West Virginia's unique natural assets will persist. John Denver might have appreciated Mountain State mussel conservation, even if he didn't know the Shenandoah River was in the neighboring state to the east.

Contact Craig at craig_springer@fws.gov