Invasive clams a threat to Sand Harbor
By Anne Knowles
CARSON CITY — Nevada officials are worried about the arrival of Asian clams at Sand Harbor.
Charles Donohue, administrator and state land registrar for the Nevada Division of State Lands, said a small population of the invasive species has been detected at the popular Lake Tahoe beach. On Nov. 30he was addressing the Nevada Legislature’s interim committee that oversees the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and Marlette Lake water system.
He told Lake Tahoe News two age classes of the clam were recently discovered by a graduate student at UC Davis after an initial review cleared the area.
Donohue said there was some speculation that the clams ended up there via discharge from the ballast of a boat that had traveled somewhere where the clams are commonly found. They have been in Lake Tahoe since 2002.
They are about 2 to 3 centimeters, with some 1-2 millimeters – like a grain of sand. They produce calcium – which Lake Tahoe doesn’t naturally have much of. Calcium is needed for quagga mussels to survive and thrive; that is one species that has yet to be detected in Lake Tahoe.
Donohue said an assessment will soon be made and, if necessary, a quick mitigation before the clams can do any near shore damage.
“Sand Harbor is a treasure,” Donohue said.
Amy Berry, chief executive officer of the Tahoe Fund, after hearing Donohue’s presentation, said the Asian clam mitigation could become one of the group’s projects for 2016.
She said two projects the nonprofit may do next year are acquisition of Johnson Meadows in the upper Truckee River and adding lookouts to Taylor Creek.
For 2017, the group is considering work on the Incline Flume Trail.
The Legislative Committee for the Review and Oversight of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and the Marlette Lake Water System meets six times during the interim. The remaining meetings will be at Lake Tahoe.
After its work, the committee can submit 10 bill draft requests to the 2017 Legislature.
Snowmobiles are frowned upon that operate miles from the lake on a snowpack yet boats which have the largest irreversible impact to the lake are not? Money talks
Are you surprised, Dub?
No shell I’m not. Boats have just made restoration impossible in my opinion. May as well go boating and enjoy it I guess.
This is old news. Asian clams were first found at Sand Harbor almost two years ago. What was surprising was they weren’t there earlier. A 2009 Tahoe Environmental Research Center study showed that currents could carry the clams’ larvae from beds in the south shore to Sand Harbor in three days – it was very probably currents, not boats that spread the clams.
The reason Asian clams haven’t colonized at Sand Harbor is that similar to most of the lakeshore, its habitat is marginal for them. Why does the Nevada Division of State Lands believe that they can eradicate the clams when every effort at every place else in the world has failed? And can someone explain what harm the clams do?
How do clams produce calcium?
The clams outcompete the other native aquatic inverts, produce nutrients from their excrement that fuel nearshore algae, increase calcium through decomposing shells and are just a plain nuisance. It’s possible currents could have brought them to sand harbor but boats are the reason they are here to begin with.. You got me thinking steve, whats more invasive the clams or the boats the brought them here…?
I love how Lake Tahoe likes to let disasters happen; then YEARS later frantically try to fix said disaster at twice the price. The keys, the mussels, the loop road….