Great Lakes researchers are looking for volunteers to help search for an invasive aquatic plant that can choke out native vegetation, and make it tough to fish or boat. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
Transcript
Great Lakes researchers are looking for volunteers to help search for an invasive aquatic
plant that can choke out native vegetation, and make it tough to fish or boat. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
Universities and Sea Grant programs throughout the region want people to search bays
and inland lakes for a non-native plant called hydrilla. It’s been found in waterways in
southern states and on the East Coast. Researchers want to make sure hydrilla doesn’t
gain a foothold in the Great Lakes.
Howard Wandell is an inland lakes specialist at Michigan State University. He says
hydrilla forms a net of vines at the surface of the water.
“It’s difficult to motorboat through and obviously trying to cast fishing lures through it is
very difficult if not impossible. And of course then just the idea of even trying to swim
in it, people are very repulsed by the idea of trying to go out and try to recreate in this
tangled mass of vegetation.”
Wandell says hydrilla also blocks sunlight, which can kill native water plants.
For the GLRC, I’m Erin Toner.