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The chemical has been used successfully in several other mussel-infested states and is designed to kill any mussels or mussel larvae that might be making a new home in the lake. Outfitted with respirator masks, goggles and Tyvek suits over puffy jackets, they puttered around the lake’s perimeter pumping an ionic copper-based chemical called EarthTec QZ onto the surface of the water. Wednesday morning, in a mix of driving sleet and swirling snowflakes, a team of wildlife biologists looked like they might be the ones frozen out as they hopped into flat-bottomed jet boats and took to the diminished lake on what would normally be opening day for recreational boaters. The 563-acre Highline Lake had already been lowered this winter to 25% of its normal capacity to make mussel spotting easier and to freeze out any that might be lurking in the rocks along the shoreline. “I felt shocked and, yes, a little bit sick,” he said.ĬPW briefly went into panic mode before countless meetings and planning sessions would birth a battle plan – all for a bean-sized bit of shell and tissue.Ī half year of zebra-mussel headaches later – and with around a dozen more of the zebra mussel’s relatives turning up on rocks and boat slips at Highline – that plan moved into high gear this week. State invasive species program manager Robert Walters, who had been fighting mussel invaders for a decade, had a similar reaction to Martinez on that end.

The invader, which likely hitched a ride to Highline on a boat, was rushed by pickup truck to CPW offices in Denver where lab tests that afternoon confirmed it was what it looked like. It represented the first infestation in Colorado, a state that, in 2008, had passed the toughest “mussel free” legislation in the country to try to prevent this kind of thing from happening. He also knew how many years of work and nail-biting worry were ahead because of this single mussel. He was well aware how much work had gone into preventing this mussel from invading Colorado for the previous 15 years. “At first, I was in denial: This can’t be happening here.” “It was sickening,” said Martinez, who, until that morning six months ago, had never seen a zebra mussel except in pictures. They are fond of attaching to rigid submerged objects. The pipe had been dangling in the lake since the previous spring as part of CPW’s protocol for hunting for zebra mussels. It was clinging to a piece of PVC pipe submerged in the waters of the popular boating, swimming and camping lake in the middle of Mesa County farm country not far from Colorado’s border with Utah. It was a shelled aquatic critter not much bigger than Martinez’s pinkie fingernail. A small team of Colorado Parks and Wildlife aquatic inspectors had something to show him that, on a horror scale for wildlife professionals, was right up there with the Creature From the Black Lagoon. Martinez, who has been at the park for 17 years, hopped in his truck without asking questions and headed for the west end of the lake. That morning he received a call at his superintendent’s desk in the headquarters of Highline Lake State Park. Russell/Associated Press file)Īlan Martinez gets the willies just thinking about Sept. Inland Seas Education Association instructor Conrad Heins holds a cluster of zebra mussels that were taken from Lake Michigan off Suttons Bay, Mich.