No matter where you are in the world, chances are a lake somewhere in your country is infested with the in Ukraine originated quagga mussel. "So what" you might ask like many before you did, but since we are no longer in the mid-1900s you should be able to find a paper trail of events and fatal consequences once these hazardous things make their way into your city's waters. Scientific and tracking reports on the quagga mussel are dated back as far as the 1890s when the first documented piece was written in Ukrainian. Here are some that I found, at first I saw only the dead ones/shells:

When I sent these for identification I was told it was too difficult to do so. Then I found out that the newly born/smaller mussels cling to hard surfaces, so I tried putting a stick and some round hard object I found into the water and made sure it touched the bottom, and sure enough:

To get right to the point: These things have a way to cause botulism among fish and birds that are living in the waters where they start spreading. If you don't know how fatal that is, it is estimated that the botulism bacteria is already deadly to an adult human if he ingests just a mere 15 nanogram, (1 nanogram is one billionth of 1 gram) so that's 0,000000015 gram. That means that the entire world population could technically be wiped out by a mere 100 grams of the stuff.

But there is a difference between the botulism bacteria that can infect and kill birds and fish, and those which can kill people. The type that the quagga mussel help become active and spread is type C, which in itself can not infect people with the actual bacteria but can cause an array of other health complications. But for the ducks, geese and all fish species in the waters this means certain death as the algae is not rotten or bad of taste, it is simply infected with the active botulism bacteria.

At first the birds and fish start to lose control over their legs/tail, later on they won't be able to move anything which is when the birds that are in the water will drown by not being to hold their head above water, even those that manage to find a safe spot on land will mostly die because in time it will cause their breathing/heart to stop as well. The fish I found were in a half-living state where it seemed they were still alive but having difficulty staying below the water and would float up all the time. If treated in time there is a possibility they can survive, depending on how fast treatment is provided and how much of the bacteria they ingested. Even if by some miracle they survive, chances are they will get infected again because there's no such thing as becoming immune against it and the active botulism bacteria will very likely still be around,

I first noticed these things when I was searching for more paralyzed/dead bodies, because the paralyzed ones may still have a chance and the dead bodies must be cleared to prevent a new ''botulism source'' as the rotting bodies will further spread the disease to others. But what was the original source? That's perhaps the most worrying thing. No one really knows, not 100% precise anyway. We know the quagga mussels create an environment that will accelerate algae production, we know certain algae like the cladophora are botulism breeding plagues, we know lack of rain and oxygen plays a major role in all this, but at what stage and exactly where the dormant botulism bacteria becomes lethal is to this day still unknown.

The quagga mussel in itself does not have the botulism bacteria, at least not at an early stage. Later on when they grow to their adult size they attract all sorts of bacteria yes, but they do not produce it, they are more like a catalyst. The bacteria is widely present in dormant form, but what the quagga mussel does is ''filter'' the water i.e. eat all the plankton and other stuff floating around which may make the water appear bright and clean, but what this actually does is allow the sun to penetrate deep into the bottom, accelerating the growth of algae and waterplants, which will in turn grow and rot faster due to excess sunlight. But the problem doesn't stop there, the quagga mussels also fertilize the bottom of the water, causing even more growth and unstoppable mass rotting algae and other junk, which will in a later stage turn the water that it once ''cleared and cleansed'' into a murky greenish swamp.

This is what's most worrying: The area in question did not even have an extremely hot summer. Far from it actually, it rained frequently and even stormed once. They say the botulism bacteria can sporadically pop up at any area with or without the quagga mussel present as long as the conditions are all favorable, like continuous warm days (i.e. summer), no rain and lack of oxygen, but what the quagga mussel does is lower the threshold for these circumstances and can even cause never before seen algae to grow in the water. There have been several documented cases of this, meaning that the quagga mussel is radically changing the natural environment it inhabits, and not for the better.

They can of course move by themselves, but spread across countries by clinging to the bottom/anchor of ships or in the ballast water. If your lake is not infested with these things, it might be an idea to alert your regional government or wildlife authorities to first check and clean ships or large boats before allowing them in non-infested lakes where fish and birds live. For me this was all but too late as the mussels are already present for over 10 years and have drastically changed the water to the point that seeing numerous fish and bird corpses past summer was a common thing. But this doesn't mean it's too late, there are several ways in dealing with the quagga mussel and the botulism they waken. By removing certain algae types in the spring that cause the bacteria, the bio-bullet method used in Ireland where they use some substance in small bullets that are poisonous to the mussel. There are also natural enemies to the quagga mussel though I'm not 100% sure how safe this is, as fish or birds that eat the infected mussels will die themselves, and to make matters worse non-algae eating birds that only eat fish will also be effected because if they eat a botulism infected fish, they too will catch the disease. But the round gobis fish is a known natural enemy to the mussel and helped uncover some recent findings in all this. Probably because they are rather small themselves and only eat the smaller quagga mussels that are less likely to be contaminated.

But despite all of this, despite all the scientific evidence and paper trail of info regarding what the quagga mussel does once it establishes itself in a greenish natural environment like a park lake, the authorities in my city are a bunch of ******* ***** ****** who can not be contacted nor ever reply to any of the findings I sent them, or any of the help I asked like when trying to identity the algae type or the poison concentration in the green corners. Or even at the very beginning of the whole thing when they ignored my pictures and I eventually got my answers from an independent diving institution that it indeed was the quagga mussel. Even then I didn't get a courteous "hey, we can actually confirm it is the quagga mussel because we have already known and not done anything about this for a decade now." Well, we are now seeing the results of a +10 year quagga mussel infestation in our lake.

None of the birds I found alive made it despite treatment, and on some occasions it took over a whole month for that same department that's responsible for the water safety to come clear the dead bodies.