Meet Daryl

This is the eldest of the viable critically endangered Glenelg Freshwater Mussel which have been spawned at the Victorian Fisheries Authority’s Snob’s Creek conservation hatchery.

The team at the hatchery have been a bit baffled by mussels and so had been manipulating the temperatures and to get them to produce glochidia – the strands which expel the baby mussels into the water!

They have also been undertaking a range of different ‘infestation’ trials to see if they can nail a perfect species/infection rate to maximise output of viable baby mussels (that have successfully attached to fish fins and remained alive),  utilising both small bodied fish and now a few larger juvenile Murray cod (20cm).

From the first sets of infestations the team collected a little over 100 viable mussels.

These have been divided up into small cohorts based of the day they dropped off but currently are only around 0.4- 0.3mm (smaller than a grain of sand!) so almost impossible to count and track.

Four weeks in, though, and they are continuing to find viable juvenile mussels that have full bellies and are growing!

We will keep you updated with progress as they grow and develop more and once they are at a manageable size for the research team to be able to count and evaluate the success.

It’s taken the team at the hatchery a little while to locate Daryl in the sand of the aquariums (3 weeks!) because Daryl is between 0.3 and 0.4mm in size.

For reference, the image of Daryl circled is in black sand (left) … those giant balls of black around out little guy are grains of sand!

The team at the hatchery have also reported Daryl is not alone! He is just the biggest … there are number of teeny tiny mussels that have been full bellies and growing when they have been discovered in the substrate!

If you want to know more about this project – Reversing the Decline of the Glenelg Freshwater Mussels, you can check out the project page here