No didymo in Taney

[Phil Lilley]

Got an email from Chris Vitello, MDC. I asked him check on the report didymo growing in the KOA area of Taneycomo. After thoroughly checking the area, Chris reports they have not found any sign of didymo.

Great news!

Thanks Chris for checking it for us.

[Danoinark]

Woo Hoo...thanks Phil...that is great news. I haven't heard if its cleared on the White or Norfork lately.

Dano

[Brian K. Shaffer]

Yes.. very good news. I didnt even know what it was.. but I know we didnt want it!

best fishes - Brian

[snagged in outlet 3]

Hey Phil.

I was the one who reported that I saw didymo at KOA. I am sure of what I saw back then and knew at the time I should have grabbed a piece to bring back. I am glad they didn't find any evidence of it and again the question remains, "does it just go away or are we stuck with it?" If it is in The white below Bull Shoals dam then it is only a matter of time before we see it at Taney. I am sorry and I certainly didn't want to cause unnecessary alarm but I am sure of what I saw. A couple cups of bleach to a gallon of water to rinse your boots wouldn't hurt if you fish in the White. Sorry again.

Snag.

[Phil Lilley]

Your report was warrented for sure. If nothing else it made some of us aware of the possibility.

Chris did say they would keep checking the area for evidence of didymo.

[snagged in outlet 3]

Maybe I better come down and check myself. Better bring my flyfishing gear while I'm at it.

Snag.

[Phil Lilley]

There ya go!

[SGFChief]

Confessing to be the geek that I am, I was listening to NPR here in Springfield this morning and I caught the tail end of a spot on didymo.

Did anyone else catch it? I've been unable to locate the article on their website http://www.ksmu.org/...

[Phil Lilley]

I listen to NPR allot- no worries.

Was it a local piece or may be national?

What did they say?

[Danoinark]

Phil

This may be what you are talking about...it appeared in the Little Rock paper a couple days ago.''Dano

Didymo algae seen as a growing concern for anglers, river lovers

BY ROBERT J. SMITH ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

The high, rocky cliffs near Bob Britzke’s house on the White River are picturesque, but an ugly, invasive algae is beginning to gunk up the Northwest Arkansas trout-fishing area just steps from his back porch.

By April, Britzke predicts the algae commonly referred to as "didymo" and "rock snot" will blanket the bottom of the river downstream from Beaver Lake Dam.

The algae look like wet toilet paper, and it’s spreading in the three-mile stretch of the river between the U.S. 62 bridge and the Parker Bend fishing area.

"This is not a major outbreak yet, but it’s a symptom of what’s to come," said Britzke, a board member of an Arkansas chapter of Trout Unlimited. "It’s a nuisance. It interferes with fishing, and it looks horrible."

Nationwide, and in Canada and New Zealand, didymo is the bane of fishermen and biologists who haven’t figured out exactly how to curtail its growth.

Once limited to Western states such as Colorado, Washington and Idaho, it’s now found in Arkansas, Missouri and Tennessee in the chilly tail waters that flow behind Army Corps of Engineers dams.

Predicting didymo’s spread, the potential damage to bottomdwelling invertebrates and its impact on some of the nation’s best trout fisheries has been elusive, experts said.

"It started expanding in Colorado 10 years ago, and it’s at the point where I’m waving my arms and trying to attract attention to it," said Sarah Spaulding, a freshwater ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver. "It seems to be showing up in warmer waters and in higher nutrient-concentration waters.

"It used to be water with low nitrogen, low phosphorus and cool temperature waters, but that’s not the case anymore."

The proper name for the alga is Didymospenia geminata, and last summer it clogged a section of the White River area downstream from Bull Shoals Dam in north-central Arkansas.

Didymo, however, arrived in Arkansas a few years earlier, but it didn’t draw much public attention.

1

Britzke, who’s owned his 4 /2 acres on the White River since 1992, said he recognized didymo in the Beaver Lake Dam tailwaters in April 2003. "Clumps the size of basketballs" were in the river, he said.

"Nobody knew what it was," Britzke said.

Spaulding said didymo was once a rare, beautiful diatom with range limited to pristine lakes and streams in northern areas of the United States and Canada. It’s no longer rare. The cells attach to rocks on the bottom of streams and grow white or light brown stalks that trap sediment.

The algae thrive in direct sunlight in streams with depths of 3 inches to 6 feet, Spaulding said. Low flow conditions caused by drought help it grow into large mats that cover stream bottoms, she said.

A retired Missouri State University biologist believed what he was seeing in 2003 near the Beaver Lake Dam was didymo, but it was the didymo outbreak behind the Bull Shoals Dam that caused the first public stir about the unfamiliar algae.

People first reported what they thought was toilet paper clinging to low-hanging tree branches near the White River, said Darrell Bowman, state trout biologist for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. Many theorized that the small sewer plant that serves the city of Bull Shoals had overflowed, putting the toilet paper in the river. That wasn’t the case.

Instead, when the Southwest Power Administration began generating hydroelectric power through the Bull Shoals Dam, the water that was pushed through raised the river’s level. The higher water deposited the algae on the low-hanging branches, and the algae remained when the water receded.

When the river’s flow slowed later in the summer, biologists and fishermen found a thick layer of didymo covering the rocky river bottom.

Erica Shelby, a water-use and resource specialist for the state Department of Environmental Quality, began to study it. At first the state wasn’t sure what it was. A draft version of Shelby’s report on the algae’s appearance at the Bull Shoals Dam was completed in February.

She confirmed what didymo researchers in New Zealand, Missouri, Tennessee and many western states had already confirmed. Didymo was spreading further in Arkansas.

"It is important for us to understand and determine the effects of [didymo] on Arkansas trout-supported streams," Shelby said.

HARM TO TROUT

Water-quality experts and biologists aren’t sure whether didymo will harm trout, but that’s one of the main fears.

Its growth on the White River bottom and in other streams could smother small invertebrates that trout eat.

In the long term, fewer invertebrates could mean fewer trout or trout that don’t grow as large, Bowman said.

The White River section below the Bull Shoals Dam is one of the world’s best trophy brown trout fisheries. The section of the White River near Bull Shoals Dam that’s impacted by didymo stretched 13 miles last year, according to Shelby’s report.

What its presence in the river means is uncertain, Bowman said.

"As far as the trout fishery, the take-home message is we don’t know," Bowman said. "We’re in the process of trying to get all the information from New Zealand and other places.

"You see a range of things. In New Zealand, it’s caused the crash of at least two trout fisheries. But my counterparts in Tennessee say didymo got in there a few years ago, and the brown trout flourished."

Shelby said there’s "early colonizing" of didymo in the Little Red River below Greers Ferry Lake.

Officials from across the nation plan to meet in May at Bozeman, Mont., to discuss doing more extensive research on didymo and developing a response to its spread, Spaulding said.

Spaulding and others think didymo is spread by trout fishermen who wade into the river, get didymo on their hipwaders and then fish at a different stream without using a 10 percent bleach solution to rinse their gear.

"We think it’s spread by fishermen and that has something to do with the spread, but it doesn’t explain why it wasn’t spreading 20 years ago," Spaulding said. "It’s not that they have such different fishing patterns now.

"Didymo needs to get attention to work toward solutions."