I'm surprised no one has commented on the following AP article.  Or did I
miss something?  Has anyone anything else to add?  This is the first I've
heard about the goby.
sj
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Fish muscles in on
destructive mussel.

Goby may be answer to Lake Erie invasion

The Associated Press
TOLEDO, Ohio
AUGUST 26, 1999

An aggressive fish that has made a new home in Lake Erie is gobbling up young
zebra mussels and eventually could take away water supremacy from the
non-native mussel, according to a researcher.

Within five years, the fish known as the round goby could dramatically reduce
the number of zebra mussels in Lake Erie, said Jeffrey Miner, a fisheries
biologist at Bowling Green State University.

A study he led in areas in western Lake Erie found that gobies ate about
two-thirds of the zebra mussels in just a month.

"If the gobies are causing this drop in young zebra mussels, we'll see a
dramatic decline (elsewhere in the lake).  Maybe 75 percent," Mr. Miner said
Wednesday.

This is both good and bad news.  While zebra mussels have caused millions of,
dollars in damage by covering water intake pipes at factories and water
supply stations along the lake, they also eat algae and help improve water
quality.

There are an estimated 1 billion gobies in Lake Erie.  The fast-breeding fish
is relatively new to the lake, though, arriving from Europe in the early
1990s in the ballast water used to stabilize freighters.  Gobies are eaten by
a variety of species, including yellow perch and bass.

But they also have an aggressive appetite for other fish.  Some scientists
think gobies could easily wipe out other fish species and damage the
ecosystems in the lake and its surrounding rivers.

Gobies can eat 20-40 of the thumbnail-sized zebra mussels a day.
Mr. Miner thinks that, eventually, few zebra mussels will reach adulthood
because of the goby.  But he cautioned that the changing nature of the lake's
ecosystem makes predicting the future difficult.

Jeff Ram, a zebra mussel researcher from Wayne State University in
Detroit, said the goby's appetite for other species shouldn't stop the zebra
mussel from having a significant impact on the lake in the future.

"Even if it falls by half, that's still a tremendous-number of zebra
mussels," he said."
And it will still be a tremendous problem."

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