The shell of a Rocky Mountain ridged mussel, a mussel that lives in Okanagan Lake.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Okanagan WaterWise/ Facebook

It isn’t out of the ordinary to see shells on the shorelines and river edges in the Okanagan area and some might wonder where they come from.

Sometimes confused with clams, the shells come from several different species of native freshwater mussels.

“There are four species of mussels in the Okanagan Lake watershed, it has the biggest native mussel diversity in the province,” said aquatic species at risk specialist with the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship, Greg Wilson.

One of those mussels, the Rocky Mountain ridge mussel, is an at-risk species and lives in Okanagan Lake.

Lots of attention has been brought to invasive quagga and zebra mussels due the risk of them getting carried into Interior lakes and causing massive problems, but for the freshwater species, especially the one at risk, Wilson said more research is needed to understand their numbers and range.

“There has not been a lot taxonomy in native freshwater mussels, it just hasn’t been done a lot,” he said. “We have more inventory type work to do to determine where they are. The Rocky Mountain ridged mussel was formally assessed and that was prioritized because we knew it was pretty rare and had only been found in one watershed in BC – that’s the Okanagan Lake.”

Wilson said native freshwater mussels are generally under threat in the province from a variety of changes in their habitats including water management.

Mussel larvae act as parasites and attach themselves to fish gills where they grow into juveniles and are carried upstream before they detach.

“Dams can be barriers to some fish and reservoirs can prevent populations and change the fish from a river to a lake species,” Wilson said. “Dams can change the levels of water and introduce sand and gravel. Some mussel species can get buried. If the water is withdrawn and gets too low the mussels are exposed.”

The mussels have important jobs to do in lakes and rivers.

“They filter a lot of water, taking nutrients and turbidity out of the water,” Wilson said. “The nutrients they digest and break down and release them as mussel poo into the soft sediment providing food for others animals, invertebrates and lamprey. They bring nutrients into the substrate for other organisms that are food for other fish.”

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Mussels also provide lots of biomass food for raccoons, otters, crayfish and birds. They filter the sediment and keep the water clean.

When asked if the mussels are edible, Wilson said he’s heard they “taste like mud.”

“I know several people that have eaten different species of mussels and most said they wouldn’t do it again, I heard they don’t taste very good, there isn’t a lot of tissue.”

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Rocky Mountain ridged mussel shells can be identified by growth rings and a noticeable ridge that sticks up. Other species of mussels found in the Okanagan Lake watershed are winged floaters, western floaters and western pearl shell.

Residents coming across live mussels can take a photo and a write a short description of the location and submit it to the BC Conservation Data Centre to help the province understand musses ranges.

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