The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has a special four-legged employee tasked with sniffing out invasive species that harm freshwater ecosystems, and his work has made a big difference.
According to KUOW, Seattle's NPR news station, the mussel-smelling dog Fin puts in 40 hours per week helping detect destructive zebra and quagga mussels that are taking over a watercraft inspection station.
The Catahoula leopard dog, blue lacy, and Australian kelpie mix has a keen sense of smell akin to a drug-smelling dog, which makes him an expert in tracking down the nuisance critters. Nick Knauss, Fin's handler, told KUOW that the invasive freshwater mussels make their way to the station on boats or trailers traveling from the Great Lakes area.
Once they've entered new ecosystems, they attach themselves to underwater infrastructure such as pipes and filters, which can cause issues with the water supply. And that's not a cheap problem to fix. If the mussels invaded freshwater ecosystems throughout Washington, it could cost the state over $100 million to maintain water and power infrastructure, per Washington's Invasive Species Council.
Aside from breaking the bank, invasive mussels are harmful to the environment since they outcompete native species for crucial resources such as food, water, and shelter. Even though zebra mussels have natural predators such as crayfish, waterfowl, and certain fish species, they have a high reproductive rate that makes them difficult to eradicate.
Knauss told the news outlet that just one mussel can produce anywhere from 30,000 to a million eggs annually. With those numbers, it's easy to see why invasive mussels can disrupt the food web and even cause species' extinction in some cases.
Nonetheless, Fin and other mussel-sniffing dogs are helping to stop them from getting out of hand. As a 4-year-old dog, Fin has tons of energy to check boats for hitchhiking mussels, and he searches up to 140 vessels on the busiest weekends.
Of course, he never ends a workday empty-handed. Knauss said Fin is rewarded with his toy of choice: two orange balls connected by a blue rope. It doesn't take much to keep him happy, even after a full day's work.
Fin was adopted from Texas and trained by a Spokane-based K-9 trainer for his mussel-hunting gig. Staci Lehman, a spokesperson for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, told KUOW that Fin is the second mussel-sniffing canine hired by the department.
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"[The dog] increases the efficiency of the whole process of checking boats. [Fin] just does a pass while we have to get down and look close," she told the outlet.
Knauss hopes the department can enlist another dog to aid conservation efforts, but it must wait for additional funding.
With the state legislature allocating $1.81 million and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers offering another $1.81 million to keep mussels from overtaking Washington, the dogs will have plenty of work to keep them busy.
"Historically, there's no success story of them being eradicated from a water body once they've taken hold, so anything we can do to prevent that is paramount," Knauss told KUOW.
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