End of the 2020 TiC Program

Hi everyone!

Thank you for sticking with us through the difficulties surrounding the COVID situation and moving all our programming online. It was a sad day that we had to release all the trout early, BUT if you want to be involved in a live trout release (socially distantly of course) and actually get to release a trout... the Sciencenter will be releasing their trout from our program on July 11th 10-12, just outside where Cascadilla Creek runs by their building.

The event will be a little bit like a fair, so just drop by with your family and check out what we have planned! There will be some macroinvertebrate sampling happening, Bill and I will be there to answer any questions, and we might even have the DEC/Fish & Wildlife there doing fish shocking!

We've been cleaning the tanks up and getting ready for next year... hopefully the fall will be different and we'll all be back in schools. Here's the tank at Northeast Elementary sitting outside for cleaning:

If you want to stay up to date on our programming for the summer, check out our brand new Floating Classroom Blog, where we'll be posting all our activities this summer. 

Stay safe, stay healthy, and we'll see you all soon!

ISAW: Zebra Mussels!

Have you ever cut yourself on something sharp on or near a dock on the lake? It was probably a zebra mussel.

Larval zebra mussel

Zebra mussels are named for their zebra-like stripes and were brought to the U.S. from the region between Eastern Europe and Western Asia, carried in ship ballast water (what ships use to control how much they float). These mussels have spread throughout Cayuga Lake and can be found along docks, in sediment at the bottom of the lake, and even floating in the water. Zebra mussels float in their larval stage, but are microscopic, requiring a microscope to see them.

Students looking at zebra
mussels in sediment on our boat.

Discover Cayuga Lake looks at zebra mussels with classes, both in the early fall when they appear in our plankton samples and throughout the year with sediment samples collected from the lake bottom. 

It is nearly impossible to control the spread of these mussels, once they are carried into a body of water, their tiny larvae can travel easily between other bodies of water. There is some speculation, however, that zebra mussels may not be that harmful to lake ecosystems. This is false! While zebra mussels do increase lake clarity and make lakes seem cleaner, that is only because they are filter feeders and are eating the plankton community. This is a negative impact because the plankton community uses the sunlight, so otherwise the sunlight penetrates deeper in the lake and can cause algae that prefer deeper water to grow more. 

ISAW: Hydrilla!

Did you know that hydrilla was first discovered in the Cayuga Lake Inlet by one of our highschool summer interns in 2011?

Hydrilla is an extremely invasive plant species, which takes over waterways and makes them impassable for boats and an impossible place for other plants and animals to survive.

Originally brought to the United States as an aquarium plant because of its high tolerance for varied water conditions, hydrilla was released into rivers and lakes in the southern U.S. - quickly overtaking many waterways.




Hydrilla can be identified by its whorls of 5 to 8 leaves, by the serrated (or teethed) edges of those leaves, by the reddish color located along the stem, and by tubers that store nutrients at the end of the stem.

These are hydrilla tubers.

Part of the struggle with controlling hydrilla is that it has multiple methods for reproduction, making it spread all the more easily. These methods include tubers, turions, seeds, and fragmentation. Tubers are produced at the end of underground stems (hydrilla has no roots). If you are having trouble picturing a hydrilla tuber, it might help to realize that potatoes are a type of tuber (and similarly, if you plant a potato it will grow more potatoes). Turions are basically dormant hydrilla buds and are located at the base of a whorl of leaves. While those two are the main methods of reproduction for the plant, fragmentation is perhaps the most dangerous. Spreading through fragmentation means that if a boat propeller cuts up a bunch of hydrilla plants, you end up with more individual hydrilla plants (hence the picture of the hydra-like hydrilla above, hydra being a dragon that grows more heads as each is cut off). And the last method of reproduction, seeds, is the least used and is mostly important for spreading over distances - it seems hydrilla seeds can be ingested by birds and carried to entirely new places.

This plant species spreads quickly. All it takes is one boat propeller or other a bird and a part of the plant (whether it be a tuber, turion, fragment, or seed), and hydrilla has moved to yet another body of water - in this way rapidly making its way across the country. The discovery of hydrilla in Cayuga Lake is particularly scary because we are connected to the Great Lakes via the Erie Canal and as such, there is a lot of boat traffic which could bring hydrilla into the Great Lakes (which have so far managed to keep hydrilla out of their long list of water quality issues). 

2012 hydrilla monitoring on Cayuga Lake.

There are methods for controlling hydrilla on Cayuga Lake, however, and so far it has not been spread to the Great Lakes. We at Discover Cayuga Lake are working with Bob Johnson, a research scientist, monitoring the lake for hydrilla, using rake tosses along the shores to pull up and identify aquatic plants. Additionally, there is an air boat that goes along the shore by Stewart Park spraying herbicides into the shallow waters to try to control the spread there.

NYS Invasive Species Awareness Week

Did you know that our lake and watershed are home to some 15 to 30 invasive species? Woah!

But what is an invasive species and why might there be a week in our state devoted to learning more about them? Learn more about invasive species awareness week here!

Sea lamprey and its bite mark in a fish.

An invasive species is any species that was brought to an ecosystem from someplace else and takes over, out competing native species. In our watershed we have many species of carp, gobys, lampreys, zebra and quaga mussels, rusty crayfish, hydrilla, eurasian water milfoil, and many other species which were brought here and are now part of our lake ecosystem.

Boat propeller caught in Eurasian Water Milfoil.

There are several key species that Discover Cayuga Lake looks at in our programming, both on the boat with the Floating Classroom and in streams with Trout in the Classroom. Normally, this time of year, we would be taking a closer look at some of the invasive species that we see on the boat. In coming days we will highlight individual species and talk about how to find them, how they spread, and why it is important to try to control their influence of our lake and watershed ecosystems.