Mud Snail

On a cool, fall evening on Lake Tahoe, researcher Sudeep Chandra stands at the back of a small boat anchored in the south end of the clear blue lake. He’s holding a device called a dredge, which looks like a large metal clamshell. “So, we’re basically going to drop this in the water,” Chandra says as he lightly tosses the dredge into the glassy lake and watches it sink to the bottom. A few seconds later, after the device snaps shut and scoops up a sample of the lakebed, Chandra reels it in and cracks it open into a shallow bucket. “We first see, of course, invasive Asian clams,” Chandra says, plucking a small shell from a pile of sediment. “These things can live two to four years old, and they can reproduce hundreds of thousands to millions of little villagers or tiny clams that go spread around the lake.” Asian clams are an invasive species that showed up in Tahoe more than 20 years ago. They give of...

go to read
^