InfoNews – July 1, 2020
While conservation officers use sniffer dogs to try to stop invasive zebra mussels from contaminating lakes in the Interior, a new tool in the battle to keep B.C. mussel free is being developed in Quebec.
A group of Sherbrooke University students are cleaning out boat ballasts to rid them of mussel larvae that might otherwise slip by the sniffer dogs.
“This summer we’re finalizing the technology,” Olivier Liberge, communications manager for Ozero, told iNFOnews.ca. “We want to improve it so it’s easier to operate and try to put it all in a trailer to go from municipality to municipality. We hope some municipalities will be interested in buying our system.”
Ozero was co-founded by the six students who recently won an Okanagan Basin Water Board grant competition.
The invasive zebra mussels have been a concern of the water board and the provincial Ministry of Environment for years. The province has been using inspections and sniffing dogs at the Alberta and U.S. borders to try to keep the shrimp from getting into B.C. lakes.