Zebra's loosing their grip?

[walleye express]

When I pulled my Big boat 2 weeks ago after it sat in the marina water for about 100 days, I was shocked to see very few Zebra Mussel attached to the outdrives, protective boots or trim tabs like in years before. I'll bet there wasn't 100 mussels all together on the whole thing. This compares to about the 3,000 I estimate were there last year. I thought that my decision to paint my outdrives with the usual copper anti-fouling bottom paint last spring was the reason, and I was kinda proud of myself. But now I hear that everybody is seeing less mussels this year then in years past. Could it be that the goby populations are thinning them out? Anybody else who leaves their boats in the water all summer on the Great Lakes or connecting waters seeing the same thing?

[walleye express]

I E-mailed my DNR bud about this and heres his answer.

Dan:

I am only speculating, but I doubt its the gobies, instead we are seeing far more quagga mussels in the bay and far fewer zebra mussels. What has changed to give quaggas the upper hand over zebras I don't know. The benthification process (the filtering of organic matter from the water cloumn) that is playing out in Lake Huron is continuing and in ways we don't exactly understand right now.