Zebra Mussels and the Spoonbill Catfish

Zebra mussels have found the Ohio River as a good habitat and unfortunately they are here to stay. We have been using chemical treatment in order to control their populations. Dr. John Hageman from Thomas More College proposed to us a possible natural method for control. He suggested that we try to use fish to control the Zebra Mussels. He recommended the Paddlefish. The Paddlefish, also called the spoonbill catfish, can grow to as large as 100 pounds and they feed on plankton. The young Zebra Mussels are free-swimming plankton. The theory is that paddlefish will graze on the Zebra mussels and algae. We decided to do a little research using the paddlefish in one of our reservoirs.

Steve Mins, the Associate Professor/ Principal Investigator at Aquaculture Research Center Kentucky State University provided us with 20 young paddlefish for our research. We released the paddlefish into the reservoir on November 15. The average size of the fish was 14 inches long. We will continue to monitor the Zebra mussel counts and the algal counts to see if our population of paddlefish are doing there job.