Water Lettuce on Lake Onalaska: Wednesday Evening Update

Date: 10/15/2015 07:29 AM
From: Fritz <fritz@funk.io>
To: Participating Natural Resource Agencies and Volunteers

Mopping up continues - we're still finding plants on the loose and have some additional shoreline to survey to tighten up the potential distribution.

Locations and findings from Wednesday:

USFWS surveyed the source up by the "tubes" and collected approximately 50 to 75 plants.  There were some large healthy plants under the dock and could be more.

Tim Collins paddled the entire channel after the USFWS removal and did not find any plants, but last night about 5pm I ran the channel again with a KAMO kid and we found 8 plants - two east of the Fred Funk landing and the rest up towards the source, so they are still popping up.

John Nash paddled from Brice Prairie completely around Broken Gun Island and thankfully found no plants.

Greg Martin walked the Sailing Club beach (where I found 20 plants on Saturday) and did not see any from shore, but the celery mats are extending offshore a ways.  Greg also spotted a blue canoe that appeared to be surveying Broken Gun Slough (aka Sailboat Club Bay) by Nelson Park, but have not heard if they found anything.

My morning survey of the lake-exposed Brice Prairie shore turned up 8 more plants (map at bottom of this message). All were individual plants that were newly-arrived in the offshore edge of the thin, fresh band of floating celery/veg accumulating near the shore.

Fallen leaves are making it harder to spot the plants that are embedded in the vegetation mats.  Many of the silver maple leaves have a similar blueish-green hue to water lettuce.

Today (Thursday's) survey efforts that I know of are:

French Island shore - Shawn Gilblin (DNR) plans to launch a canoe from Nelson Park about 8am and begin surveying southward along the west shore of French Island.  I plan to join him about 9am after my morning survey of the Brice Prairie shore.  More paddling effort welcome!  We'd like to survey down to the (western) spillway.

USFWS thinks a couple of more visits at the source would be worthwhile and may try in the afternoon. 

(below) Wednesday morning's water lettuce occurrence (red dots) in a survey of the lake-exposed part of the Brice Prairie shore.  No plants have yet been found east of the easternmost red dot: