Fish & Water - Sounds Wild
Operation Northern Creep

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Operation Northern Creep

Traffic was brisk on the Alaska Highway in May of 2016, with cars, trucks, and recreational vehicles with canoes, kayaks, and trailered pleasure boats streaming through the border crossing east of Tok, known as the Port of Alcan. For ten days in mid-May, Fish and Wildlife Service staff inspected about 100 boats entering Alaska and met with hundreds of visitors, providing outreach materials on invasive species. This was part of "Operation Northern Creep," an effort addressing the threat of invasive species entering Alaska.

A major concern are two species of invasive mollusk, zebra mussels and quagga mussels. These mollusks were first introduced to U.S. waters in the late 1980s, and their presence has cost the Great Lakes region upwards of $200 million a year. The invasive mussels limit the ability of natural ecosystems to support commercial and sport fisheries, water uses, and wildlife watching. Twenty years later, these mollusks have made their way across the country to Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California.

The overland movement of watercraft - boats on trailers, canoes and kayaks on cars - from invasive species infested waters carried both adult and larval stages of invasive mussels and other aquatic invasive species to western freshwater systems on their hulls, in ballast tanks and in compartments. The larval mussels can survive on a boat out of water for as long as 27 days. Aside from allowing a watercraft to completely dry for 30 or more days, hot pressurized water is the silver bullet for eliminating invasive mussels on watercraft. A few of the boats inspected at the border in May had previously been inspected in Wyoming, Idaho, or in British Columbia, and fortunately, no mussels were detected on any of the watercraft entering Alaska.