Boaters need to clean boats between launchings to prevent spread of disease and invasive species
By DAVID STEINKRAUS
Journal Times | Posted: Friday, August 31, 2007 12:00 am
It's one of the biggest boating weekends of the year, which means it's also one of the riskiest for Wisconsin's lakes - risky because the common practice of lake hopping increases the likelihood that boaters will inadvertently spread invasive species from lake to lake.
A survey which the state has been doing for years shows that about 40 percent of boaters hop from lake to lake, said Julia Solomon, an aquatic invasives education specialist who works for the University of Wisconsin-Extension and the state Department of Natural Resources.
And on a weekend like this, she said, people typically go to many lakes in a short period of time, making it even more important that they clean their boats between launchings.
What can move with a boat? Name an organism and it can be a hitchhiker - zebra mussels, the plant called Eurasian water milfoil, or viral hemorrhagic septicemia, the new fish disease spreading into Lake Michigan.
The Natural Resources Board enacted emergency rules in April and May to prevent the spread of VHS (see inset).
Because of VHS, experts are recommending more thorough cleaning in some cases.
Remove water from bait wells to prevent the transmission of VHS. And use either bait only from the lake you're fishing in or which you've bought from a licensed bait dealer.
If you're boating on Lake Michigan or the Lake Winnebago system, wiping out bait wells with bleach also isn't a bad idea, Solomon said. "The reason we're hesitant about recommending that to (all) people is you don't want that stuff back in the lake, either."
Any time you take your boat out of the water, you should look it over and remove anything you see clinging to it, such as bits of weed or mud. If your boat will be out of the water for five or more days, aquatic organisms will dry out and die, Solomon said, but if it's going back in the water sooner it should be rinsed with hot water or a high-pressure stream of water. Flush the water from your engine's cooling system, too.
Rinsing is important because you need to get all the small bits of plant or animal off your boat and trailer. Eurasian water milfoil can reproduce from just a bit of its stem, Solomon said.
"And this time of the year plants tend to be pretty thick, so it's easy to pull stuff out with you when you're done launching," she said. "It's caught in a place on your trailer that you didn't see, and you launch in the lake, and off it floats, and theoretically it can start a new colony."
Of course it may not. It's like being exposed to a cold virus, she said; you may get the disease if conditions are right, or you may not.
So just as washing your hands during flu season helps keep everyone healthy, washing your boat at this time of year can help keep Wisconsin's lakes healthy.