Irish Angling Forum

pip · Egg Joined: 13 Apr 2007 Posts: 2 Location: co down

After being involved in fishing for a lifetime my father in law noticed a pearl mussle on the local coat of arms and after a bit of detective work found out that the fresh water pearl mussle was once common on the bann.After years of hard work and a lottery grant with the help of queens university and ballinderry hatchery thousands of dollaghan salmon and local trout fry have been released with the spores of the pearl mussles on their gills.The mussles release spores which attach themselves onto the gills of the salmonoids until they are a certain age and then detach and embed themselves on the river bed.This project is still young and although my father in law instigated the project unfortunately he lost his battle with lung cancer before he could see the effects.The project is known as the Dessie Smyth pearl mussle project and so far so good these musles if successfull will contribute to the filtering and cleansing of our local water ways.
Just a summary which i thought some readers would find interesting

Sean · Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 9:33 pm Post subject:

interesting mate, i had never even heard of them before.