This is the 6th year of monitoring the freshwater mussels with the Upper Sangamon River Conservancy. The weather always plays a role in the events, sometimes delaying things with thunderstorms or high water levels, other times dry periods lowering water levels to allow access to larger stretches of stream bottom.
This year, we scheduled four dates in July and August, one day for each of the four locations on our schedule for 2026. As you may have guessed by the dates of this post, NONE of the dates worked out. The first date the forecast called for a morning full of thunderstorms. They didn’t really materialize, but we had to make the call to cancel in respect for our volunteers’ time. A few days before our first August date, there was a huge storm that dropped over 2 inches of rain across the region. The river surged to flood stage. Rather than being at the 4-5 foot level that we hope for, the river rose to 15+ feet. This obviously would not work, and we ended up cancelling not one, but three dates due to the flooding from this storm.
We finally made it out to the river for the first monitoring of the season on September 5th, our pre-scheduled backup date. We added the 19th and 20th to the calendar, then tried to find another date for the fourth location. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get a combination of weather and schedules to align, so we will maybe try to get to the fourth site sometime in 2027, adding it to the other locations already on our schedule.
Each day at the river begins with a short set of introductions, instructions, and background information on mussel monitoring.
The volunteers then make their way into the river, walking to their assigned search areas.
The water had returned to a much more reasonable and accessible level, but was still deeper than normal on the 5th. It was deep enough that a couple of volunteers actually dove into some of the deeper pools to collect mussels that were otherwise out of reach. This was a first for the project!!
Otherwise, this years’ mussel collection went similar to previous years, tagging, photographing, weighing, and measuring each animal. We collected a great number and variety of mussels, regardless of water levels and weather delays.
Danelle