The latest news about Maine lakes and ponds.

Milfoil Fighters Try New Tack with Weighted Tarp

September 05, 2007 - Oakland -- The 400 square foot black and green tarpaulin lurched across the top of the water like a drunken manta ray, surprising a large snapping turtle, which popped up its head for a moment to investigate.

Confronted by half a dozen faces looking down from boats and twice that number on the shore, the turtle scooted backward off the tarp and dove for the bottom. Two divers assisted the men in the boats as members of the Messalonskee Lake Association haul the tarpaulin about 30 feet out from the shore and sank it to the bottom.

Stretched kite-like over a metal frame and marked by bouys, it fell slowly over a clump of submerged variable leaf milfoil, an invasive plant species that is choking out natural species in Messalonskee Lake.

The snapping turtle resurfaced several yards out from the boats and watched from a suspicious distance. The tarpaulin might have seemed disruptive to the turtle's day, but members of the Lake Association hope that what they started Thursday afternoon as an experiment off Willey Point will eventually result in a better environment for turtles, fish, native plant life and human residents.

Called a "benthic barrier" (benthic refers to the bottom of the lake or ocean), the tarpaulin will cling to the lake bottom for the next 60 days, blocking the clump of milfoil growing beneath from the sunlight. At the end of that time, Lake Association members will take a look at how light deprivation has affected the milfoil and decide how effective a larger scale project will be, according to association member Bill Libby.

"It's not a good time of year -- it's a bad time of year to do it," he said. "But we just wanted to get something in and get an idea of how much work it will be and how well it works."

This is the first time that members of the Lake Association have taken such a hands-on approach in fighting milfoil spread, according to Messalonskee Lake Association president Michael Willey.

The association also plans to send divers down to hand-pluck the plants from the lake bottom.

It is not likely that they will be able to eradicate the plant from Messalonskee Lake, Libby said. Rather, the point of the Lake Association's effort is to limit the plant's spread to areas of the lake where boaters do not frequent in order to prevent milfoil from spreading to other lakes in the state.

An infestation can sprout from and 1 inch piece sticking to the bottom of the boat.

"Next spring, we'll come back and get more aggressive," Libby said, watching the divers and allowing a guide rope that was attached to the sinking tarpaulin to slide through his hands.

This article first appeared in the Morning Sentinel, August 24, 2007

Lakes: Messalonskee Lake
Regions: Belgrade


Print this story

Email this story

return to Lake News