GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — The Grand River restoration is underway. Many of you have seen the divers in the downtown area.
Over a dozen divers are out there snorkeling because many spots in the river are shallow.
They're not out there looking for buried treasure but a treasure to Michigan all the same.
"So our divers are looking for freshwater mussels," BioSurvey Owner and Senior Biologist Sarah Veselka said.
The mussels are an important part of the river ecosystem.
"At one time, they cleaned up our rivers. They're kind of the livers of the rivers, as we like to call them," Malacologist Heidi Dunn said. "Freshwater mussels, in and of themselves, provide a lot of ecosystem services for us. You know, cleaning the water, cycling nitrogen, attracting fish, stabilizing the substrate."
Dunn explains that the divers use a grid and their hands to find native freshwater mussels.
"They're disturbing the substrate because they like to bury, so they're stirring it up, moving rocks, getting out all the silt. And if they find any live mussels, we're bagging them, and then we record them and tag them," Dunn added.
This is the first step of a larger project to make a section of the Grand River a more recreational place for visitors. So these divers are relocating the mussels upriver near Ada or downstream near 196.
Before being sent off to their new home, they make a pit stop to be tagged and marked.
"We'll mark each of the animals like that. Now, when we collect them again, anything that's beyond that is growth so that we know that they're happy in their new home," Dunn said.
She wants to chart their progress for when they eventually return to see these animals. To Dunn, it's easy work when you love the water.
"Just having your head under the water, you don't have to think about anything but mussels. It's like a big Easter egg hunt. You're like, 'Ope, got one,'" Dunn said.
These divers spend hours underwater.
"Of the 4,000 mussels or so we've collected so far, we've only gotten 15 juggling endangered snuff box. So you have to have enough of those guys to be able so that they can find each other and, you know, reproduce.
The malacologist adds they're ahead of schedule.
"We got lucky with this low water. We thought we would have to dive this whole thing, but fortunately, we can snorkel it, so it makes it a little bit easier," Dunn said.
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