*taken from The Daily Iowan, Tuesday October 24, 2006
Before the UI can disturb the Iowa River’s riverbed with construction, it must first ensure that no endangered mussels line the rocky and oft beer bottle-laden bottom. That’s where Helms & Associates comes in. For the past 30 years, Don Helms has searched Midwest waterways for shell-covered pistol grips, pimplebacks, mapleleafs, lilliputs, and perhaps very fittingly, giant floater mussels. So when a recent UI project involved placing two 36-inch water pipes across the river, he and his associates were called to survey the bottom.
Amid the rocks and broken bottles, the aquatic consultants found four pistol-grip mussels in the survey. Thus began the nearly $70,000 endeavor to move the mussels approximately 100 feet upstream. “This is a very clean river,” said Helms, who has a master’s degree in fishery from Southern Illinois University. “The diver has to pick around the rocks, look around all the cracks and crevasses.” Sounds easy. But with the water only offering a visibility down to two feet and, as of Monday, the temperature hovering at 48 degrees – which induces shivers even in a full “dry suit” – this was no easy task.
Attached to an air tube resembling an umbilical cord, the diver wore thin gloves so he could differentiate between the mussels and the riverbed. When Jeff Zilliox, a five-year diver working with Helms, found a mussel, he placed it in a burlap bag and sent it above the surface to be relocated. Searching for the mussels is like closing one’s eyes and feeling a bunch of rocks, said Zilliox, who was warming up in front of an onboard gas heater following a recent dive.
When they started, the temperature was closer to 57 degrees. But when the temperature later dropped below 50 degrees, the mussel hunters had to hand-place all of the endangered animals they found. If the temperature drops below 40, they won’t be allowed to handle the critters because the risk of damaging them is too great.
So far, the company has found 10 endangered mussels and roughly 500 others since they began diving on Oct. 9. Broken down into grids, only a small portion of the area still remains to be combed for the mollusks.
Between the spring and fall, when the water is warm enough, Helms and his mussel-minded workers have hunted the creatures from lakes in Wisconsin to rivers in Missouri. He is one of around four people in the Midwest who provide the service, he said, adding that business has been exceptional recently.
Helms said that in some years, he does around three or four jobs a year, but this past year, he had between 25 and 30. “People are becoming more and more worried about endangered species, “he said. No matter the costs, the mussel men are performing a valuable service, UI employees said.
“It’s an effort to preserve the environment,” said Chris Varo, a UI engineer overseeing the project. “We have a duty to preserve and protect the environment.”