Years ago when Zebra Mussels first appeared in polluted lake Erie I remember airline pilots flying over the lake were saying how clear the lake had become. I thought at the time the Zebra's might be a solution to water pollution. Before the Zebra's showed up in Erie I was on a charter boat fishing for Walleye and between two charter boats we had, only 5 Walleye were caught. The captains blamed the low Walleye catch on the continuing high pollution of the lake.
The article below thinks the high potassium runoff from farms caused the pollution do to high rains and are responsible for the potassium run off into the lake, creating algae. Probably what is true is the zebras are filtering the water of algae caused by the potassium and thus increasing the oxygen content needed for walleye to thrive. The author was talking of bad pollution levels in 1970, I was fishing in Erie in the late 1950's, so the problem of the polluted lake Erie Walleye population had been going on for a long time. Just my uneducated guess. So
Lake Erie�s polluted past returning with a vengeance
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/...-vengeance.html Now it seems Phosphorous levels are high and causing blue green algae in Erie. What I believe is happening is that nearly every farm is putting in plastic pipe underground ditching so excess water runs off the fields immediately and this water all runs into the rivers at the same time which increases yields but also flushes nutrients into the streams. This is true in East Central Indiana.
