>>938696They reproduce at a much higher rate than our native mussels in North America. Lake Erie for example has gone from ~6" of water clarity to ~3ft of water clarity because of Quagga mussels I believe (close relative to zebra mussels). As a result, that has caused a boom in underwater vegetation and many of the native mussel species are either endangered or extinct in bodies of water with those invasive mussel species. Zebra and Quagga mussels also attach themselves to any available hard surface which ends up clogging grates and inlets for water supply facilities, water pipelines, power plants, spillways, etc. Businesses and local governments spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year to scrape the mussels off their intake grates and trying to purge them from their water pipes. The cost of downtime for those operations is also significant. Hell, zebra mussels even attach themselves to the hard shells of other mussels and crustaceans, killing them directly sometimes.
