Life can be tough along the Lake Erie shore. The only consistent feature about this body of water is its inconsistency – in other words, it’s never the same lake two days in a row. One has to be adaptable to meet the daily, or hourly, shifts of mood. Short term water level changes can be the most challenging aspect for the aquatic organisms living in the lake’s near shore waters and coastal marshes.

  Wind tides, or seiches as they are officially known, will drain the water from this western shore within a few hours. Former lake bottom will lay exposed as extensive mud flats for hours or even days. When it is a stiff autumn gale that does the work, the exposure time will be frigid as well. The water eventually returns, of course, but at its own sweet time. If you are a slow gill breathing animal stranded on this chilly mud you can’t afford the luxury of “sweet time.”

  The native mussels that inhabit the mucky shallows can’t swim away with the retreating water like fish and aquatic insect nymphs can.  Even these swift co-habitants are sometimes stranded, so what’s a lowly clam to do? The only thing to do is to dig in with their large muscular foot and clam up.  Individuals like this Paper Shell Mussel (see above) are forced to seal themselves up within a watertight case in order to keep in crucial moisture. This gal (at least I assume it’s a gal based on her feminine proportions) was caught completely off guard and hadn’t the time to dig in before the wind tide struck her piece of Lake Erie bottom a few days ago.

  It was a relatively balmy Halloween day when this picture was taken, but the previous few nights were quite chilly. Her exposure time up to that point was already extending into several days and nights of what can only be termed “molluscan torture.” Although barely alive, she still had enough reserves to keep her valves (shells) shut. She yielded only slightly when I attempted to pry them apart (which I did only to make sure there was a living creature inside).

  Paper Shells are one of about 40 species of native mussels that live in the Great Lakes region. The waters of the Detroit River and Western Lake Erie are ideal environments for many types of these shelled creatures. Most mussels have thick rigid shells, but the Paper Shell has a very thin covering which cracks into pieces when the animal dies and the shell dries out – thus the name. On the living animal, light will transmit right through the shell and the fleshy creature inside (as seen here with a mid-morning backlight).

  Zebra Mussels, those alien mussels that have staked claim on all former native mussel territory, have inflicted havoc upon our local clam population. Because of this, natives such as the Paper Shell are worthy of some human sympathy. Wind tides are one thing, but alien biological tides are quite another.

  Since I couldn’t immediately purge the lakes of Zebra mussels, the only immediate favor I could render this clam was to toss it back into the drink. This was the least that a two footed creature could do for a one-footed fellow earth inhabitant. The water was some thirty feet away at the time and I made sure to plunk her an additional twenty feet out just in case.

  The water didn’t return to “normal” depth until yesterday. I doubt the mussel would have been able to stay clammed up for that long, but she probably has endured worse without my help.