SAN ANTONIO — Set up on a small table inside the San Antonio River Flood Tunnel Inlet on Monday was a group of biologists studying hundreds of native mussels, which act as natural water filters, removing harmful debris and bacteria.
Austin Davis, a senior aquatic biologist for the San Antonio River Authority (SARA), said this conservation effort has been years in the making.
“We used to have native populations here, once upon a time," Davis said. "But through urbanization, we’ve lost those populations.”
Returning the mussels to the San Antonio River marks the end of a two-step process: etching, to keep track of the ones being researched, and tagging.
“We can go back once they’re placed in the river," Davis said. "We can track their survival, their growth rates, other data for their habitat.”
A few hours later, the crew made its way to Espada Dam. Aquatic biologist Caille Marshall said the research that is being implemented now will hopefully stabilize the mussel population to grow.
“Right now, we’re doing sitewide measurements for one of the locations we plan on reintroducing our native freshwater mussels,” Marshall said.
The group will be collecting data like channel bed depths and what makes up the sediment on the bottom of the river, be it silt, sand or clay.
“All of which are very, very important for our mussels, because they live on the bottom of the channel bed and they don’t have legs or fins or anything to really choose where they are in the water,” Marshall said.
One thousand freshwater mussels have already been returned to the San Antonio River. SARA anticipates that a total of 4,000 will be reintroduced to their habitat by the end of 2024.
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