Wearing masks, snorkels, gloves and knee pads, teams spent days in the Huron River this summer turning over rocks and searching the riverbed for animals that could not move themselves out of danger.
They found about 3,000 freshwater mussels.
Staff, engineers, interns and volunteers moved the mussels to safer water ahead of the planned removal of Ypsilanti’s Peninsular Paper Dam. The animals were shifted from slower water along the riverbanks to the faster-flowing center of the channel, where they will be less vulnerable to sediment disturbed during the project…