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I have sailed mostly in Lake Ontario for more than thirty years. As a boy the problem was that phosphates were so thick that visibility in the waters was terrible. When the scourge of zebra muscles came along everyone acted as though the sky was falling - it did not do so. Every one of those muscles apparently filters sixty gallons of water a day. The water clarity improved dramatically. Yes zebra muscles attached themselves to hard objects like rocks and steel pilings but they stayed off of bottom paint like the plague. Yes I had to start using bottom paint on our run about but we always used it on our sailboat so it was no big deal. I started to fish and you should see the largemouth bass, pike and yellow perch we have caught over the years - yes there are some large fish and they are in good healthy numbers. Overall my comparision is that the water quality has improved dramatically as a result of their presence. I am not too old but old enough to remember what it was like before they were here and what it has been like since they arrived - I see no harm done as a result.
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