It Lives!

Hard to believe, but in amongst all the rubbish and muck in the lake on Minnawarra, there is life! and its not just the ducks, coots and ibis. Durring my adventures in the lake, I came across these guys. A little yabby, and a freshwater mussel. The mussel was just happily sitting there as mussels do, the Yabby was hiding inside the edges of a road sign that had been tossed into the lake. The presence of these animals means that the lake is quite healthy (that being said, the place is full of frogs, dragonflies and mayflies, and they certainly dont breed in polluted water).

I dont know very much about freshwater mussels. Guess its something Ive never felt the urge to study before. I know they are exceptionally good at filtering the water they live in. They are one of the organisms that help to keep a body of water clean

Yabbys' are an introduced species to Western Australia. Here we have Koonacs, Gilgies and Marron. Yabbys' were introduced to WA in the 1930s, in farming dams and such. All of these freshwater crayfish (as they are called by the fisheries department) have a habit of 'walking' from one water source to the next when conditions change (over crowding, water is polluted, searching for a mate, etc), and as such they now inhabit various river systems in the Southwest region of WA. The easiest way I can spot this is a Yabby is by his claws. Both Yabbys' and Koonacs' have the chunky, round looking claws, where as marron and gilgies have more delicate and elongated claws. The way to tell the difference between a Koonac and a Yabby is that Koonacs have serration (jagged edges) on the inside of their claws, where as the inside of a Yabby's claws are smooth.