Lake George Watershed Lake Steward Program End of Season ...

DRAFT
Plants/Animals Removed from Boats
After stewards had spoken with the boater about invasive species and spread prevention,
they would request to visually inspect the boat for any hitchhikers. Boaters were encouraged
to join the Lake Steward in the inspection so that boaters could learn to inspect their boats
for themselves. Stewards mainly inspected boats on their way into Lake George, however
they also inspected boats on their way out when possible.
Stewards would collect any sample of foreign material they found attached to the boat or
trailer. They would bag it and label the bag with the boat registration number the sample
had come from, along with the date and launch location. Samples were delivered to the
Darrin Fresh Water Institute in Bolton Landing for identification. Some samples would end
up having more than one plant/animal species in it, which would result in a different number
of specimens then number of boats found with plant/animal matter.
Below is a chart of how many boats were found with foreign material and how many
specimens were found at each launch location (Figure 5). The total number of boats and
the number of boats that were entering the lake are shown. The difference between these
numbers is the number of boats that were leaving the lake when a sample was removed
from them. Boats leaving Lake George were sometimes found to be carrying hitchhikers out
of the lake. This was happening frequently at the Hague Launch, which has invasive plants
growing in the water at the launch. One of the main purposes of the Lake Stewards was to
help prevent the additional introduction if invasive species into Lake George. However, since
Lake George is an infected lake, we also do not want to spread our invasive species to other
lakes. So inspecting boats on their way out is also important to regional efforts to slow the
spread of invasive species between waterways.
Launch Boats Total Boats Entering Samples Invasives
Norowal 32 31 45 28
Mossy Point 13 8 15 6
Dunham’s Bay 13 11 28 11
Hague 15 2 22 15
Rogers Rock 3 1 3 1
Northwest Bay 0 0 0 0
Island View 0 0 0 0
Figure 5: Summary of all samples and invasives removed from boats at all launches.
14 Lake George Watershed Lake Steward Program End of Season Report 2008