is this good? a musscle

[kuwaizair]

I am in Northren NJ where my mom works there is a stream. she told me "about these clams" we went into it and I have these empty shells.

is this a good species? endangered? the shell is sort of 3 inches

Comments

[birdiebirdie]

I'm assuming this is a fresh water stream -from the websites I've seen online, there's really not that much info out there about Freshwater clams and Mussels except for the green Zebra Mussel which is an invasive species that hitchikes on boat props and goes from water to water.

Were there any closed ones?

I've sometimes found shells near bodies of water where people had a picnic and threw the shells back in...

[kuwaizair]

there were some live ones. But I have no way to observe them so I didn't take them home

[birdiebirdie]

Yeah - no need to disturb the living. Well, check out http://www.state.nj.us/dep/fgw/mussels.htm - if some of the descriptons soud right, you can google the specific species name to see what you've got.

Like this one which is endangered Google Image Search here

[kuwaizair]

my mom says she swears she saw one swimming. If they are I could tell the fish and game and maybe some land near there could be protected? is that how it works?

some were pretty big, a live one I saw I think had a shell a little over 3 inches, i didn't mesure and am bad at it

[blasphemusfish]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unionidae I'm guessing they're a type of these, have a look through, but I don't think they're invasive. Zebra mussels are quite small afaik, and not in unionidae.

[kuwaizair]

yeah i saw they weren't but then I saw a large number of them are threatend or endangerd. so i wonder if I should call fish and game again with "hey I think found some rare animals, by the way should our lake still have banded myster snails?"