Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful will host its 1st annual ‘Tennessee River Watershed Mussel Fest’ on Saturday, May 17, from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. at Seven Islands State Birding Park, 2809 Kelly Lane, Kodak, Tn.
At the free festival, visitors will have the opportunity to touch a mussel, see the impact of mussel filtration in waterways in a filtration display, enter in a raffle for door prizes, witness the release of 200 mussels into the French Broad River, a tributary of the Tennessee River, and watch program coordinators place Adopt a Mussel concrete silos into the riverbed, among other activities.
The festival is a component in the nonprofit’s five-part Tennessee River Mussel Movement Initiative, is a collaboration with advisement from the University of Tennessee Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, and is funded by Nobody Trashes Tennessee, a litter prevention campaign administered by the Tennessee Dept. of Transportation.
The Mussel Movement initiative is an effort to both raise awareness around and bolster freshwater mussels, a threatened species that filters pollutants and bacteria from our waterways and is considered a cornerstone species in that the very structure of the ecosystem in seven-state Tennessee River watershed (the most bio-diverse ecosystem in North America) depends on the abundance of mussels.
In fact, a recent graduate study at the University of Tennessee conducted in 2023 proved that local freshwater mussels help to filter out microplastics from the Tennessee River watershed. The study further proved the vital role of freshwater mussels on local waterways in a time when their populations have been rapidly declining.
“The Mussel Movement Initiative has been a long time coming on KTnRB’s part and the enthusiastic, collaborative support we’ve received from UT and local scientific community is a sure sign of our region’s potential to have impact on this front,” said Kathleen Gibi, executive director for Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful. “The decline of freshwater mussels is an alarm bell that we need to listen to for the sake of our river, the very foundation of our community, our health, our culture, and the region’s economy.”
The Mussel Movement Initiative has a tagline of ‘Conserve. Inspire. Educate. Document. Value.’ with an action word associated with each of its five components:
1. Conserve - Adopt a Mussel program
A program in which juvenile mussels provided by the Cumberland River Aquatic Center, a facility of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency are placed in concrete silos that provide protection as they mature. Adoptees pay a fee to adopt a mussel, name it, and receive updates on the mussel’s growth until it is released into the river at a more robust state.
2. Inspire – Tennessee River Watershed Mussel Fest
A festival that engages the public with freshwater mussels and will be held in different parts of the Tennessee River watershed, potentially multiple locations a year. The festival also includes the release of mussels into the river and placement of Adopt a Mussel silos.
3. Educate – Education Lectures
KTnRB’s new Education & Outreach coordinator will be giving lectures to educate youth about the importance of our river system’s filtering cornerstone species.
4. Document – Mussel Shell Inventory
As KTnRB has the unique task of hosting volunteer river cleanups (and scouting for those cleanups) in remote coves of all seven states within the Tennessee River watershed, the crew is taking photos of mussel shells that they find on the shorelines to document the presence of different mussel species within the watershed and with mussel identification oversight by UT professors who specialize in studies of freshwater mussels. In just a few short months of the program, KTnRB crews have already documented over a dozen freshwater mussel species in six lakes within the Tennessee River watershed.
5. Value – ‘A Mussel’s Worth’ Study
A single adult freshwater mussel can filter between 10 to 20 gallons of water a day from the Tennessee River watershed, the drinking source for communities within the Tennessee Valley. Additionally, many other species’ survival depend on freshwater mussels, such as fish, birds, and mammals like raccoons and otters. Not only does the river’s ecosystem depend on mussels, but, by extension, so do massive industries such as fishing and outdoor tourism. KTnRB is collaborating with UT to determine the dollar value of freshwater mussels on the Tennessee River watershed.
With a career specializing in the study of freshwater mussels, Dr. Michael McKinney, UT professor who serves as Director of the university’s Environmental Sciences program in the Dept. of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, is advising KTnRB on their Mussel Movement Initiative along with Dana Mills, Graduate Teaching Assistant.
“The Tennessee River watershed is arguably one of the most important ecosystems in our hemisphere, and its freshwater mussel population will always be a determining factor in how that ecosystem impacts our region,” Dr. McKinney said. “It’s great to be able to combine efforts between a boots-on-the-ground, take action sort of nonprofit like KTnRB and our department at UT, which brings to the table years of research and proven studies around freshwater mussels.”
KTnRB first began pursuing work around freshwater mussels after attending a 2019 Keep America Beautiful national conference and witnessing the work of the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore, a nonprofit that maintains an Adopt an Oyster program in the Chesapeake Bay. Several years later, Dr. McKinney attended a meeting with KTnRB staff and the Tennessee River Mussel Movement Initiative has grown out of an effort to pursue an Adopt a Mussel program, a freshwater approach to follow the work being done on the waterfront in Baltimore.
In preparation for the mussel release that will occur during this year’s Tennessee River Watershed Mussel Fest on Saturday, May 17, KTnRB is hosting a river cleanup on Friday, May 2, launching from Seven Islands State Birding Park in collaboration with Tennessee State Parks and the Friends of Seven Islands. The area has not yet experienced a river cleanup since devastation from Hurricane Helene, and Gibi said this is a way to give the mussels being released a head start on their work in the river.
For more information on KTnRB’s Mussel Fest on Saturday, May 17, in the Knoxville, Tenn. area, the river cleanup prior to the Mussel Fest, or for information on participating in the new Adopt a Mussel program or any other part of the Tennessee River Mussel Movement Initiative, please visit www.KeepTNRiverBeautiful.org.