When it comes to aquatic nuisance species, Ben Holen's mission is education and prevention

Mar. 2—Ben Holen is the aquatic nuisance species (ANS) coordinator for the North Dakota Game and Fish Department, working out of the Jamestown office. Originally from Bismarck, Holen went to college at Valley City State University and worked as a seasonal employee for Game and Fish in 2015. After stints in Idaho and Utah, he returned to North Dakota in 2019 as the ANS biologist.

Holen, who was a presenter at the International Water Institute's

29th annual River Watch Forum

on Wednesday, Feb. 28, in Grand Forks, spoke with Herald outdoors writer Brad Dokken about the status of ANS in North Dakota and efforts to prevent the spread. Here's an edited transcript of that conversation.

BD: How many lakes and rivers in North Dakota currently have ANS?

BH: Without doing the numbers, it'd be hard to put a number on it. But we're really fortunate here in North Dakota that we have fairly few waters that are infested with ANS. The exception would be common carp, which are found in many different areas. Most of the ANS we find are in the southeast here.

BD: What kinds of ANS are most prevalent?

BH: Curly leaf pondweed behind common carp is the most widespread. It's found throughout the Missouri River System and some different areas. We have flowering rush in a few different locations. Zebra mussels are in four lakes and three rivers. We have Eurasian water milfoil in one other location and then silver, bighead and grass carp are found in the James River System. It's pretty limited when you consider the department manages 450 (lakes).

BD: As I recall, there's a dam preventing silver, bighead and grass carp from getting farther up the James River.

BH: Yes, there's Jamestown Reservoir Dam, which prevents further movement up into the James River Valley. So, just in general, we see a few silver carp every year but by no means are there high densities of silver carp right now in the James River, which is a good thing.

BD: In Minnesota, the Department of Natural Resources sent out a news release this week that commercial fishermen on the Mississippi River found 82 silver carp and one bighead carp near Winona. When you hear reports like that, what goes through your mind as an ANS coordinator?

BH: Anytime you hear that silver carp are wandering into a new area, it always kind of perks the hair on the back of your neck up, just for us to be out there actively looking for silver carp and ways that they could move up within the James River Valley into some of our natural lakes. This summer, we plan to work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and do some (environmental DNA) testing, if water conditions allow, to try and further hone in on where these silver carp are potentially going in the James River Basin.

BD: What's a typical day for an ANS coordinator?

BH: It really depends on the time of year, but a typical day can range from helping seasonal watercraft inspectors to listening to what's going on in Congress as far as ANS grants and money or it could be doing early detection work or working with our outreach specialists. So, a wide variety of different things. Or, I could be coordinating with the states of Minnesota, South Dakota or Montana ... a bunch of different activities that I do on a daily basis and it depends on the time of the year and what's going on nationally.

BD: When you find ANS, like here on the Red River with zebra mussels, do you have to step up your monitoring and test more often?

BH: It really depends on the area, but if we have a detection of zebra mussels in that local area, we'll up our monitoring of our lakes around that area. Taking more plankton tow-net samples, we'll increase our education both in signage, digital marketing, personal contacts, things like that to make sure people are doing the right thing when coming off that infested waterway, so they're not incidentally spreading zebra mussels or other ANS. And then, we'll actively send and allocate more inspection time to those areas in response to that infestation.

BD: Have there been any real near-misses, like somebody getting ready to launch a boat that has zebra mussels on the trailer or something like that, for example?

BH: We've found zebra mussels on industrial equipment, we've found them on recreational watercraft. The good thing is when we found them, they've all been what we considered pretty desiccated and deceased at that time. We worked with the boat owner and commercial equipment guys to do hot water decontamination and get that boat completely taken care of, even though the zebra mussels were considered dead.

So, I wouldn't say too near at this time, but the risk is definitely out there.

BD: Are there certain boat ramps or certain bodies of water with inspectors or cleaning stations — things like that — set up all the time during the summer months?

BH: In North Dakota, we do what's called roving watercraft inspections. And this really allows us to be mobile and follow the watercraft traffic. So, if I hear about a hot bite over at Alkaline Lake, our inspectors are able to take that station and move to Alkaline Lake. Whereas in some areas, they might have their inspection station set in one location. We try to strategically allocate those inspector times to areas that we perceive to have the most risk, and we can do that through past watercraft inspection data. So, I can look at the past 11,000 to 15,000 watercraft inspections and say 10% of the people (for example) launching at Grahams Island (State Park on Devils Lake) are coming from a zebra mussel-infested water body, so we're going to allocate our time more to Grahams Island than we would to Round Lake ramp, which is on Devils Lake, too.

BD: I imagine you have to coordinate closely with the game wardens, too.

BH: We actively work with the game wardens. Our watercraft inspectors support our game wardens, and our game wardens support our watercraft inspectors. So, sometimes, we'll take watercraft inspectors, and when game wardens are running an inspection checkpoint, we'll send guys to go help them out. When I see problem areas, we'll have a game warden shadow one of those watercraft inspectors and hopefully help take care of those problems.

BD: Are anglers and boaters getting better at taking the ANS threat seriously or is more education needed?

BH: I think drastically over the last 10 years, it's gotten much, much better. There are still people out there that definitely need to be educated on why this is important and how great of an impact ANS can have.

We're trying to actively target water sports and pleasure boating, too, because it's harder for us as Game and Fish to reach those individuals. But we're trying interesting efforts through digital marketing, through commercials, through radio advertisements, on Spotify and different things to try to reach those individuals.

BD: What are the most common ANS violations?

BH: I would probably say it's just pulling the plug, and standard water violations are probably the most common. We're still reminding people that you've got to have all plugs pulled in your watercraft during any out-of-water transport. Some of it is an honest mistake, which can happen, but every time people are coming off a water body, we basically ask them to be their own watercraft inspector.

BD: Are there many places where you put up cleaning stations?

BH: We're actively working to put up different — we call them ANS prevention devices — out there in the landscape. We helped install self-serve wash units at Lake LaMoure, so when people come off Lake LaMoure and there's not an inspector around, they can use that washing unit to lower their risk of potentially spreading zebra mussels.

We also are using this kind of new technology called I-LIDS (Internet Landing Installed Device Sensor). They're basically virtual watercraft inspection devices. As an agency, we're a pretty small staff, but we put out these virtual watercraft inspection devices that are basically activated by a magnetic sensor, which turns on a camera, captures an inspection and sends it up to the cloud, where it can be reviewed. And while this is happening, it's also playing an audio message to boaters. ... So, it's kind of a cool thing out there that helps us do a little bit more inspections and also provides that audio message to boaters who might experience sign fatigue from time to time. We currently have five I-LIDS units in the state.

BD: In places where you've documented ANS, have there been any observable changes in fish populations?

BH: I guess we haven't really seen that too much, other than the places we have common carp. When common carp get in (a water body), they can definitely have changes on the ecosystem pretty rapidly and for our fish populations. But as far as zebra mussels, we haven't seen the effects on growth and things that have been seen in other areas. But it's still fairly recent since we've had zebra mussels in the state, so I wouldn't say either way that effects are happening.

There's definitely ecological effects in the food web as far as the flow of nutrients, but whether that's equating to a decrease in fish growth, we haven't seen that quite yet.

BD: Beyond the "Clean Drain, Dry" message, there is always going to be water that people can't get at. What can or should boaters do in that situation?

BH: We recommend hot water decontamination as an added step on top of Clean, Drain, Dry. We recommend, basically, any internal devices inside your boat livewells, bilge areas, things like that, and use 120-degree water for at least two-minute contact time to kill anything that might be in the water and then spraying outside of your watercraft with 140-degree water for 10 seconds of contact time. Literature has shown that to be an effective way to kill both zebra mussels and zebra mussel veligers (larval stage zebra mussels).

BD: Anything else?

BH: Besides recreational watercraft, docks and lifts are a huge vector. We recently — last year — passed a rule that basically requires docks and lifts to sit 21 days out of water before they're moved around. If a dock or lift sits in a zebra mussel-infested water body and then shortly after it's sold and moved to a different lake, that's a very easy way to start a new population.

And then commercial equipment, which people don't really think about, either. Anytime there's water projects, we work with DOT Water Resources and other agencies to inspect the high-risk commercial equipment that's out there.

We honestly find more zebra mussels on that commercial equipment, like barges and tugboats and things like that, coming to North Dakota than we do on recreational watercraft.