How Triathletes Can Avoid Introducing Invasive Species
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The Door County Triathlon is coming up this weekend, when about 2,000 athletes will jump in Green Bay for the sprint triathlon and half iron.
But the weekend’s not all about athletics – there are environmental concerns, too. Because it’s submerged in open bodies of water, athletes’ swimming gear can transfer invasive species such as phragmites, zebra mussels or spiny water fleas. Those invasive species can spread and hurt native ecosystems.
“Triathlons are just huge events of people coming from all over, and, as a triathlete, most of us are crazy, so you know they were swimming wherever they’re from on Thursday, throwing their wetsuits in a bag and swimming in another lake on Friday,” said Tim Campbell, aquatic invasive species outreach specialist for the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant.
Minimizing the spread of invasive species through athletic gear like wetsuits is Campbell’s pet project. He’s reached out to a few race organizers who bring buoys and other equipment from race to race, and wrote an article for USA Triathlon about his experience as a competitive triathlete and aquatic invasive species specialist.
In the article, Campbell talks about training for a race in Lake Winnebago in 2007. He had been practicing swimming in Roach Lake, and (fortunately) was too busy with work to make it to Lake Winnebago. Afterward, he realized swimming in Lake Winnebago, tossing his sandy wetsuit into a bag and using it again in Roach Lake the next day could have been an environmental mistake.
“On that wetsuit could have been zebra mussel larvae, Eurasian water milfoil fragments or even a fish virus that I could have introduced into Roach Lake,” Campbell wrote in the article “Aquatic Invasive Species and the Impact on Triathlon.”
But triathletes and swimmers can help prevent the spread of invasive species between bodies of water by cleaning their wetsuits and letting them dry before getting in another lake.
“At the end of the day, there’s a lot bigger pathways out there, but every little bit helps,” Campbell said. “If we’re in that mindset where we’re not moving water, plants or species around, we won’t be moving invasives around.”