By Alabama Public Radio
Cherokee, AL – State biologists from Alabama and Tennessee are trying to figure out what's killing mussels in Pickwick Lake. Bob Milligan is a mussel diver from Guntersville. He says he's never seen the waterway littered with as many dead mollusks as he found this week. He says divers began noticing dead mussels about two weeks ago. Bruce Metts owns a shell business in Cherokee and says Pickwick Lake was just beginning to recover from a massive mussel die-off in 2004. The U-S Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that killed more than 40 million dollars worth of mussels. The Alabama Department of Conservation collected several mussels from the lake and sent them to laboratories for analysis.