Scientists and a corps of volunteers are launching an all-out assault on a tiny invasive clam in hopes of preventing it from befouling the crystal-clear waters Lake George.
The Lake George Asian Clam Rapid Response Task Force, a coalition of community groups, scientists and regulatory agencies, hopes to smother the golden, thumbnail-size Asian clam by laying up to 900 plastic mats on the bottom of the lake in a six-acre area where the clams were discovered last August.
Task force officials say in just three years, the invasive species has spread from a few dozen clams from a bait bucket or aquarium to hundreds of thousands in the New York lake, which is connected to Lake Champlain by the La Chute River.