Mussel infestation and steering failure on the Barrier Queen

The Barrier Queen’s mussel infestation turns a steering failure into a troubling mystery: the mussels appear not merely to have fouled the rudder, but to have spread across the ship after it became immobilized. Leon Anawak offers a possible sequence, not a proven explanation. The ship’s condition, the strange material he collects, and a single flash of light beneath the hull leave the cause open even as they make ordinary neglect seem inadequate.

Initial Evidence and the Jammed Rudder

At the truck’s tailgate, after coughing up harbour water, Anawak has been nominated to explain what he found. Clive Roberts first asks whether mussels had blocked the rudder. Anawak confirms that they appear to be Zebra mussels. The rudder’s failure, in his reconstruction, begins with mussels settled over its shaft: when the helmsman tries to apply five degrees of rudder, the blade does not move, but the obstruction is not recognized. The helmsman therefore tries to move it farther, then applies full force. The rudder breaks free, crushing the mussels in its path without dislodging them. Ground molluscs form a paste that wedges the blade and prevents it from swinging back across the shaft.

The detail makes the failure more than a simple case of a fouled steering surface. In Anawak’s account, the attempt to correct the ship’s course worsens the obstruction: the force that frees the rudder also grinds the mussels into the material that locks it in place. The mechanism is plausible as a sequence, but it does not answer the larger question of how such a heavy infestation accumulated so quickly.

A Possible Sequence of Infestation

Anawak distinguishes the rudder from the propeller. The sea-chests are clear, while the propeller is completely covered with mussels. He considers it unlikely that they attached in Japan, since the rudder had worked normally until the ship reached the two-hundred-mile zone. A rotating propeller, he argues, would be too difficult for even a determined mass of mussels to colonize. That makes the engine’s stoppage a possible turning point: if the propeller stopped, mussels could settle there.

His proposed sequence begins with a large swarm settling on the rudder. Once the rudder jams, the ship heels and the engines are shut down within minutes. With the propeller no longer rotating, more mussels descend onto the rudder, reinforcing the blockage; the infestation then extends over the propeller and along the hull. This reconstruction gives the ship’s loss of steering and the spread of the mussels a possible causal connection, but Anawak does not present it as certain. The crucial transition—from an obstructed rudder to a ship-wide infestation—remains unexplained.

The Hull and the Unidentified Creature

The extent of the growth also conflicts with the ship’s maintenance history. Roberts says the Barrier Queen is inspected constantly and coated with environmentally friendly special paint intended to prevent organisms from attaching; he expects, at most, a few barnacles. Anawak replies that the growth is far beyond that. The hull looks as though it has been exposed for weeks to hordes of mussel larvae, an appearance Roberts finds difficult to reconcile with the short time available and the absence of neglect.

Anawak also reports an encounter during his inspection below the ship. Something shot out toward him from inside the mussel crust. Recalling the moment, he first thinks of stars, then corrects himself: what he saw was a single flash of light. He considers that the creature might have been a squid, too quick for a jellyfish and strong enough to burst through the shells. It appeared when he reached into a crevice, and he wonders whether his knife cut it and triggered a reflexive thrust. But the water was too murky for him to identify it confidently, so this remains a tentative explanation rather than a confirmed species identification.

Samples and the Investigation

Anawak has collected blobs of jelly in a jar and carefully transfers them into a larger container of seawater. He is concerned that the tissue already seems to be decomposing, making prompt handling important. He recommends that Roberts have the dock checked, and that the sealed samples be flown by helicopter to the laboratory in Nanaimo biological hazard isolation zone. Anawak intends to accompany them because he knows who should examine the material.

Roberts draws him aside and asks what he really thinks, stressing that tonnes of mussels could not ordinarily have accumulated in so short a time and that the ship had not been left unattended for weeks. The question preserves the gap between the mechanical account and the biological mystery: Anawak can describe how a blocked rudder might become more firmly jammed, and how stopped machinery might allow the infestation to spread, but he cannot yet explain the speed or scale of the colonization. The samples and the proposed dock inspection turn that uncertainty into a concrete next step rather than a settled conclusion.