And quite a few that were older than 100 yrs. The Tennessee state gem is the pearl, taken from mussels in the fresh water rivers of the state. There is a multi-million dollar shell export industry in the midwestern United States. Mussels are harvested in the south where they are shipped to Japan for the pearl industry. There is a scene where Burt Lancaster is brailling for freshwater mussels.
Brailes are crowfoot dredges used to harvest freshwater mussels in the south.
You can tell where former stream confluences were by looking at the distribution of freshwater mussels. Muscle Shoals is an area on the Tennessee River in Northern Alabama. A. E. Ortmann, in 1924, noted that up to 80 species of freshwater mussels belonging to 29 genera were once found there. Send an E-mail .