AIS best practices

I read a post here recently about Canada requiring a 4-6 week drying period of your boat before entering CA. Not sure what province they were entering but I got this from ON in an email. The Best Management Practices for preventing the spread of AIS. The regulations are not legal requirements but I’m guessing your boat could be barred from entry if it appeared to be contaminated. I don’t know how to post a link from my phone so I’m including screenshots.

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They will turn you away if they find zebra mussels 100%, even if they are not attached and you can remove them by hand. This is different than MN law. In MN, it is not legal to launch with attached AIS, but if you remove it you are good to go, whether that is by hand or with a pressure washer. At the border, they deny entry until they see a time-stamped picture of the boat being decontaminated by a hot-water pressure washer, which they do not provide at the border. I talked to a guy recently who had a small clump of mussels in his transom area, nothing attached, and he had to drive all the way to Detroit Lakes to have hot water sprayed on a clean boat for a photo op.

I see that Mn DNR has 26 decontamination sites around the state. I wonder if a guy could offer that service in a border town and be licensed or something?
A car wash would be able to do it for a fee and give you a certificate for the border control.

Just have your boat cleaned before you leave home and you won’t need to worry about.

I think you’re right Dutch. And my spidey sense tells me that this is going to be a big issue going forward.

I just got back from there, yesterday we crossed into Ontario at I-Falls on 6/24 and they never asked when my boat was in the water last.

I had heard of 1 other guy being asked when his boat was last in the water but that was all they asked from what I read. After hearing about it, I made sure I cleaned my boat inside and outside as best I could

Thanks for the update. I’m keeping my ears open on this one. No firm plans but I might go to Kenora in August.