![]() ![]() In northern Lake Huron where we have so many young wild fish it seems redundant to be also stocking. The return of lake trout as the big predator might result in a more stable ecosystem. Johnson says with the alewives gone, lake trout are now getting the nutrients they need, so they don’t need much more help from federal hatcheries. It doesn’t appear that alewives can ever recover. That happened about ten years ago, mainly because there were too many salmon eating them. But those stocked fish couldn’t reproduce, until the alewives disappeared. The federal government has hatched almost 100 million lake trout since 1972 and put them in Lake Huron. When lake trout eat alewives, it causes all kinds of problems in eggs and young fish because of a vitamin deficiency. “But then, with the collapse of alewives, everything changed.”Īlewives are a little feeder fish that come from the Atlantic Ocean. The litany of challenges working against the reestablishment of a self-sustaining lake trout population seemed insurmountable,” Johnson said. “I felt we were so completely stymied by one thing after another after another. Johnson’s been working on the lake for 25 years and for most of that time it looked hopeless. He runs the Department of Natural Resources research station in Alpena. Jim Johnson never thought he’d see the day when lake trout recovered in Lake Huron. ![]() Then the sea lamprey came in and sucked the life out of the lake trout populations. The Lakes would produce 15 million pounds of the fish every year. Lake trout used to be a mainstay of Great Lakes commercial fishing in the first half of the twentieth century. Lake trout are suddenly doing what biologists have been trying to get them to do for more than 40 years: They’re making babies. Go lake trout! Native fish overcome seemingly ‘insurmountable’ challenges in Lake HuronĪ fish that was almost wiped out in the Great Lakes is making a comeback in Lake Huron. Michigan Radio is making a free audio CD of this series and the accompanying photo slide show available for educational use. Support for this series is provided by the Great Lakes Fishery Trust. Updated reports will also be posted each day on this page. You can listen to the reports on Michigan Radio (91.7 FM in Southeast Michigan, 104.1 FM in West Michigan, 91.1 FM in Flint) Monday, Sept. These changes impact both sport fishermen and the commercial fishing industry, which together contribute an estimated $5 billion to the Great Lakes economy.The Environment Report is examining this issue in a special five part series, In Warm Water: Fish & the Changing Great Lakes. In addition, harmful algal blooms are creating dead zones that are bad news for fish, and impact boaters and everyone else that enjoys being on or near the water. This could make it harder for native cold water fish to survive, and give invasive species an edge. Warming air and water, shorter winters with less snow and ice and more extreme weather are impacting the lakes and the fish that live there. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |