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How One Man Changed the Ecology of the Great Lakes With Salmon
An anonymous reader writes During the sixties the Great Lakes were facing an ecological disaster due to invasive species and over fishing. Biologist Howard Tanner's solution to the problem was to bring in another non-native species, the Pacific salmon. Fishing boomed for many years but with the recent salmon crash in Lake Huron many wonder if the salmon were a band-aid on a ecological wound that's too big to fix. From the article: "Tanner's goal wasn't to just alter the species composition of the lakes; he wanted to change the public's relationship with the lakes themselves. Beyond pier fishing for perch and smallmouth bass, fishing in the lakes primarily had been the domain of relatively few commercial fishing crews using big boats and nets to harvest lake trout, perch, whitefish and chubs for restaurants and stores. But because these commercially fished native species had been so destroyed by overfishing and the lamprey and alewife infestations, Tanner inherited something of a blank slate — almost like a freshly filled reservoir in the West. He had little interest in trying to repaint the same old picture, but wanted instead to turn the waters over to large numbers of sportsmen who fished as much for thrill as fillet."
Because seriously, everything is better with lasers.
Everything
Let's hope the Asian carp doesn't take hold in Lake Huron.
No no we can yell at each other about you know... uh ...issues.
Most stories posted to this site are of this ilk. They are looking for 1000+ discussions of who is right or wrong. We give it to them every time :(
Is biology no longer a science? Is this not relevant to issues in the bioTECH sector?
The natural environment is a survival of the fittest game where most actors look out for their own interests - pretty much like an economy. Is it any surprise that in both cases when we try to perform top-down management we fail due to unintended consequences?
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
It's just the whiners. If it was an article about how slashdot moderates and scores posts with an extraterrestrial artificial intelligence package somebody would still post claiming that it's not relevant and not interesting why is this on slashdot.
What a great illustration of ecosystem complexity and unintended consequences that involves salmon, alewives, lamprey, zebra mussels, quagga mussels, and round gobies, all of which are non-native to the great lakes. After half a century of unpredicted swings of boom and bust the fishery managers are gradually moving toward restoration of something that resembles, at least faintly, the original lake trout and perch ecosystem. I'm sure more unintended consequences will be revealed as this plays out, but the ride certainly reveals the pitfalls of messing with mother nature.
chilean sea bass just gives the the creeps.
Esra Erimez
Four lampreys are native to the Michigan Great Lakes region. Two are parasitic; two not. The two parasitic species, while they cause deep wounds, rarely kill their hosts.
The Sea Lamprey is the relatively recent invader (1930s-40s) which has caused ecological havoc.
THE FIVE LAMPREYS OF MICHIGAN' 5 GREAT LAKES
-kgj
America is the land of non-natives anyway
They are a delicacy in France and could probably be used as dog food or a protein enhancer for other food stocks.
Commercial fishing crews hate him!
This is totally not a story about unintended consequences. If you read all three parts (which is a great read), you'll see that the cycle went like this:
Native fish taken out by alweifes
Alewifes taken out by Salmon
Salmon taken out by too few alewives (overfeeding)
Native species recover, because of no alewifes
The original guy did exactly what he set out to do: destroy alewives with salmon and build a fishing economy. That was pretty successful. After that population crashed they eventually discovered that the original fish came back, due to the lack of alewives.
The unintended consequences in this case are positive - marine biologists were able to learn something totally unexpected by doing experiments on a large scale.
The original goal was never to get the native species back; it was to make the lakes back into a commercial fishery. Is the state today "better" because the native species are back? Who knows. Just because things are status quo ante doesn't mean it's better. That population is just as vulnerable to a die off as it used to be.
That's why it's better to read the article instead of skimming it.
Writes a song about him, THEN you know he mattered. Until that time, he's just like any one else looking for their 15 minutes.
And "sport fishing" is right up ther with "golf is a sport" crowd.
The story sounds a little too fishy.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The Salmon Cannon.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
A lot of people seem to think that Slashdot is only supposed to be about IT, even though IT is just the most uninteresting part of computer technology. It's the janitor part of computers.
There was no crow in Singapore
There was no rabbit in Australia
There was no salmon in the Great Lakes
There was no black in the Americas
BUT NOW THERE ARE !!
No matter if it's Salmon in the Great Lakes, or Crows in Singapore, or Rabbits in Australia, or Blacks in the Americas, all these are examples of ecology being totally fucked up by White Skin human beings
Out west, where the original Oncorhynchus (so called Great Lakes salmon and Rainbow trout) stock came from we are experiencing a decline in the viability of stocks because of hatchery methods. Perhaps the decline in stocks in Lake Huron is partly due to this problem as well as a drop in feed levels. The entire marine habitat of the Georgia Straight as well as the Straights of Juan de Fuca is losing resident native strains of Oncorhynchus because of the loss of viable in stream rearing habitat on the rivers and creeks that are essential to the life cycle of west coast salmon.
In turn we are seeing a drop in populations of many native species that predate upon the salmon, including the resident Orca pods.
Out here our answer to the problems is to use the few remaining herring and instead feed it to farmed salmon in pens. In fact one of the arguements for the expansion of the fish farming industry is the fact that we have screwed up the viability of the existing one, so go ahead mess it up completely! As the genetic viability of the hatchery stocks declines over the next few decades then just maybe we might start to take action in the place where it is needed most, kicking out the idiots who are doing the damage and exposing the practices of fish farming for what they are not what they pretend to be.
Just maybe the loss of the sport fishery in the Great Lakes will serve as a wake up call to the idiots who oversee the fisheries, if not it is time to turf them out of their fat chairs in Ottawa, Washington and the provinces of BC, Ontario and states like Michigan where the management of our fisheries has become the realm of short sighted morons who bend to industrial interests.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
attacking US of A. As we see nothing Putin does works but Asian invasion of US waters is highly successful. Time to start teh bohmbehrs?
Ah, I see. An acolyte of The Invisible Hand!
A lot of people seem to think that Slashdot is only supposed to be about IT, even though IT is just the most uninteresting part of computer technology. It's the janitor part of computers.
It's because IT employees don't get anything else. Don't take their slashdot, too!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Frankly both the invasive carp as well as the snake head fish are something that interest fishermen and others. Opinions may vary but I'd bet money that a few people will quite deliberately sneak both species into the great lakes. Obviously when this occurs other species may not be able to do well at all but the fishermen will be able to easely catch carp and snake heads. Although the carp would be better raised in fish farms they could be considered a resource as they taste ok. We have had snale heads in south Florida since 1980 and maybe even before that. I've caught quite a few but never cooked one. They are simply a larger version of the American bowfin which have always existed in Florida.
How One Man Changed the Ecology of the Great Lakes With Salmon
Seems to me like the salmon did all the hard work.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
This is relevant to nerds and technology how?
Some of us are eco-nerds.
Seriously. Planets and space habitats will need ecological engineering - the real stuff, not the eco-wacko knee-jerks.
Examinations of how this horrendously complex system works when tweaked are definitely "news for nerds" and "stuff that matters".
There are lots of different sorts of nerds, and lots of nerds geek out on many different technologies each. If you sometimes see nerd-fodder that isn't on one of YOUR subjects on Slashdot, suck it up and shut up, while the nerds of THAT topic finally get to have THEIR conversation.
We get enough of that disruptive raining-on-our-parade from the jocks.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I was thinking a fishing quota for residents and commercial fishing would solve the issue of overfishing. Maybe I am missing something. Plus people need to be educated about bringing non-native species to an environment. Look at the impacts cane toads in Australia or the Northern Snakehead fish in the mid-Atlantic States in the United States of America. Just saying.
I'm a northern IL local, and sometimes fish Lake Michigan.
The big new threat of late is the Goby, which as far as I know no native fish feed on. It's sort of like a Sculpin (which is native), but it's what all the local fishermen have been bitching about.
The asian carp may eventually come, but there's a pretty effective eradication program underway on the IL river. There's a company that has started to harvest them to sell as food and fertilizer. I can't find the YT video offhand, but there's one floating around of the commercial fishermen filling up their boats with gill nets. Apparently, after removing millions of fish over the last few years, they are starting to really put a dent in their numbers, to the point where they mention it's not as profitable as it used to be.
Would you like some cane toads?
One of her give away shows should do it:
"You get a carp!"
"You get a carp!"
Some of us nerds enjoy fishing the very waters discussed in this article. If you think folks don't nerd out about fishing, you haven't spent much time around fishermen.
Easy Online Role Playing Campaign Management
I have sport-fished salmon in lake Michigan, and it was great. A lot of fun, and good eating. Caught a few really nice trout, too. I do worry, though, about the decline of commercial fishing in the great lakes (gosh, the whitefish that used to get pulled out of those lakes was incredible!), the zebra mussels and the asian carp.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R