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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."
When it does, lay the blame squarely on the City of Chicago. Electric barriers are not going to keep them out.
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
This... anonymous or not, deserves upward moderation. The non-natural Chicago canal is where they will come from. If and when they come, the carp have the potential to destroy at a minimum a 7 billion dollar industry. Chicago says they need the waterway to allow iron ore shipments, but there other ways to ship the ore which needs to be delivered to wherever it is loaded onto boats in the first place. i.e. they can deliver it to the Illinois River instead of to the great lakes and then via the canal.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
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.