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."

Comments

Great story of unintended consequences

[Todd Palin]

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.