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

They should try Sharks with lasers

[Anonymous Coward]

Because seriously, everything is better with lasers.

Everything

Fear the Asian carp

[larry_larry]

Let's hope the Asian carp doesn't take hold in Lake Huron.

Re:Fear the Asian carp

[Anonymous Coward]

When it does, lay the blame squarely on the City of Chicago. Electric barriers are not going to keep them out.

Re:Fear the Asian carp

[Anonymous Coward]

You know you're going to up to your gills with people carping on about racism -- some out of ignorance, and some will do it just for the halibut.

Re:Fear the Asian carp

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer to invasive species like Asian carp is to introduce seals into the Great Lakes. Of course, you will need some polar bears to keep the seals in check.

Re:Fear the Asian carp

[theshowmecanuck]

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.

Re:Fear the Asian carp

[khallow]

I can't picture what you think the traffic flow is like. My understanding is that there's a lot of iron ore shipments going both ways (some mining occurs in both the Mississippi River basin and the Great Lakes, similarly, there's steelworks in both the Mid-Atlantic states and southern Alabama. Further, ships need to return so there would always be two-way traffic going through the Chicago canal.

Re:Fear the Asian carp

[onepoint]

While I know the above is all for a good laugh, but there is a small solution to the carp problem that could stem the flow. Figure out if the fish is any good for pet food. Then, if it's viable, legalize the sale of it to processors for non-commercial fisherman. Once a fisherman knows he can legally sell his catch, he's going to think, fuel is paid from the processor and I've got myself a vacation.
While not the greatest solution, it's a simple and fun way to slow the fish down from crossing over into the lakes. Seems like a low risk solution.
Also, while not a common food here in the USA, I ate carp a while back. It tasted fine, no bones to complain about, maybe it could turn into a retail fish for consumers.

Re:Fear the Asian carp

[Bob the Super Hamste]

They already are classed as an invasive species so can likely be caught in any amount by anyone. They are a fairly fun fish to bring in and make good fertilizer for the garden so I am doing my part to try and control the problem. I probably catch 20-30 of them a year in the early spring and fall and hand them out to neighbors and family who are looking to improve the soil in their gardens. Add to it that they are pretty easy to catch, a yellow leadhead with a nigh crawler bounced off the bottom seems to work really well in pool 2 on the Mississippi, so it is a great way to introduce a kid to fishing as they can actually catch some big fish without much effort.

Re:Fear the Asian carp

[ClayDowling]

If the Asian Carp shares the same fate as the rest of the invasive species that have infiltrated the lakes, expect walleye to start eating them sooner rather than later. Already walleye are eating zebra mussels and brown gobies. The downside is that the walleye fishery has changed a lot, because they're no longer interested in the bait that fishermen have to offer.

Re:Fear the Asian carp

[An dochasac]

Even if the canal were closed, it is a just a matter of time until someone with an evil bent or an adolescent sense of humor deliberately introduces a few carp into the lake -- that's all that's needed.

To those who still claim that humans are far too small to effect the environment, the Great Lakes are a great counterexample. Three times in my lifetime I've watched the biological ecosystem of these lakes change dramatically. The 70s Alewife invasions made hundreds of miles of beaches unbearable, the zebra mussels cleared the water but gave small fish no place to hide and allowed sunlight through to cause the huge blue-green algae blooms that shutdown Toledo's water supply this summer. The Asian carp carp invasion of the Great Lakes is a foregone conclusion. Their DNA is already in Lake Michigan and more exotic species such as the Yangzee river freshwater jellyfish are already found in tiny isolated inland lakes in the Wisconsin north woords. There isn't enough law enforcement to check all of the jet skis, kayaks, ski-boats, sailboats, fishing boats and prevent deliberate introduction. It's already too late, sustainability is impossible. Resilience and/or recovery are our only options.

Re:Fear the Asian carp

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly!
I proposed a fix and they said I was mad. My fix would have completely cleaned up the Asian Carp problem and not involved any silly electric barriers.
You see, Bull Sharks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... are fresh water capable. They have an organ that allows them to do salinity adjustments in their body so they can adapt to fresh water. In the early 1900s one was actually caught near Chicago.
So we start stocking the Mississippi with lots of young hungry bull sharks.
They will grow at amazing speed as they stuff themselves with the Asian Carp. With the abundant carp I think they should pass world record sizes in the first year or two. Imagine how many carp a bull shark that is bigger than Australian great white, can eat in a day.
Those carp will be gone in short order and I will have ridden my fame to another new job and completely forgotten the shark project by then.

Re:Fear the Asian carp

[Herve5]

Why did you post AC? I miss a /. friend now :-)

Re:News for nerds

[meerling]

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.

Re:Just like the economy

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't call the collapse of the salmon a failure. By introducing them, the invasive alewives were greatly reduced in number, which gave the native lake trout and walleyes a chance to recover.

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.

Re:Great story of unintended consequences

[Mspangler]

"gradually moving toward restoration of something that resembles, at least faintly, the original lake trout and perch ecosystem"

The original ecosystem was a very large block of ice as of 25,000 years ago. The repopulation of the lakes after the glaciers melted back was very like the "freshly filled reservoir in the West." The upper Mississippi could repopulate from southern reaches, but how did the native (to humans) fish get back in the Lakes in the first place?

Re:Great story of unintended consequences

[i.r.id10t]

Fish eggs are sticky, and will stick to the legs of wading birds at one pond/stream/lake and wash off in another.

Lampreys in the Great Lakes

[handy_vandal]

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

Wrong conclusion: not "unintended consequences"

[mveloso]

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.

Re:Wrong conclusion: not "unintended consequences"

[kesuki]

my biggest problem with the fine article because it jumped around more than inception. it was not written in sequence or with suitable foreshadowing for the 'jumps' it made.

for maximum understanding and widest audience appeal it should only jump around when needed. the story should first use the first two paragraphs to sum the story, for the people who skim. after that it should have a clean flow of events in the order they occur chronologically. this isn't spider-man, and i realize how when writing you might want to simply put things in when you think of it, but the final draft should have those sections cut and pasted to the chronological timeline and then polished into the final draft.

Re:Wrong conclusion: not "unintended consequences"

[hey!]

Meanwhile here in New England, the alewives' natural range, shad and alewives are so endangered it's illegal to take one except in a few larger rivers. The springtime herring run are largely gone, along with the massive influx of marine nutrients they brought to fresh waters.

One of the things that always mystified me growing up fishing here was the incredible uniformity of freshwater fish species across water bodies with very little geographic connection. New England is dotted with thousands of small ponds, and they all have more or less the same fish. Even tiny little ponds of a few acres with no major tributaries and only seasonal outlets will have bluegill, yellow perch, and probably a few black bass lurking somewhere and reportedly some pike or muskellenge. How did they get there? And why aren't fish like bluegill from different watersheds distinctive, the way the finches Darwin found in different Galapagos islands were different? Surely natural dispersion of these fish across the whole region would have taken thousands of years.

I was recently reading about the history of dams in the US, and got the answer. In the late 1800s inland fisheries across the country were collapsing because of dam building for powering mills, so the federal government set about restocking ponds and streams across the country. The scale must have been mind boggling, because you can find the same fish in tiny, isolated ponds that don't show up except on detailed topographical maps. Even the neighbors seem scarcely aware of these ponds, but at some point maybe a hundred years ago the federal government planted fish there.

Looked at one way it was an astonishingly successful effort. There's almost no body of water in New England larger than a persistent puddle where a competent angler will catch *nothing*. And there are ponds not ten miles from Boston I can be certain of catching a half dozen crappie in a day and one or two largemouth bass -- certainly not trophy size, but enough to put up a game fight. But I often wonder what was in these waters before we crashed and rebooted the fish populations.

Re:Wrong conclusion: not "unintended consequences"

[Feral Nerd]

Meanwhile here in New England, the alewives' natural range, shad and alewives are so endangered it's illegal to take one except in a few larger rivers. The springtime herring run are largely gone, along with the massive influx of marine nutrients they brought to fresh waters.

One of the things that always mystified me growing up fishing here was the incredible uniformity of freshwater fish species across water bodies with very little geographic connection. New England is dotted with thousands of small ponds, and they all have more or less the same fish. Even tiny little ponds of a few acres with no major tributaries and only seasonal outlets will have bluegill, yellow perch, and probably a few black bass lurking somewhere and reportedly some pike or muskellenge. How did they get there? And why aren't fish like bluegill from different watersheds distinctive, the way the finches Darwin found in different Galapagos islands were different? Surely natural dispersion of these fish across the whole region would have taken thousands of years.

I was recently reading about the history of dams in the US, and got the answer. In the late 1800s inland fisheries across the country were collapsing because of dam building for powering mills, so the federal government set about restocking ponds and streams across the country. The scale must have been mind boggling, because you can find the same fish in tiny, isolated ponds that don't show up except on detailed topographical maps. Even the neighbors seem scarcely aware of these ponds, but at some point maybe a hundred years ago the federal government planted fish there.

Looked at one way it was an astonishingly successful effort. There's almost no body of water in New England larger than a persistent puddle where a competent angler will catch *nothing*. And there are ponds not ten miles from Boston I can be certain of catching a half dozen crappie in a day and one or two largemouth bass -- certainly not trophy size, but enough to put up a game fight. But I often wonder what was in these waters before we crashed and rebooted the fish populations.

That may be part of the explanation but It's not quite that simple. Canada and Scandinavia for example are dotted with isolated mountain lakes that also have various fish species living in them but in this part of the world there has never been an intentional large scale stocking effort which has long puzzled biologists. The current theory is that the eggs of the fish or the larvae are carried between lakes in in the feathers of water birds.

Re:Wrong conclusion: not "unintended consequences"

[Attila Dimedici]

because you can find the same fish in tiny, isolated ponds that don't show up except on detailed topographical maps. Even the neighbors seem scarcely aware of these ponds, but at some point maybe a hundred years ago the federal government planted fish there.

The problem with your theory is that I know for a fact that those same fish show up in ponds that did not exist a hundred years ago. For that matter I know that those fish show up in ponds that the federal government (nor any other organization) ever planted fish in. The reason I know this is that I know the people who built the ponds and owned the land they were situated on when fish started to appear in them. And yes, some of these ponds now have fish in them, even though no one put them there and there is no way for fish to swim there from elsewhere.

Re:Wrong conclusion: not "unintended consequences"

[clintp]

One of the things that always mystified me growing up fishing here was the incredible uniformity of freshwater fish species across water bodies with very little geographic connection. New England is dotted with thousands of small ponds, and they all have more or less the same fish. Even tiny little ponds of a few acres with no major tributaries and only seasonal outlets will have bluegill, yellow perch, and probably a few black bass lurking somewhere and reportedly some pike or muskellenge. How did they get there? And why aren't fish like bluegill from different watersheds distinctive, the way the finches Darwin found in different Galapagos islands were different?

From Michigan here, lots of unconnected lakes and ponds here too.

It was always explained to me that they get there carried on the feet of waterfowl. Ducks and such land in the shallows and weeds, feet get covered in eggs. Ducks move on. Sometimes they're stocked by property owners or the DNR.

The fish *are* genetically diverse. Big fishing tournaments rely on this fact and do genetic testing on fish to make sure they came from the correct lake.

Is it really true?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The story sounds a little too fishy.

Re:Genetic viability is also a long term concern

[Required Snark]

The shorter version: you didn't bother to read the article.

It talks a lot about the actual decision making process, which you did not reference. It also goes into great detail on how sport fishing has been a major driving force in fishery policy since the introduction of salmon in the late 1960's. It ends with the current dilemma of balancing between the re-emergence of trout as the primary sport fish vs the salmon, which are not doing well. The irony is that a trout friendly ecosystem is much closer to the way the lakes were before the man made changes that lead to the introduction of salmon in the first place.

You'd rather just whine in complete ignorance rather then read something interesting and become more knowledgeable. Pathetic.

Some of us

[Ungrounded Lightning]

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.