A researcher says the decline of some tiny aquatic animals at the bottom of the food chain continues in the Great Lakes. The GLRC’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
A researcher says the decline of some tiny aquatic animals at
the bottom of the food chain continues in the Great Lakes. The
GLRC’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
There’ve already been some signs that organisms vital as food for
Great Lakes fish are dropping in numbers. Now comes the first batch of data collected
for the EPA in all five lakes from 2001 to 2005.
Project Director Mary Balcer of the University of Wisconsin-Superior
highlights one species that seems to be in more trouble:
“One of the more important things is that the diaporeia are disappearing. These are small
shrimp-like animals that live down in the bottom sediment. And scientists had been noting
decline in Lake Michigan and Lake Huron for several years and our data confirms that
the organism are continuing to go down in numbers.”
Balcer says scientists believe zebra mussels might stealing the food
the tiny organisms used to eat.
For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach