Tag: jensen

Growers Cover Up Local Produce

  • If the hydroponics trend continues, strawberries could be available locally everywhere. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

It’s the middle of winter and you’re craving some fresh,
juicy strawberries. Go to your local grocery store and
you’ll find lots of packaged strawberries shipped from the
west coast or down south. For locally grown strawberries,
you have to wait till June if you live in the Midwest. But
that’s starting to change. Jennifer Guerra has the story:

Transcript

It’s the middle of winter and you’re craving some fresh,
juicy strawberries. Go to your local grocery store and
you’ll find lots of packaged strawberries shipped from the
west coast or down south. For locally grown strawberries,
you have to wait till June if you live in the Midwest. But
that’s starting to change. Jennifer Guerra has the story:


I like strawberries. A lot. There’s strawberry rhubarb pie
for starters, strawberry and spinach salad, strawberry
shortcake. But I’ve been on this kick lately of trying to
buy only locally-grown produce, which is admittedly hard to do when you
live in the Midwest, especially with strawberries. Most of
the year, they’re shipped in from Florida and California,
but there is one place in Michigan were you can still pick
strawberries as late as October.


(Guerra:) “The redder the better…that’s too green”


It’s snowing out. I’ve got on the winter coat, the hat, the gloves,
and I’m picking strawberries with Kelly Bowerman.


(Guerra:) “So, which one is this?”


(Bowerman:) “This is a tribute. We have aroma, diamante, and
tribute. Aroma is a nice big berry, diamante’s even a bigger berry,
but it just don’t turn red, it’s oranged-colored, and tribute is smaller with a lot more
flavor.”


(Guerra:) “Alright, let’s get all three. Let’s get a
variety.”


Bowerman calls his strawberries three finger berries, which
he says are roughly the same size as the ones shipped in
from California


(Bowerman and Guerra try strawberries)


And frankly, the strawberries better taste
good, seeing as how Bowerman spent 60,000 dollars on them.


Well, not on the actual berries themselves, but on the
hydroponics system he uses to grow the berries. With
hydroponics, he still grows his strawberries outside, but
instead of planting them in the ground, the runners sit in
pots above the ground in a solution of warm water and
minerals. And since there’s no soil, the strawberries can
grow from June to October without the roots freezing over at
the first sign of cold weather. Still, there’s only so much
a hydroponics system can do on its own:


“He’s gonna find out that people want strawberries at
Christmastime, and so the next step will be to put a
greenhouse over that system and then we have 12 months.”


Merle Jensen is a professor of plant science at the
University of Arizona and he knows his hydroponics. He
knows growers all across the country who’ve started moving
their hydroponics systems inside greenhouses so they can
artificially light the crops. That way, they can produce
year round. But wait, there’s more:


“All of our leafy vegetables – high value fruits like
strawberries – will all be under cover in the next 5 years.
I’m sure of that. It’s a rapid expansion, not only in the
United States, but we see it in Canada, Mexico. So, this is the wave
of the future.”


A future that Jensen swears will taste delicious:


“You know what? I can say that because we can control the
nutrition, the salinity within the root system such that we can
program that product to have more acid and more sugars and better
flavor, and we can do that through hydroponics at will. And local growing is
becoming bigger and bigger all the time. It’s just got an
image of being better.”


Of course in the Midwest, “local” is still pretty relative.
Our Michigan farmer, Kelly Bowerman, says he gets people
from up to 50 miles away to pick his strawberries:


“One guy bought $28 worth of strawberries, and he said that ain’t
no big deal cause it cost me $40 worth of gas to
get here and back.”


And he’ll have to continue putting in that kind of travel
time if he wants to eat locally grown strawberries in the
middle of winter. Unless of course Jensen’s right and
hydroponic greenhouse systems really are the wave of the
future. If so, it might not be too long before Bowerman’s
strawberries show up year round at your supermarket.


Oh, and by the way, I liked the tribute strawberries the
best. They were my favorite.


For the Environment Report, I’m Jennifer Guerra.

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The Invasion of the Quaggas

  • A close-up of the quagga mussel. Quaggas have spread in all of the Great Lakes except Lake Superior. (Photo courtesy of the Michigan Sea Grant Archives)

Whitefish is a main dish for everything from fish boils to fancy dinners all around the Great Lakes region. But in some areas of the Great Lakes, whitefish aren’t doing so well. Rebecca Williams reports on what’s happening to the fish many people love to eat:

Transcript

Whitefish is a main dish for everything from fish boils to fancy dinners all around the Great Lakes region. But in some areas of the Great Lakes, whitefish aren’t doing so well. Rebecca Williams reports on what’s happening to the fish many people love to eat:

(sound of knives getting sharpened and fish being filleted)

Mike Monahan sells fish from all over the world at his seafood market. But he says whitefish is a very popular seller.


“It’s been there forever, and everybody just expects it to be there, and it’s inexpensive. But really it’s a great fish, as far as a nice light delicate fish, I’d put it up against the soles and flounders.”


Monahan says he’s still getting good supplies of whitefish. So, for now, he’s happy.


But some of the people who catch whitefish are worried. Commercial fishers have been hauling in skinnier whitefish in some parts of the lakes. It’s taking whitefish longer to grow to a size worth selling. And in some cases, the fish aren’t fat enough to make a good fillet.


(sound of shorebirds)


Paul Jensen fishes for whitefish in Lake Michigan. He says lately, he’s had to move his boat to deeper waters. That’s because whitefish are hungry and they’re swimming out deeper. They aren’t finding their favorite food. It’s a little shrimp-like creature called Diporeia.


“Diporeia are probably like a Snickers bar to whitefish; they were high in fats, high in lipids and it was their main food – it was very nutritious for them and it affected their growth rate. Eating Diporeia a fish could reach maturity maybe in 18 months or 2 years. Now we’re looking at fish that may take 5 years to get there.”


Whitefish are not eating Diporeia because it’s vanishing. In some places, researchers used to find 10-thousand of the little critters in a square meter of sediment. Now there are very few, or none at all.


Tom Nalepa has been trying to figure out why. Nalepa is a biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab.


“It’s a real scientific puzzle as to why Diporeia is declining. It’s definitely related to the spread of quagga mussels and zebra mussels but that exact negative relationship is kind of elusive at this point in time.”


But Nalepa says he’s sure the invasive mussels are to blame. The mussels got into the Lakes in the ballast tanks of foreign ships. And they’ve spread in all the lakes except Superior.


Tom Nalepa says he’s seen populations of Diporeia crash right around the time the mussels were booming. Nalepa says now, Diporeia’s gone from large areas in most of the Lakes.


That’s bad because Diporeia is an important food source for most of the fish in the Great Lakes.


But for whitefish it’s really crucial. Back in the good old days, Diporeia made up about 80% of their diet.


Tom Nalepa says whitefish are trying to find something else to eat. He’s seeing them switch to a snack food that could make them even skinnier.


They’re starting to eat quagga mussels.


“When whitefish feed on quagga mussels they have to deal with the shell which has no energy content at all and it has to pass the shells through its digestive system so basically the fish feels full when it’s not getting any energy source.”


Nalepa says to the fish, quagga mussels must seem like good food, because there are lots of them.


He says quagga mussels are booming, because they can live in harsher conditions than zebra mussels can. So biologists are predicting quaggas will be even worse for the lakes than zebra mussels.


“Where are things ultimately going to end up? People may just have to get used to fewer fish. Because basically now we’re trading the fish community for the mussel community. The lakes are loaded with mussels instead of fish now. It may be just the way it’s gonna be.”


Some fishermen are already seeing things change. One day last season, Paul Jensen pulled in some of his nets. He was expecting fish.


“It was kind of startling because the amount of quagga mussels that came up with those nets far exceeded the catch of fish. And we hadn’t really equipped the boat with a snow shovel to shovel quagga mussels out of the boat. The impacts are startling because you begin to wonder, if our little net caught these, how many are there and what are the impacts going to be down the road?”


Jensen says he wishes the invaders had never gotten into the lakes in the first place, because there’s no way to predict what effect they’ll have next.


But some scientists worry these changes at the bottom of the food chain will lead to a major collapse of the fish stocks that many people depend on.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Multimillion Dollar Parasite Fight Continues

  • A sea lamprey, the first invasive species in the Great Lakes. (Photo courtesy of the USEPA)

One of the most destructive invasive species in the Great Lakes was also the first one to arrive. The sea lamprey invaded the Lakes more than a hundred years ago, and no one’s been able to get rid of it. As Rebecca Williams reports, it’s the only invader in the Lakes that managers have been able to control… but it takes millions of taxpayers’ dollars every year to keep the blood-sucking parasite in check, and there’s no end in sight:

Transcript

One of the most destructive invasive species in the Great Lakes was also the first one to arrive. The sea lamprey invaded the Lakes more than a hundred years ago, and no one’s been able to get rid of it. As Rebecca Williams reports, it’s the only invader in the Lakes that managers have been able to control… but it takes millions of taxpayers’ dollars every year to keep the blood-sucking parasite in check, and there’s no end in sight:

(Sounds of tank bubbling)


There’s a sea lamprey sucking on Marc Gaden’s hand.


“You can see he’s really got my thumb now, I’ll try and pull him off my thumb – this is a suction cup (popping sound of lamprey being detached).”


Gaden is with the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. It’s a group that was created by the US and Canadian governments with one main purpose: to control the sea lamprey. Gaden isn’t in any actual danger when a lamprey’s hanging on him. They don’t feed on warm-blooded creatures. But fish are another story.


“The mouth is ringed with sharp teeth, row after row of these sharp teeth, and in the middle of the mouth there is a tongue that flicks out and it’s sharp as a razor. What that tongue does is files its way through the side of the fish’s scales and skin and then the sea lamprey has access to blood and body fluids of the fish and that’s what it does, it feeds on them.”


Sea lamprey get fat drinking fish blood and fluids. They leave bloody holes in the side of fish, wounds that often kill the fish. Each lamprey can kill 40 pounds of fish a year.


Lamprey got into the lakes through manmade canals that connected to the Atlantic Ocean. By the 1940’s, the exotic species had invaded every one of the Great Lakes. Marc Gaden says by the 1950’s, lampreys had killed off most of the big predator fish in the Lakes.


“There’s literature around that time period that talked about gaping bloody wounds that commercial fishermen were finding on their catch, the commercial catch was beginning to go down the tubes, also because of overfishing, but sea lamprey was a major cause of that decline.”


Paul Jensen’s family used to fish for the popular lake trout before the lamprey wiped them out. Jensen now fishes for whitefish. He’s one of a small pool of commercial fishers who still pull a living from the Lakes.


“Every port along southern Michigan had commercial fishermen. South Haven, St. Joseph, Ludington, Manistee… There aren’t any, they’re gone. And one of the main reasons they’re gone, I think can be traced back to sea lamprey.”


Jensen says most commercial fishers these days have to do more than catch fish. He also runs a marina and builds research boats. Jensen says commercial fishers either had to adapt to the changes the lampreys brought or get out of the business.


“The whole food chain has just been devastated and turned upside down by exotics, and it’s been kind of a mystery; we have no clue as to where it’s gonna go. We’re glad with what we’re getting but I don’t know if we have much control of where it’s going.”


The people who manage fisheries have been wrestling for control over the sea lamprey. Marc Gaden says the lamprey control program has reduced the parasites’ numbers by 90 percent over the past 50 years. But he says lampreys have recently rebounded above target levels in several areas of the Great Lakes.


“It goes to show you these are crafty beasts. Even though they’re primitive and haven’t evolved much since the time of the dinosaurs, they still will find ways in which to spread and find new stream habitats and we always have to try our best to stay one step ahead of them.”


Gaden says the fishery commission has been aggressively treating the areas where lamprey numbers are too high. The main method is a lampricide that kills lamprey when they spawn in streams. Researchers are also working on chemical attractants to lure lampreys into traps.


But all of this takes money. Since the 1950’s, the US and Canada have spent about $300 million to keep lampreys in check. Marc Gaden says that sounds like a lot of money, until you look at the value of the fishery. It’s valued at about 4 billion dollars a year.


“So the amount of money we spend, upwards of 20 million a year, to keep lampreys under control, is a tiny fraction of the value of that fishery. But nevertheless it’s a cost we’re going to have to endure in perpetuity because the lampreys are not going away.”


But the Bush Administration’s proposed budget cut some of the funding for lamprey control. The fishery commission is hopeful that Congress will restore the funding. Marc Gaden says if we want any sport fishing, any tribal fishing, any commercial fishing… lampreys have to be kept under control, and that takes steady funding from Congress.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Mud Snail Slimes Into Great Lakes

A foreign invasive species is spreading to new areas. It’s a snail that could spread in huge numbers and compete with fish for food. The GLRC’s Mike Simonson reports:

Transcript

A foreign invasive species is spreading to new areas. It’s a snail that could
spread in huge numbers and compete with fish for food. The GLRC’s Mike
Simonson reports:


The New Zealand Mudsnail has made its way to Lake Superior. It had already
been identified in Lake Ontario. These snails become dense on a river or lake
bottom. Minnesota Seagrant Aquatic Species expert Doug Jensen says it’s like
having half a million in the space of a bathtub. They can squeeze out bottom
dwelling organisms that fish eat. Jensen says native fish eat New Zealand
Mudsnails, but the fish don’t digest them:


“They can pass through the guts of fish and potentially waterfowl and then
survive that situation and then breed in a new location, where ever they’re
deposited. They reproduce asexually. They produce clones of themselves; they
don’t need a male to establish a new colony.”


The snails are the latest on a long list of invasive species that have likely been
carried in by foreign ships.


For the GLRC, I’m Mike Simonson.

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