A spiny fish that can hunt in the dark has invaded Lake Michigan. The foreign fish is known as the Eurasian ruffe. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie MacDowell reports, biologists fear the ruffe could harm the lake’s yellow perch population:
Transcript
A spiny fish that can hunt in the dark has invaded Lake Michigan. The foreign fish is known as the Eurasian ruffe. And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie MacDowell reports, biologists fear the ruffe could harm the lake’s yellow perch population:
Experts say the ruffe is originally from the Black and Caspian seas, and it’s an
efficient little machine. It lays enormous numbers of eggs and has no predators because of its spiny skin. Gary Lamberti is a professor in the department of biological sciences at the University of Notre Dame.
He says the ruffe are depleting the yellow perch’s food supply.
“The Eurasian ruffe are specialists on that food, that is they eat that food all the
time. And those are the worms and aquatic insects that are found at the bottom of
the lake. That’s what ruffe eat and that’s also what perch eat at a certain stage of
their lives. But ruffe do it all the time and they do it better.”
Lamberti says the yellow perch’s population is already declining in the Great Lakes,
probably due to competition from many invasive species.
The ruffe could be another blow to the commercial fishing industry, as yellow perch
are widely harvested for food and are a favorite among sportsmen.
The Eurasian ruffe probably migrated from Lake Superior, where they were first
discovered in the 80’s.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Annie MacDowell.