A little girl holds a minnow in her hands. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
For decades now, we’ve been pushing
the limits on how much fish we can
catch. Mark Brush has been looking
at the recent trends:
Transcript
For decades now, we’ve been pushing
the limits on how much fish we can
catch. Mark Brush has been looking
at the recent trends:
If you look at the news, you get the picture. Declining salmon runs in British Columbia. Herring season cancelled along the West Coast. And tuna populations nearing collapse.
Over-fishing and damage to the environment are big problems in the world’s oceans, but you see declining fish stocks in the nation’s freshwater bodies as well.
Bill Carlson’s family has been fishing the Great Lakes since the 1870s. They catch fish called chub. But the chub are in serious decline.
“The chub population has just taken a real plunge, but we’re not sure what we’re experiencing is just a change in their habitat.”
These fish go through boom and bust periods. But since the chub’s main food source has disappeared, some biologists think the chub will have a tough time making a comeback.
So between over-fishing and environmental damage, the only good news seems to come from areas where there are strict rules in place – giving these fish stocks a chance to bounce back.
A close view of salmon eggs and developing salmon fry. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
A federal judge says the Obama
Administration soon has to come
up with a plan to restore endangered
salmon runs to the Pacific Northwest’s
biggest rivers. Ann Dornfeld went
gill net fishing on the Columbia
River to find out what’s at stake:
Transcript
A federal judge says the Obama
Administration soon has to come
up with a plan to restore endangered
salmon runs to the Pacific Northwest’s
biggest rivers. Ann Dornfeld went
gill net fishing on the Columbia
River to find out what’s at stake:
(sound of a boat moving through water)
Gary Soderstrom is a fourth-generation Columbia River salmon fisherman. Even though it’s his work, on a sunny summer day there are few places he’d rather be than casting a gill net on this tranquil bay near the mouth of the Columbia.
“Just being this far from the dock, it’s just a whole different world! All the nights and the days I’ve put out here, I still feel good when I get out here.” (laughs)
Soderstrom – or Suds, as he’s better known – says gillnetters today catch salmon pretty much the same way his great-great-grandfather caught them. The main difference today is motors help fishers lay out and reel in their nets.
(sound of reel squeaking as net is laid)
“See how he’s layin’ up the bank here, and then he’s gonna go across. That’ll create a trap for the fish if he leads ’em over to the beach, and they might get confused.”
The technique might not have changed much. But this river has. These days, a dozen species of salmon and steelhead on the Columbia are listed as endangered. One of the biggest factors is the hydroelectric dam system that provides most of the power to the Pacific Northwest. Those dams keep young salmon from making it to the ocean. Suds says that’s why his son won’t be a fifth generation fisherman.
“There used to be several thousand fishermen on the Columbia at one time. Now there’s a couple hundred of us that are still active. Most guys like my son and them have went and got other jobs to try and raise families on.”
Federal law requires the government to restore the endangered salmon runs. For years, fishers and environmental groups have been calling for the removal of four dams on the Snake River, a tributary of the Columbia.
But the Clinton and Bush Administrations backed other plans to restore salmon runs. Those plans ranged from spilling a small portion of water through the dams to trucking baby salmon around the dams. Federal courts rejected those plans as insufficient. Now a federal judge has told the Obama Administration it has until mid-September to come up with a plan that goes far beyond the scheme President Bush proposed last year.
Ann Dornfeld: “What do you think is the chance that they’re gonna take out the dams?”
Gary Soderstrom: “Well, about like me winnin’ the Powerball! (laughs) I mean, don’t think it’s ever gonna happen, but realistically, it’d work.”
Suds says he’d also like to see tougher restrictions put on farmers who irrigate their crops with water from the Columbia.
“Irrigation systems, a lot of them are still water hogs. I think they should be forced into using the least amount of water they can get by with.”
It’s been about 15 minutes, and it’s time to reel in the nets.
(sound of reeling in nets)
We’ve brought in one 17-pound coho.
(sound of salmon hitting the floor)
But like most of the other fish caught on the Columbia these days, it was raised in a hatchery upstream.
Suds says for years he’s been volunteering his time on advisory councils and boards throughout the state to try to restore the habitat that once brought millions of salmon down the river the natural way. But what he’d really like to do is meet with President Obama and explain the river’s history to him firsthand.
“But in my situation, being a peon fisherman, you’ll never get to talk to a guy like him. Y’know, if you could bring him out here and show him what I’ve shown you today, maybe he’d have a clearer understanding of what’s going on out here.”
Suds Soderstrom says he wants the president to make good on his promise to let science dictate his policies, rather than politics – which always seem to favor development.
“Sooner or later you’re either gonna have fish or people. And the people seem to be winning.”
The new Administration has until September 15th to propose its plan to save endangered salmon. The federal judge who’s been overseeing the process for years has made one requirement: this time, the plan has to work.
Biologists Jim Farquhar and Mike Smith inspect the cormorant nests in the treetops. (Photo by Karen Kelly)
Some black-crowned night heron chicks in a nest. They've returned to Little Murphy Island on the St. Lawrence River after four years of cormorant management. The cormorants often destroy the vegetation the herons nest in. (Photo by Karen Kelly)
fisherman Steve Sharland. He feels the cormorant should be eradicated from the region. (Photo by Karen Kelly)
The pesticide DDT almost wiped
out the double-crested cormorant.
Now, the bird is thriving, and it’s
blamed for devouring fish in lakes,
rivers, and fish farms in many parts
of the country. Karen Kelly reports
on the struggle to share resources
with this unpopular bird:
Transcript
The pesticide DDT almost wiped
out the double-crested cormorant.
Now, the bird is thriving, and it’s
blamed for devouring fish in lakes,
rivers, and fish farms in many parts
of the country. Karen Kelly reports
on the struggle to share resources
with this unpopular bird:
(sound of clanking and birds)
Mike Smith eases a boat into the shallow water just off Little Murphy Island. It’s a tiny patch of sand and trees in the middle of the St. Lawrence River. It straddles the New York border with Canada.
Smith is a wildlife technician with New York’s department of environmental conservation. He specializes in cormorant management. That means he knocks down nests, breaks eggs, and – very occasionally – shoots them.
Before he even jumps off the boat, he starts counting the birds that are poking out of nests in the treetops.
“I see a few. I’m looking at their nests. We tried to have a zero percent successful reproduction rate.”
Smith counts maybe ten nests. They started with 150 or so in the spring.
There are tens of thousands of these birds. They spend their summers in the north. And in the winter, they go south where they raid fish farms.
Biologists estimate each bird eats a pound of fish a day. That can make a dent in the local fish population. The birds also strip trees of their leaves to create nests. And their guano ends up killing the trees’ root systems. That ends up driving out other animals that need vegetation.
Some people feel the birds should be eradicated. One group of anglers was even arrested for killing hundreds of them on Lake Ontario.
There are others, like the group Cormorant Defenders International. They feel they should be protected.
It’s up to biologists like Jim Farquhar of New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation to find the balance between human needs and cormorants.
Farquhar: “We have needs too, as people.”
Karen: “And we’re competing with them.”
Farquhar: “And we’re competing with them in some cases. Hopefully, if we can inject good science, we make good decisions as a result.”
The biologists’ biggest effort has been on Lake Ontario. They’ve been destroying nests there — and killing some adults – for ten years. Farquhar says they’re finally seeing results.
They’ve reduced the cormorant population on the lake by about two-thirds, and the fishing’s improved.
Now, the biologists are trying to have the same success on the St. Lawrence River. But they’ve only seen a 13% decrease in the number of cormorant nests and they’ve been doing it for four years.
Part of the challenge is that most of the birds live on Canadian soil where management is left to the landowner.
Local anglers like Steve Sharland of Ogdensburg, New York, are frustrated with the slow progress.
“They should eliminate them. They’re not a Northern New York bird and what they’re doing to our fisheries is a sin.”
That’s a common misconception. Actually, the cormorant is native to the region but few people have seen them in such large numbers.
Sharland says some people are so frustrated, they’ve been shooting the birds illegally. But Jim Farquhar believes those are isolated incidents.
“Mike just mentioned that we’ve got some black-crowned night herons nesting out here. It’s another species we’re concerned about, and one we’ve been trying to actively protect from the cormorants. So that’s a good sign.”
A good sign. But it’s another species trying to live on this small patch of land. And the biologists’ balancing act has become even more delicate.
Shrimpers have seen their catches dwindle down from thousands of pounds of shrimp a day to very little due to the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. (Photo by Samara Freemark)
Of course, the bigger the zone, the further out shrimpers have to send their boats. That means a lot of wasted time, fuel, and wages. (Photo by Samara Freemark)
Every summer, thousands of
square miles of the Gulf of
Mexico die. The Dead Zone is
caused by pollution that flows
down the Mississippi River. It’s
runoff from factories, sewer
plants, and farms. And it causes
a lot of problems for fishermen
in the area. This year, the Dead
Zone is projected to be huge –
maybe the largest ever. Samara Freemark explains:
Transcript
Every summer, thousands of
square miles of the Gulf of
Mexico die. The Dead Zone is
caused by pollution that flows
down the Mississippi River. It’s
runoff from factories, sewer
plants, and farms. And it causes
a lot of problems for fishermen
in the area. This year, the Dead
Zone is projected to be huge –
maybe the largest ever. Samara Freemark explains:
Imagine for a moment you’re a shrimp fisherman. Every day you send out your fleet to the same waters you’ve fished for decades. And your boats pull in a lot of shrimp- thousands of pounds a day, millions a year. And then one day, a normal summer day, you send the boats out, and they come back empty.
“You go from about 5000 pounds to nothing. It’s dead. That’s why they call it the dead zone.”
That’s Dean Blanchard. He runs the largest shrimp company in America- Dean Blanchard Seafood.
Blanchard started seeing the dead zone about five years ago, but it’s not a new phenomenon. For a long time, nutrient fertilizer from upstream has run into the Mississippi River and from there, into the Gulf. It fertilizes big algae blooms– and when the algae decays, it sucks oxygen out of the water, making it impossible for fish to live there.
What’s new is how much fertilizer there is now.
“It’s not natural.”
Nancy Rabalais is a marine biologist at LUMCON. That’s Louisiana’s center for marine research. She says that over the past several decades there’s been a surge in fertilizer use in the Corn Belt states. That eventually ends up in the Gulf.
“We’re having 300 times more than we did in the 1950s. And it’s just over loaded the system.”
Rabalais predicts this year’s dead zone will be almost three times as big as it was twenty years ago – more than 8000 square miles.
Of course, the bigger the zone, the further out shrimpers like Dean Blanchard have to send their boats. That means a lot of wasted time, fuel, and wages.
And the zones might mean even bigger problems. Don Scavia is a professor at the School of Natural Resources at the University of Michigan.
“There’s a half a billion dollar shrimp industry in the gulf. And the shrimp depend on that habitat. And what we’re concerned about is that if the dead zone continues or even grows, that fishery may collapse.”
Congress is taking some measures to address the problem. Conservation programs in the Farm Bill work to reduce how much fertilizer farmers use, and how they apply it.
But there’s something else in the Farm Bill too – a lot of subsidy programs. Those pay for ethanol production. Which means more corn. Which means a lot more fertilizer.
“And what is debated every 5 years is how much funding will go into those conservation programs, relative to funding going into subsidy programs. And, by far, the subsidies win.” (laughs)
Scavia says for every $1 spent on conservation programs in the Corn Belt, $500 go to subsidizing crops.
Shrimper Dean Blanchard says he’s not sure how long he can live with that balance, especially as he watches the dead zone grow.
“How big is this thing going to get? If we kill the oceans we have problems. We have serious problems.”
But Don Scavia is hopeful. He says we know exactly how to reduce nutrient runoff – in fact, the basic programs are already in place. It’s just a matter of Congress choosing the right funding priorities.
DDT was banned in 1972, but traces of it are still all over the place - including in Great Lakes fish. (Photo courtesy of Tony Arnold)
Scientists have known for a long time
that a lot of wild-caught fish have
dangerous contaminants. People
who eat fish have to weigh the health
benefits against the risks of consuming
those pollutants. Now, some research
could make that balancing act even
trickier. Gabriel Spitzer has more on
the link between diabetes… and an
infamous old chemical many assumed
was long gone:
Transcript
Scientists have known for a long time
that a lot of wild-caught fish have
dangerous contaminants. People
who eat fish have to weigh the health
benefits against the risks of consuming
those pollutants. Now, some research
could make that balancing act even
trickier. Gabriel Spitzer has more on
the link between diabetes… and an
infamous old chemical many assumed
was long gone:
In the early morning hours, anglers gather on Navy Pier in downtown Chicago.
Ray Penn is practically within casting distance of the city’s skyscrapers.
He dips his line in the waters of Lake Michigan, hoping to pull out something tasty.
“I filet ‘em, and I fry ‘em, yeah. They got a little bit of bones in ‘em, but – oh yeah. Oh, yeah, baby! I felt that!”
It’s looking like a good morning for rock bass.
“See, there’s a bass on the end of this. This is a small bass, now this guy here, he’s edible.”
Penn says he eats fish a couple of times a week, without giving it a second thought.
Down the pier, Patrick Duhan has the same attitude.
“This is the Great Lakes! It’s such a big body of water. It’s almost like the ocean. They throw tons of crap in the ocean, and there’s just too much of it to screw up.”
But, scientists say, people have managed to screw up the Lakes a fair amount.
Epidemiologists have been studying a group of sport fishers, like these guys, and charter boat captains, who eat a lot of Great Lakes fish.
Mary Turyk of the University of Illinois at Chicago measured the contaminants in their blood, and tracked their health over the years.
“We found we had 36 cases of new diabetes. And what we found was that DDE, the metabolite of DDT, was related to diabetes incidence.”
DDT.
That’s the pesticide made famous by Rachel Carson’s book, “Silent Spring.”
The chemical was banned in 1972, but traces of it are still all over the place – including in fish.
And like mercury or PCBs, it concentrates as it moves up the food chain.
So you don’t have to eat much.
“The captains were eating, I think, on average, a meal a week. One meal a week? Yeah. That doesn’t seem outlandish or anything. No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t at all. In fact, recommendations from the FDA for eating fish, based on mercury levels, are two meals per week, for pregnant women.”
So just half that much fish was linked to about a 33% increase in diabetes cases.
Turyk says it’s not clear how DDE or DDT might contribute to diabetes.
It may have to do with effects on hormones or the immune system.
“We really need more basic science to determine mechanisms that might be responsible for this.”
Another unknown is just how dangerous might this be, and when does it start to outweigh the advantages of an otherwise healthy food?
Tamara Duperval is a family doctor at a West Side Chicago clinic.
She says she still tells people to eat more fish.
“In our population, it’s really a wonder and a challenge to try to present fish as an option, when primarily the staple of diet is either chicken or beef.”
That population is mostly low-income and minority.
She says about half are overweight or obese.
From a nutrition point of view, those are exactly the people you’d want to be eating a lean, healthy protein like fish.
So Duperval is concerned about sending mixed messages.
“I do think it is confusing. And, it’s in part, I think, how we communicate crisis in this country, especially when it comes to food safety. They miss the overall preventative message, that fish is good food, and it actually provides a lot of important nutrients that are lacking in their diets.”
Health authorities often issue advisories about certain fish that have a lot of pollution.
Duperval says understanding those warnings can help people avoid some of the hazards.
But the diabetes research shows we may still have a lot to learn about these chemicals, so what’s safe to eat is getting harder to know.
They call the cages Oceanspheres. They’d have the diameter of half a football field. (Photo courtesy of Hawaii Oceanic Technology)
A company in Hawaii wants to build the world’s first commercial bigeye tuna farm. Bigeye tuna is also known as ahi and it’s a popular fish for sushi. Rebecca Williams has more:
Transcript
A company in Hawaii wants to build the world’s first commercial bigeye tuna farm. Bigeye tuna is also known as ahi and it’s a popular fish for sushi. Rebecca Williams has more:
Bigeye tuna are getting overfished in the wild.
So a company called Hawaii Oceanic Technology wants to raise tuna in giant underwater cages off the coast of Hawaii.
They call the cages Oceanspheres. They’d have the diameter of half a football field.
Bill Spencer is president and CEO of the company. He says they’ll raise 20,000 fish in each cage. The tuna will get up to 100 pounds each.
“They’re typically a schooling type fish so they’d be able to swim around in the Oceansphere so we think that would give them the ability to get the kind of muscle tone that would be appreciated by the consumers.”
There are real concerns about pollution and that fish will escape and spread disease to wild fish.
Spencer says ocean currents will sweep away fish feces so they won’t concentrate, and he says the cages are built so tuna can’t escape.
A catfish farmer loading 2,000 pounds of catfish into a truck to be transported for processing. Right now, fish farming in the U.S. can only be done in inland or near shore waters. The U.S. government is deciding whether to allow fish farms in federal waters, in the zone between three and 200 miles offshore. (Photo courtesy of USDA)
The federal government is deciding whether to allow fish to be raised
in cages in the ocean. Rebecca Williams reports:
Transcript
The federal government is deciding whether to allow fish to be raised
in cages in the ocean. Rebecca Williams reports:
The U.S. imports more than 80% of all the fish we eat. About half of
those imported fish are grown on farms in huge underwater cages.
The U.S. government is deciding whether to allow these commercial fish
farms in federal waters. The first place it might happen is in the
Gulf of Mexico.
Tom McIlwain chairs the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council:
“There’s biosecurity reasons for being able to produce those foodstuffs
in the US. I think we can do this in an environmentally sound manner.”
McIlwain says a number of permits would be required before anyone could
start operating an ocean fish farm. But some environmental groups are
worried about pollution from the farms.
And some fishermen who catch fish in the open ocean are worried these
fish farms could drive down the price of their catch.
Zebra mussels continue to plague many of the nation’s waterways,
crowding out native aquatic life and aggravating fishermen and
engineers. But Brian Bull reports that the invasive species might play
a key part in the surgery room:
Transcript
Zebra mussels continue to plague many of the nation’s waterways,
crowding out native aquatic life and aggravating fishermen and
engineers. But Brian Bull reports that the invasive species might play
a key part in the surgery room:
The Nerites Corporation specializes in bio-degradable, waterproof
tissue adhesives. The concept is familiar if you’ve ever superglued
your fingers together.
The Madison, Wisconsin company is currently developing an adhesive that
could be used in complex heart surgeries, to seal, attach, or re-join
blood vessels. CEO Thomas Mozer says they’ve based their research on
zebra mussels, which attach themselves to surfaces like ship’s hulls
and water intake pipes.
“They adhere to surfaces underwater in the rather messy environment of
the ocean or lakeshore. Where the zebra mussels attach to surfaces.
The kind of environment where synthetic adhesives made by man – prior
to ours coming along – wouldn’t work.”
Mozer predicts it’ll be about three years before the tissue adhesive is
perfected for use in hospitals and clinics.
Roger LaBine winnows the wild rice. (Photo by Michael Loukinen, Up North Films)
The Ojibwe tribe harvest rice on Lac Vieux Desert, but doing so can lower water levels and create muddy shorelines. (Photo by Michael Loukinen, Up North Films)
Since European settlers first came to this country they have had serious conflicts with Native Americans. The GLRC’s Sandy Hausman reports on one modern-day dispute between a Native American tribe and communities in the upper Midwest:
Transcript
Since European settlers first came to this country they have had serious conflicts with
Native Americans. The GLRC’s Sandy Hausman reports on one modern-day dispute
between a Native American tribe and communities in the upper Midwest:
(Sound of Ojibwe music)
The Ojibwe tribe first came to the north woods of Michigan and Wisconsin hundreds of
years ago. They say their migration from the east coast was guided by prophets. Those
prophets told them to keep moving until they came to a place where food grows on the
water. Roger Labine is a spiritual leader with the tribe. He says that food was wild rice:
“This was a gift to us. This is something that is very, very sacred to us. This is very
important, just as our language. This is part of who we are.”
For hundreds of years, wild rice was a staple of the tribe’s diet, but starting in the 1930s,
private construction of hydroelectric dams pushed water levels in rice growing areas up.
High water killed most of the plants and took a toll on wildlife. Bob Evans is a biologist
with the U.S. Forest Service. He says fish, bird and insect populations dropped
dramatically:
“Black tern is a declining, threatened species that is known to use wild rice beds,
Trumpeter swans. They’re a big user of rice beds. Um, just a whole lot of plants and
animals. It’s really a whole ecosystem in itself.”
So in 1995, the tribe, the U.S. Forest Service and several other government agencies
demanded a change. A year later, the federal government ordered dam operators to drop
their maximum water levels by 9 inches. The dam owners appealed that decision, but in
2001 a federal court ruled against them.
That fall, the Ojibwe who live on Lac Vieux
Desert harvested nearly 16 acres of wild rice and this summer, the tribe is tending more than 55 acres.
But the resurgence of rice beds comes at a price. Lower lake levels have left docks in this
boating community high and dry, created muddy shorelines and made long-time residents
and summer boaters angry:
“I used to come here and dock all the time. We picnicked here. I had to walk in 50 feet,
because there wasn’t enough water to float a pontoon, and it’s that way all around the
lake.”
Ken Lacount is president of the Lac Vieux Desert homeowners association. He first
came here in the 1940s and doesn’t see why his cultural traditions should take a backseat
to those of the Ojibwe:
“My grandfather built one of the first resorts. I fished in Rice Bay my entire life. That
was his favorite place to take me.”
Lacount is bitter. He and his neighbors feel powerless to change the situation, since a
federal court has ruled for the Ojibwa. Defenders of that decision say water levels are
especially low because of a prolonged drought in region. When that ends, they predict
lake levels will rise, and homeowners on Lac Vieux Desert will be happier.
(Sound of paddling)
Such conflicts are nothing new. Ron Seeley is a reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal. He’s covered Native American issues for more than 20 years. Paddling through the rice beds, he recalls an earlier battle
over fishing rights. In the late 80s, a court ruled the Ojibwe were entitled by treaty to
spear fish each spring. Local fishermen worried the practice would destroy their industry:
“Sometimes thousands of people would show up at the landings on a spring night. Tribal
members from all over the upper Midwest would come to support the spearers and drum
and chant. The anti-Indian forces were arrested for using wrist rockets or real powerful
sling shots to shoot pellets at the tribal members while they were out spearing. It was a
violent time up here.”
As court after court upheld the rights of native spear fishermen, and as commercial
fishermen continue to prosper, hostilities subsided and now, as the Native Americans prepare for
their biggest rice harvest in more than 50 years, the Ojibwe hope that the controversy over water levels
will also die down. Tribal leader Roger Labine says wild rice is a symbol of the Ojibwe’s survival:
“This is an endangered species. It’s something that we’re fighting to save, just like the
eagle, just like the wolf. We were put here to care for Mother Earth and all the gifts that
the creator gave us.”
And having won the first battle to restore rice beds, Labine is hoping to secure even
greater protection for these wetlands by asking the federal government to declare the rice
beds historic.
A juvenile lake sturgeon. (Photo courtesy of USFS, Rob Elliott)
Biologists have been concerned about a number of native species that
have been disappearing. One of them is the largest fish in the Great
Lakes. Over-fishing and gravel mining in riverbeds have wiped out 99-
percent of the population of lake sturgeon. Sturgeon used to be common
throughout the Great Lakes, but they’re a rare sight these days. Celeste
Headlee reports… biologists are trying to save some of the sturgeon’s
spawning grounds:
Transcript
We’ve been bringing you reports from the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s series ‘Ten Threats to the Great Lakes.’ Lester Graham is
our guide through the series. He says our next report is about an ancient
fish that’s been disappearing.
Biologists have been concerned about a number of native species that
have been disappearing. One of them is the largest fish in the Great
Lakes. Over-fishing and gravel mining in riverbeds have wiped out 99-
percent of the population of lake sturgeon. Sturgeon used to be common
throughout the Great Lakes, but they’re a rare sight these days. Celeste
Headlee reports… biologists are trying to save some of the sturgeon’s
spawning grounds:
(Sound of the lake)
Sturgeon are the largest fish in the Great Lakes. The grayish brown
creatures can grow up to seven feet long, and weigh more than 200
pounds. Sturgeon have been on Earth for 100 million years, and they’ve
remained essentially unchanged in all that time. Instead of scales, the
fish have an almost leathery skin with five rows of bony plates running
along their torpedo-shaped bodies.
Fish biologist Bruce Manny says sturgeon were once abundant in the
Great Lakes. Back in 1880, in one month’s time, fishermen pulled four
thousand of them from the Detroit River.
“They tore holes in their nets when they were fishing for other fish that
they cared about. So, when they found a sturgeon in their nets, they
would kill them, bring them to the shore, pile them up on shore, dry them
out and use them for fuel in the steamships. Burn them up.”
Most of the time, the creatures were caught and killed while fisherman
angled for more valuable fish. Scientists think over fishing has caused
sturgeon populations in all of the Great Lakes to dwindle to less than one
percent of their former number.
The state of Michigan closed the Detroit River to sturgeon-fishing years
ago. Bruce Manny says he decided to check on the sturgeon and see if
the fish population had started to recover.
Manny assembled a team of biologists from the U.S. Geological Survey.
He says he was surprised when his team caught only 86 fish over the
course of four years. Manny says he realized the sturgeon were in
serious trouble.
USGS scientists followed the tagged fish for two years, and their
patience was eventually rewarded. Manny found the first known
spawning site ever documented in Detroit River in modern times.
“We were excited all right. Eureka moment. I mean this is like a very,
very great coincidence that we were able to find these spawning ready
males, and they were able to find a female. When there are only 86 fish
caught in four years out here, there aren’t that many around. So, to find
someone to spawn with is a real challenge, I would say.”
The area where the sturgeon mated lies close to a sewer discharge pipe.
There are limp, brown grasses bordering grey, mucky water. Manny sent
divers down and discovered the fish had actually produced fertilized
eggs. Manny says this was a major step forward for his project.
Sturgeon are pretty picky about their nesting sites. They need a fast
moving current and several layers of rock where eggs rest safely. The
problem is a lot of the gravel has been mined out of the Detroit River for
use in construction.
Another problem is the sturgeons’ long life. Fish biologist Ron Bruch is
in Wisconsin. He oversees sturgeon populations in Wisconsin’s
Winnebago river system. He says female sturgeons live more than 100
years and they don’t spawn until they are at least 20 years old.
“Their life history works well for a long-lived species, but it doesn’t
work well for a species that’s exploited heavily. So, sturgeon can only
tolerate very low exploitation rates, and when that exploitation is high
the populations collapse.”
Wisconsin was the first state in the U.S. to create a sturgeon management
program more than 100 years ago, and the fish are more abundant there.
Biologists in Michigan monitored the nesting sites in the Detroit River
this spring. Eight species of fish used the beds, including popular sport
fish like yellow perch and walleye. Only two sturgeon came by the sites,
but they weren’t ready to spawn.
Ron Bruch says biologists will have to create a lot more spawning sites
like the ones in the Detroit River before the sturgeon population is firmly
reestablished in the Great Lakes.
“In and of itself, it’s not going to restore all of Lake Erie or all the Great
Lakes, but it’s a shining example of what can be done in many areas
around the Great Lakes to help produce Lake Sturgeon spawning habitat
and rehabilitate the Lake Sturgeon population.”
USGS biologists will go back to the nesting sites next spring. They say it may
take years for sturgeon to notice the small beds in the 32-mile river.
One important development, though, is a change of policy from the
Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. Canadians used to allow
fisherman to take one sturgeon a day out of the river. Now, it’s illegal to
possess one of the endangered fish on both sides of the channel.
A little girl holds a minnow in her hands. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
