posted 04-11-2011 09:58 PM ET (US)            

Re: Sea Lamprey control and federal spending...I have a feeling that a whole lot of programs are going to feel the pinch as we work through our government spending problems.

The challenge will be to engage the politicians and public in a discourse of what we value (and are willing to pay for) instead of just cutting budgets to meet arbitrary limits.

Here's hoping that the current control measures have some residual effects while it all gets sorted out.

posted 04-12-2011 12:31 AM ET (US)            

Absolutely amazing.

Let me share something with you guys. I am privileged to be working with Dr Howard Tanner who is credited with introducing, successfully, Pacific salmon into the Great Lakes. Incentive was to control an invasive fish the alewife which is like a fat sardine. Alewives were introduced via St Lawrence Seaway probably in the 50s. So were Sea Lamprey. Alewives die off cyclically and when they did there was a "300 mile pile of stinky fish along Lake Michigan beaches". I am old enough to remember this very well.

Native top predator fish (Lake Trout mainly) were able to keep alewife numbers down until lamprey began to kill off the top predator fish. That's what happened.

Tanner graduated from Michigan State with PhD, could not find a job in Michigan and went to Colorado for nearly 12 years before Michigan "lured" him back to work on the Great Lakes.

What many of us (including me until Howard and I have been working together) is that the Great Lakes were considered a commercial fishery. THere was no fishing license required to fish any of them. There was no real sports fishery and some areas were considered ecological disasters.

The story is fascinating and way too long to get into here but what Howard did, besides perfecting hatchery techniques to rear P salmon (35 failed attempts prior) AND for a variety of reasons, being able to even get fertilized Coho eggs, what they did was create a SPORTS FISHERY that did not exist prior resulting in a $7 billion/year economic impact for our state.

These issues are critical for the future of our part of the country, it's revitalizaton after too many terrible years including several hundred thousand jobs and loss of young people to other places.

The Great Lakes story is about and the result of the Greatest Generation - a handful of WW2 vets, some war heros, who were innovative, bright, energized and with a "can do" attitude and love for their country and where we live. They had to skate around bureaucracy, haters, nay sayers and tough budgets. They had one shot and did their best. They did not stop and Howard's more significant legacy is the environmental enforcement team he put together which is a huge story I hope we get to tell as well.

We need to get involved and drive these decisions or what we have and what this country, state and taxpayers have invested in for the last 5 or more decades will be gone.

We also need to remember how we got into this mess and that there was once a President who left a surplus (and excoriated constantly) one who started a war and a whole lot of greedy bastards who care nothing about this country or its future.

The power of the people of our communities and this country have always prevailed and it's time we bond together and do the same right now.

posted 04-12-2011 10:51 AM ET (US)         

Alewives found their way in to Champlain just a few years ago. I saw my first one come out of the mouth of a fresh caught Atlantic Salmon two years ago.

Three straight years of lamprey control and the new forage base produced three new state record Lake Trout last year. The record for Salmon wasn't broken but the average size has jumped dramtically. 4 years ago a 7lb salmon was something to realy get excited about. Now they are pretty common.

posted 04-12-2011 11:08 AM ET (US)            

I've not caught enough Lake Michigan salmon to yet see a lamprey mark, but I understand that recently, more fish have been boated with damage from beast in my area. I'll attempt to confirm whether this is related to an ongoing reduction in eradication funding.

As an aside, anytime our Federal Government commits to doing something well, it is inevitably done the best that the known universe has ever witnessed. Examples range from the military to space exploration to university education to bio-engineering. If you don't recognize this, contender, you're not paying attention.

posted 04-12-2011 01:10 PM ET (US)            

http://record-eagle.com/local/x1041534774/Lamprey-program-spared

posted 04-12-2011 09:47 PM ET (US)            

Pacific Salmon were chosen as the potential top predator because they are voracious feeders. The fact that they perish after spawning was deemed an additional benefit, when compared to the long lived Lake Trout since they would bio-accumulate DDT and PCB residues for a shorter interval of time, hopefully making themselves palatable at body-burden contaminant levels below warning concentrations, unlike Lake Trout.

One of the issues related to Sea Lamprey control is that over time, water quality of tributary rivers to the Great Lakes have benefited from the Clean Water Act, substantially improving. As they are restored, Sea Lamprey colonize them, requiring expanded treatment. TFM and Bayer 37 are the Lampricide chemicals used in treatment. Both are made by Bayer Pharmaceuticals in Germany. As the dollar falls against the Euro, they each become more expensive to acquire. When you combine this with the expansion of the streams requiring treatment, you will recognize the ever expanding cost of Sea Lamprey control. I worked under Louis King and Lee Hanson who prefected the sterile male release program to augment chemical treatment to achieve Sea Lamprey control. Currently, researchers at MSU are working to perfect pheromone traps. Stable isotope analysis is also being used to identify those tributaries that contribute disproportionately to open lake parasitic populaitons of Sea Lamprey in the Great Lakes. This will hopefully enable more targeted chemical treatment efforts to keep populaitons in check.

As far as the USACE goes...

http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/119547054.html

posted 04-13-2011 11:27 PM ET (US)            

Since you have this direct knowledge why not get involved in the project?

It is so broad and complex it is impossible for one or two people (John Hesse, Bedford, Myrl Keller, Bill Cullerton and a few others) to capture everything accurately and totally. We need as many people like you as possible. All Howard wants to do really is to build the Howard and Helen Tanner Endowment at MSU for fisheries students. Howard is 87 years old and so far doing well. If I make it I hope I will be doing half as well as he is.

posted 04-14-2011 08:14 AM ET (US)            

I am currently trying to do something,Pete. I am in the third year of an individual effort to bring an end to the thirty year failed attempts to regenerate a self-sustaining Lake Trout Stock in the lower Great Lakes by the USFWS,USGS and Great Lakes State DNR fishery personnel. Exemplar Grata: Lake Trout currently represent half of the salmonids stocked each year in Lake Michigan. They represent 10% of the sport catch. They constitute 50% of the salmonids stocked each year. At legal length, their body burden contaminant levels place them in the do not consume or consume once a month category. Fishery managers are currently mulling raising Lake Herring in the hatchery system to provide an augmented forage base for Lake Trout. Lake Herring are an obligate zooplanktivore. Quagga mussels and Zebra mussels have diminished zooplankton population densities by over fifty percent do to their proliferation and filer feeding in the last decade in Lake Michigan waters. So, in a food density diminished system, fishery managers are contemplating rearing and stocking a forage specimen population for Lake Trout that will deplete an already depleted trophic level further, likely crashing the entire food web! Do you think this is a wise use of your Federal and State tax dollars?

Here is a current example of the USACE's "due diligence':

http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/119547054.html

Add their stated deadline of a Great Lakes Asian Carp Management Plan to be formulated finalized by 2015 to the list. Notice I state management plan, not zero tolerance or eradication! The USFWS already prepared an emergency action plan for management of Asian Carp two years ago! Why does each Federal agency have to formulate their own action plan?

Phil Moyle,PhD.(Wisconsin Sea Grant)was involved in the design phase of the permanent barriers. They call for an operating voltage of 2.5volts. The USACE and US Coast Guard have been involved in some major "foot dragging" with regard to operating voltage at the barrier sites for over two years! The fishery literature is replete with examples of the requirement for higher voltages for juvenile fish when AC current is used as a repellent, due to their higher surface area to volume ration when compared to adult fish. Asian Carp likely allready transited the barriers when the USACE shut both the Demonstration Barrier and the first permanent array down for maintenance simultaneously two years ago for a period of nearly two weeks. This is likely why eDNA samples have tested positive above the barrier site over the last dozen months or so. Hopefully, these pioneer Asian Carp do not exist at densities that will enable them to establish a spawning population. Dr. Moyle argued vehemently against this dual shut down of the electric weirs, but was overridden by USACE and US Coast Guard personnel.

The USACE has seized on Asian Carp population expansion management as a guaranteed future revenue stream from the Federal coffers. So,the more important question remains: what is future the legacy of the Great Lakes fishery?

posted 04-14-2011 09:32 AM ET (US)            

quote:

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"The USACE has seized on Asian Carp population expansion management as a guaranteed future revenue stream from the Federal coffers."

---

This seems like a rather dark view of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. What is being implied in that statement is that the USACE has intentionally allowed Asian Carp to enter the Great Lakes in order to create a new job for itself in management of the invasive species. I sincerely hope that the people running the USACE are not really that evil.

One might think that the USACE already has enough work to perform just maintaining the water ways and harbors we have now. My understanding of their funding and their mandated tasks is that the two are often not coordinated. Congress will pass legislation that requires the USACE to perform some task, but the USACE never gets the actual funds to perform the task. I recall a presentation from a USACE official which explained that there was legislation to require all sorts of things to be done, but no funds alloted to do it.

On the other hand, the USACE is a very old agency as federal agencies go, and it would not surprise me that their organization and structure contains many methods and practices which might not be as efficient or modern as one would find in a newly-created organization.

posted 04-15-2011 10:59 AM ET (US)            

http://www.mlive.com/outdoors/index.ssf/2011/04/ quagga_mussels_950_trillion_ti.html

posted 04-15-2011 05:03 PM ET (US)            

Their cost benefit analysis met approval criteria to go forward, but then it seems a group of folks applied for their data under the Freedom of Information Act. When THEY re-calculated the numbers, it seems USACE personnel "fudged them Mightily". Congressional committe personnel were supplied with the contradictory figures and the project was killed. This all occurred at a time(early 1980s) when the total tonnage of shipping on the Great Lakes was declining. You draw your own conclusions whether these folks have a long history of "make work" projects. As you stated in your previous comments on your conversation with your USACE contact, funding for dredging is becoming scarce. Grand Marais has been fighting for monies for dredging and breakwall construction for over a decade.

I can site three other examples, but there is no value in going further with this thread from my perspective.

posted 04-16-2011 08:18 AM ET (US)            

quote:

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"I can [cite] three other examples, but there is no value in going further with this thread from my perspective."

---

posted 04-16-2011 09:41 AM ET (US)            

Dave

.

posted 04-16-2011 09:56 AM ET (US)         

quote:

---

a group of folks applied for their data under the Freedom of Information Act. When THEY re-calculated the numbers, it seems USACE personnel "fudged them Mightily". Congressional committe personnel were supplied with the contradictory figures and the project was killed.

---

"THEY" of course having no group agenda of their own opposed to the project, applied for and recalculated the cost analysis as fair and independent arbiters using [what] methods to achieve such program killing-ly different results from the "Mightily fudged" numbers? And was any one at the USACE held accountable for submitting such an apparently blatantly false official report? Seriously.

Please continue.....

posted 04-16-2011 10:45 AM ET (US)            

Yeah, "any one" of significance at a government agency truly being held accountable, now that would be some real news. The most you'd hear is they're leaving to spend more time with their family, transferred to a different agency, etc., etc. The fact that the boondoggle canal project ended instantly is corroboration enough for me. The ACE had every opportunity to move ahead with the project and show how their cost-benefit analysis was correct.

posted 04-16-2011 11:37 AM ET (US)            

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/ pdf?res=FB0915FA345A1A738DDDA00994DB405B8984F0D3

posted 04-16-2011 01:50 PM ET (US)            

I can't find any reference to this proposal, however, in October of 1898, the New York Times reported that there were some Chicago businessmen who proposed a canal across Schoolcraft and Alger Counties, which is the general vicinity of the one referenced above, and attributed to being proposed in the 1980's.

New York Times report: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/ pdf?res=F2061FFE345D11738DDDA10994D8415B8885F0D3

In my research, it is also interesting that the Canadians have been working on their own 'Grand Canal' proposal that would divert freshwater runoff from St. James Bay up through the Ontario Forests (utilizing a series of canals and Nuclear power stations) to supplement Great Lakes water levels. This proposal would have a canal terminus in Northern Georgian Bay.

There are also proposals to Link the St. Croix River with Duluth, and there was, at one time, a proposal to build a system of canals that would have linked Lake Michigan with Lake Erie across the southern portion of the state of Michigan.

Many plans are made throughout history. Only a small fraction of them see fruition.

That aside, we still need to remain vigilant to protect this resource!

posted 05-18-2011 08:09 AM ET (US)            

http://www.gloucestertimes.com/topstories/x423433715/ NOAA-to-fishermen-Were-sorry

posted 05-21-2011 04:54 PM ET (US)            

I recall the game fish introduction very well.

The sad part about all of this is that a great deal of the initial funding was from fishing licenses and stamps.

posted 07-01-2011 02:33 PM ET (US)            

http://record-eagle.com/statenews/x981128418/ Scientists-Divide-systems-to-keep-out-carp

posted 07-01-2011 04:52 PM ET (US)            

I'm glad I grew up through the years I did because our kids and grand kids will never, ever know what we used to take for granted and now long for.

posted 07-05-2011 11:54 AM ET (US)            

http://www.tradeonlytoday.com/home/ 514921-white-house-to-lead-asian-carp-forum