Keeping the $5.5 billion Michigan fishery afloat

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources’ Charlevoix Fisheries Research Station is based in a building that was constructed in 1917, originally as a federal fish hatchery. It wasn’t the first on this site. An earlier hatchery was built in 1894.

The U.S. government was trying to replenish the fish population. Lake trout, whitefish, and walleye were not reproducing at rates fast enough to keep up with the demand of commercial fishing.

There were no limits on how many commercial fishers there were and no limits on how much they could catch. State licenses were issued, but that was simply to make sure the states got some tax revenue from the fishing industry.

Federal fish stocking only slowed the decline. Then new technology opened up the markets for Great Lakes fish far and wide.

In 1868, a Detroit man developed a refrigerator rail car. It was cooled by an ice and salt mixture. Refrigeration changed everything for shipping food.

Refrigeration helped a little-known brewer named Adolphus Busch of Anheuser-Busch to ship beer across the nation. Refrigeration helped get beef from out West to the big cities in the East. And it gave commercial fishers in the Great Lakes new markets that had been unimaginable before.

“We know what the Great Lakes fishery is like prior to European settlement from very early records from Indigenous fishers,” said Andrew Muir, Science Director with the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.

“There’s a lot of records from Jesuit missionaries about the bounty of the Great Lakes, the plethora of species,” he added.

The Great Lakes supported some of the largest freshwater fisheries on the planet. For thousands of years, they sustained the native peoples of the region.

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In less than a century after European settlements were built on Great Lakes shores, the fishery was in dire straits. 

Today, at the Charlevoix Fisheries Research Station the long pools of water, where newborn fish were once raised, are now covered up by a floor. The station is now made up of labs and offices on the second floor with equipment and work space on the first floor.

This past February, staff were analyzing the samples of fish they’d caught during the previous year.

“It’s basically counting what we call annuli, which show annual growth rings,” explained Steve Lenart, a fish biologist who manages the station.

It’s like counting tree rings. In this case, it’s counting growth rings on fish ear bones or fin bones, depending on the type of fish. 

“This works well in areas like Michigan because growth slows down when the water gets cold. Growth rings squeeze together a little bit and that makes annuli every winter,” said Kris Snyder, a fisheries technician, as he put a new sample from a yellow perch under the microscope. 

Snyder said the sampling last year pulled in more perch than he’d seen in a decade. Perch were plentiful in the 1980s, but then the population dropped substantially.

“There’s a nice array of age classes. I’ve got little four-inch perch all the way up to 14-inch perch,” Snyder said, adding, “We seem to be headed in the right direction.”

This kind of research on all kinds of fish is being done in labs around the Great Lakes region. The different state agencies have agreed to a Joint Strategic Plan that compiles their data for a big picture of the fisheries in the lakes. Lenart said this kind of cooperation is critical to understand what’s happening to the fisheries in the Great Lakes.

But the successes and the challenges are different for each of the lakes. 

The Charlevoix research station on Lake Michigan is finding results for the fish populations similar to what the Alpena Fisheries Research Station is finding in Lake Huron. That makes some sense. The two lakes are, hydrologically speaking, one big lake. Some fish even swim back and forth between the lakes. 

Lake Superior has seen its top predator fish, the lake trout, make a comeback. Last November, fisheries managers determined that lake trout population had recovered to the point it no longer needed to be stocked. The fish had dropped to extremely low levels and took decades to recover.

Lake Erie, with the least water by volume and being the most shallow of the Great Lakes, is where you’ll find the largest amount of fish.

It’s said that while Lake Superior holds 50% of the Great Lakes water; it has 2% of the fish. Lake Erie only has 2% of the water and 50% of the fish in the lakes.

“I mean, the walleye have been gangbusters,” said Chris Winslow, director for Ohio Sea Grant and Ohio State’s Stone Laboratory.

He noted that there are many variables in play: water levels, when storm events come through to stir up nutrients, what was ice cover like, how bad are the harmful algal blooms in the western basin of Lake Erie.

“But, we can say for roughly the last almost decade, the walleye have been doing very, very, very well,” Winslow said.

That’s not the case for perch. In some parts of the lake the yellow perch population is doing well and in others the perch is declining. Researchers are trying to determine why. Is it the decline of a smaller fish that perch eat, the emerald shiner? Is it dead zones -oxygen depleted areas- in the lake?

 Then, there’s the nutrient issue. A vast area of farmland, covering a large portion of Ohio and parts of Michigan and Indiana, drains into Lake Erie, causing an increase in phosphorus. That’s primarily from applied fertilizer, including manure from large livestock farms. Phosphorus feeds the toxic cyanobacterial growth and nitrogen pollution increases the toxicity. Often called harmful algal blooms, they cover large areas of the western basin of the lake. That’s not good for fish, or wildlife, or humans.

Winslow said climate change is also a factor in the very complicated circumstances in Lake Erie.

“Whether it’s a nutrient poor system, or a nutrient moderate system, or an elevated nutrient system, it often goes hand-in-hand with temperature. We are seeing increased air temperatures in this part of the country and that matches with increased water temperatures.”

Hotter summers often mean larger cyanobacterial blooms.

Winslow said it’s important to remember, the Lake Erie fishery is an important part of the economy for the states surrounding it, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York, plus the province of Ontario.

“I mean, when I drive up there, the boats in the parking lot are North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky. It’s not just Ohio, right? It’s not just you and me walking down our dock, getting in our boat. These are new dollars to the region. It’s absolutely critically important.”

Climate change is affecting all the lakes to one degree or another. Lake Superior is one of the fastest warming large lakes in the world. That’s affecting fish populations. For example, the eggs of whitefish are deposited in rocky coastal areas of the lake. When there’s ice cover, there’s little or no wave action. Without ice, waves crash against the rocks and the eggs crash too, damaging them and contributing to the decline of whitefish populations. 

The cycle of lake levels rising and falling over the years has led to higher highs and lower lows, and it’s happening faster which also causes problems for egg survival. 

As a Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of the Chippewa Indians Fisheries Management Program biologist once explained the whitefish is not only an important source of protein, but it is also important to Anishinaabe culture. It’s a thread throughout their creation history.

The Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians is looking into low reproduction rates for the whitefish. The work is ongoing as they try different approaches to raising whitefish and restoring them to more natural habitats.

Invasive species devastating to some fish 

Because of overfishing, the stocks of Great Lakes fish were already declining. But in the 1920s and ‘30s a new threat appeared. New canals connecting the lakes to other waters allowed other kinds of fish such as alewife and sea lamprey to infest the Great Lakes. 

“The sea lamprey was really the death blow to the commercial fishery,” said Marc Gaden, Executive Secretary of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission (GLFC), a binational, treaty-based organization created in 1954. One of its primary efforts is working to suppress the sea lamprey population. 

The sea lamprey is a parasitic fish that looks like an eel. It attaches to fish and sucks blood. On average, a single sea lamprey can kill up to 40 pounds [21 kg]  of fish during its parasitic juvenile stage.

It was assumed that if the effort to kill sea lamprey was curtailed, the parasite’s population would quickly expand. Testing that hypothesis is not something the Great Lakes Fishery Commission gave serious consideration because of the damage to the fishery. 

During the COVID pandemic, however, workers were not always able to get lodging or meals where they would travel to kill larval lamprey. The population increased. The COVID circumstances showed the sea lamprey suppression works.

The alewife infestation was managed by introducing another non-native species in the 1960s: Pacific salmon. Salmon became very popular with recreational anglers. But salmon populations are down because the alewife population decreased because it was affected by yet another invasive species.

Zebra mussels and quagga mussels made their way to the Great Lakes by hitching a ride in the ballasts of ocean-going freighters entering the lakes. Ships would take up ballast water in eastern European waters as a way to stabilize the ship. Then some of that water and its stowaways would be pumped into the Great Lakes. Both the zebra mussel and the quagga mussel quickly spread throughout the lakes.

The mussels, had no predators. While zebra mussels covered more shallow water, quaggas spread into deeper water by the hundreds of trillions if not quadrillions. Estimates are difficult to gauge. 

These filter-feeders eat much of the bottom of the food chain, the phytoplankton, leaving little food for fish and other organisms in the Great Lakes. The damage is irreversible. 

That lack of food has caused more damage to fish populations than most of the other challenges. It’s believed the primary reason whitefish populations have dropped so significantly is because they cannot find enough food.

More than 100 other invasive species were transported via ocean-going vessels until the U.S. and Canada required ships entering the region to take measures to flush out ballast water. It seems to be effective.

But Marc Gaden said there is an after-effect. 

“We have to do something to curtail the inter-lake movements of these species and the USEPA rules have essentially exempted the lakers (freighter ships that remain in the Great Lakes) from that.”

The allegation is that some invasive species might have established in one Great Lakes port, but not in others, but Great Lakes freighters -that stay within the lakes- are spreading invasive species through their ballast water exchanges. 

“We have great science that shows the lakers do move these things around,” Gaden said.

The organization representing the ships disagrees.

“There’s no validity to that statement at all,” responded Debbie DiCianna, Director of Environmental & Regulatory Affairs with the Lake Carriers Association.

The science that Gaden mentioned came from two sources: 

1. Great Waters Research Collaborative’s study of eight Canadian and United States bulk carriers which participated in the study. It found “laker ballast water from the lower four Great Lakes that was destined to, or directly in, discharge to western Lake Superior ports contained non-indigenous species of aquatic organisms not previously recorded in Lake Superior.”
2. A Fisheries and Oceans Canada analysis found, “The movement of unmanaged ballast water by Lakers within the Great Lakes region is a high-risk pathway for spreading AIS (Alien Invasive Species).”

“The Canadians are always the ones bringing up the idea of spread and what can occur, DiCianna said, adding, “there were a lot of actions that were put into place by lakers, the U.S. flagged lakers, by changing how their sea chests were, how uptakes were, all of that to drastically reduce what could be the probability of things.” 

DiCianna said nobody has shown her data on where spread has occurred.

She also said the suppliers of treatment systems are not willing to service Great Lakes freighters because there are so few of them. 

DiCianna believes the spread of invasive species from port to port within the Great Lakes is much more likely to be caused by recreational and sport boating. 

To stop the spread of invasive species, state agencies campaign to get recreational boaters to clean their boats after leaving a body of water to keep from fouling the next lake or river they boat in.

“They don’t want to do the little bit that some of the marinas ask them to do,” she said.

A very complicated and intricate web

Back at the Charlevoix Fisheries Research Station, vessel captain Patrick O’Neill is repairing nets that are used to take samples during the warm water season. 

He said from his observations over the years, the lakes and the different fish populations are constantly changing.

“We have fish coming in; we have fish going out. We have environmental changes that are happening. And overall, a lot of what we’re seeing change is based on management.”

He said stocking lake trout in Lake Michigan has made a difference. They study the results and decide whether stocking is needed again in the same place or whether to stock where there’s lower abundance.

Fish biologist and station manager Steve Lenart said just stocking fish is not enough. You have to determine what is causing the bottleneck.

“For whitefish, I think we can surmise that it’s probably related to food availability,” he said.

Stocking more whitefish does not fix that problem.

That situation is not limited to whitefish.

Several years ago at a meeting between Michigan DNR personnel and anglers, things got heated. Some of the fishers were angry because the salmon population in Lake Huron had plummeted. They blamed the DNR, arguing that the agency didn’t want to spend the money to stock more salmon. 

But the reason salmon populations were down was that their food in Lake Huron was diminished. Many were swimming to Lake Michigan because there was more food there. The DNR personnel explained that releasing more juvenile salmon would do no good. That’s because the small fish would just become a meal for the greater number of walleye that were benefitting from the declining salmon population in Lake Huron. The anglers were not happy with that explanation. They insisted that stocking would solve the problem.

Invasive species, a lack of food, climate change, and many other factors affect different fish species in different ways. Some benefit. Others decline. Because things are changing so fast, learning what is affecting fish populations and how management might help needs more study.

There’s been great collaboration between the Great Lakes states and the federal government. There’s also been cooperation between the U.S. and Canada to do what’s best for the fishery and lakes they share. 

The fishery is a $5.5 billion a year benefit to the entire Great Lakes region because of commercial fishing and -especially on the U.S. side- recreational fishing. But much of that research and the collaborations with Canada have not been a priority of the administration of President Donald Trump. 

“The picture is grim. There’s no question that all the signals we’re getting is that we’re going to continue to see cuts that really impact the Great Lakes,” said Laura Rubin, Director of Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Protection Coalition.

Advocates for the Great Lakes are fond of saying fish don’t know international boundaries. Pollution such as PFAS and plastics can spread across the borders. The nutrient runoff into Lake Erie affects Ohio, Michigan, Ontario, and beyond. 

“Our agencies have been told ‘Don’t work with Canada. Don’t work on joint research. Don’t work on joint treaties.’ These are the kinds of things that undermine research and undermine Great Lakes protection and restoration,” Rubin said.

She is optimistic about one project. The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative has strong bipartisan support in Congress. President Trump did approve funding during his last administration. It could mean hundreds of millions of dollars a year to pay for boots-on-the-ground work and the scientific research needed to make the right decisions for the Great Lakes fishery.

However, there’s concern that if the Environmental Protection Agency budget is cut to the degree the administration wants, its capability to administer those grants could be handicapped. 

That’s a concern that Michigan U.S. Senator Gary Peters shares.

“The Trump administration seems intent on gutting environmental protections, not just in the Great Lakes, but all across the country.”

Senator Peters said even Members of Congress outside of the Great Lakes states understand the importance of protecting the source of 20% of the accessible fresh water on earth.

The support in the White House is less certain. President Donald Trump did approve funding the GLRI during his first term.

“But, I am very concerned about what that [EPA cuts] could mean for the administration of GLRI contracts,” Peters said, presuming the GLRI money would be approved.

The Healing Our Waters – Great Lakes Protection Coalition outlined some of the cuts in the proposed budget from the White House include:

$2.46 billion cut to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) programs that help communities fix and update their drinking water and wastewater infrastructure.

$1.006 billion cut to programs that help states take action to meet community clean water goals.

$235 million cut to EPA research and development that protects the health of communities.

$100 million cut to EPA initiatives that address pollution concerns in communities facing disproportionate environmental harm.

There is still hope for funding for a barrier near Chicago to keep invasive carp out of the Great Lakes. Last week President Trump issued a memorandum that instructed several federal agencies to complete work on the barrier. Those four carp species have taken over long stretches of the Mississippi River system. The fear is that the invasive fish could devastate the fragile state of the fishery in the Great Lakes.  

Marc Gaden at the bi-national Great Lakes Fishery Commission is optimistic that the GLRI, the carp barrier, and some programs to protect the Great Lakes fishery ultimately will be approved by Congress.

“We have political systems that are notoriously fractured right now. You get almost no agreement on anything. But the Great Lakes have been a notable exception to that.”