# Return of the native species



## Pinefarm2015 (Nov 29, 2015)

*The demise of alewives and salmon in Lake Huron brought something nobody expected: An explosion of native species. Is Lake Michigan next? And could a more diverse ecosystem offer protection against Asian carp and other invaders?*


*Linwood, Mich.* — Ernie Plant's eyes get wide when he talks about how spectacular Lake Huron's salmon fishing was back in the late 1980s, when his dad would take him up north on Friday nights after his high school football games.

They'd spend fall weekends along the shore of the lake chasing the chinook that were chasing the alewives that ran so thick they even teemed in water-filled ditches along coastal roadways.

"We never had a boat," said the sales manager at Frank's Great Outdoors, a gear and bait shop north of Bay City. "But we didn't need one."

When Lake Huron's salmon crashed a decade ago, Plant, who holds a degree in biology from Northern Michigan University, had no doubt the lake would eventually right itself and the fish would come back.

And fish did return — but they weren't the fish Plant or many others expected.

What has happened in the decade since the crash of Lake Huron's two dominant species — invasive Atlantic alewives and the giant Pacific salmon planted to gobble them up — is a remarkable story of nature's resilience. Efforts by lake managers to sustain the invasive alewives to keep the salmon fishing rolling had, for decades, pushed native species to the fringes.

But when the alewife dwindled and the salmon followed, there was an almost instant surge in native lake trout, walleye, smallmouth bass, chubs and emerald shiners.

"It all happened as soon as the alewives were gone," said Michigan Department of Natural Resources biologist Dave Fielder. "The natives started producing like crazy."

The remarkable result is that today the top of the Lake Huron food chain more closely resembles its natural self than anytime since the lamprey and alewives invaded in the mid-1900s.

"Lake Huron's fishery," said Jim Johnson, a retired biologist with the Michigan DNR, "is more stable and robust in the past four or five years than it has been in a long time."

It has everything to do with the disappearance of alewives, and little to do with Howard Tanner and Wayne Tody's grand salmon plan, crafted after alewives had over-run Lakes Michigan and Huron. Tanner said he was never interested in trying to bring back native species just because they were native. He wanted the best sport fishery he could fashion from the lakes — and for him that meant Pacific salmon.

And that led to managing the lakes in a manner that would preserve the invasive alewives for the salmon to eat.













For years after the alewife invasion, the walleye fishery on Lake Huron's Saginaw Bay was sustained only by hatchery-raised fish. But When the alewife population collapsed, native walleye started reproducing in the wild. Walleye numbers have reached record levels even though the stocking program has been stopped.
"You wanted the alewife to be alive and healthy. You wanted them there forever," said Tanner. "Maybe not as such a big nuisance, but that was the foundation of what you were trying to build. We didn't want to destroy it."

Some biologists on Lake Huron today are looking at alewives completely differently.

One of them is Fielder, who proudly displays on his cluttered desk a framed "Tanner and Tody Award" received from the state for examining what's happened to Lake Huron's food chain since the alewife collapse.

His conclusion:

"If you really want a native fish recovery, you're not going to fully achieve that in the presence of alewives, unless natives are sustained by hatcheries," said Fielder. "And how can you call that a recovered fishery?"

Biologists had long suspected that the massive schools of alewives were trouble for native species; they just didn't know how much trouble until the alewives virtually disappeared on Lake Huron. It turns out alewives are death for the Great Lakes' native fish species in a number of ways. They gobble up the eggs and young of native species and out-compete them for the zooplankton that is the foundation of the lake's food chain.

Read more...
http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/A-Great-Lake-revival-b99397836z1-284551621.html


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## Lou is Blue (Sep 14, 2014)

whats protecting us from Asian carp is the "food desert " between the Chicago River and the St Joe.


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## rz6x59 (Nov 9, 2008)

Mother nature will take care of herself. It's the people that keep mucking it up. Long after we leave this rock things will take their natural course.


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## hardwater_ben (Jan 1, 2013)

Awesome read! If everyone would read this article front to back it would clear a lot of things up for those who think they know it all about the Great Lakes salmon fishery. Almost changes my outlook on the situation myself.


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## Fishndude (Feb 22, 2003)

I thought this was interesting.

"The thiamine problem has been known for years, but the extent that it was foiling federal efforts to restore lake trout in the Great Lakes was not grasped until the Lake Huron collapse.

The top native predator had been sustained on Lake Huron with hatchery plantings for decades. But since the alewife declines, the trout are again successfully breeding in the wild. Lake managers are considering stopping that hatchery program — something most biologists would have thought improbable just six or seven years ago."


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## RedM2 (Dec 19, 2007)

hardwater_ben said:


> Awesome read! If everyone would read this article front to back it would clear a lot of things up for those who think they know it all about the Great Lakes salmon fishery. Almost changes my outlook on the situation myself.


What in the article is influencing your outlook on the situation?


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## RedM2 (Dec 19, 2007)

I get that it's best to make the most of any situation and to have a positive attitude as often as possible, but it seems like the propaganda machine is trying to pick up steam. More and more articles of this nature appear to be making a showing. I think they realize people are going to leave big lake fishing in droves without a fish that's "fun" to catch... they've got to try to stop the bleeding so the revenue keeps rolling in. If lakers fought similar to kings, this wouldn't even be a discussion, imo.


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## slightofhand (Jul 21, 2010)

RedM2 said:


> I get that it's best to make the most of any situation and to have a positive attitude as often as possible, but it seems like the propaganda machine is trying to pick up steam. More and more articles of this nature appear to be making a showing. I think they realize people are going to leave big lake fishing in droves without a fish that's "fun" to catch... they've got to try to stop the bleeding so the revenue keeps rolling in. If lakers fought similar to kings, this wouldn't even be a discussion, imo.


This propaganda piece is a year or more old...and was put together by a well known native only henchmen of the Wisconsin/Illinois native only glfc commission. Next on the native only hitlist is steelhead coho and browns.


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## Pinefarm2015 (Nov 29, 2015)

slightofhand said:


> This propaganda piece is a year or more old...and was put together by a well known native only henchmen of the Wisconsin/Illinois native only glfc commission. Next on the native only hitlist is steelhead coho and browns.


Wow, the words propaganda, henchmen and hit list all in the same short post.


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## Chasin (Jun 25, 2002)

I'm all for a balanced fishery in Lake Huron but after fishing the tournements this spring one thing is clear. Without the coho and Kings in some form the draw to fish simply isn't there. Getting a king so far this spring has been like winning the lottery for the boats here. It would mean so much if we could get some kind of salmon program off the ground. Will Atlantics be an answer? I don't know but talking to everyone in the tournemts so far this spring after the Can to Can this weekend everyone I know is heading to lake O or Erie for steel and walleye. Slips are going to be a premium this year in our most eastern Great Lake.


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## wallyg (Dec 31, 2010)

Chasin said:


> I'm all for a balanced fishery in Lake Huron but after fishing the tournements this spring one thing is clear. Without the coho and Kings in some form the draw to fish simply isn't there. Getting a king so far this spring has been like winning the lottery for the boats here. It would mean so much if we could get some kind of salmon program off the ground. Will Atlantics be an answer? I don't know but talking to everyone in the tournemts so far this spring after the Can to Can this weekend everyone I know is heading to lake O or Erie for steel and walleye. Slips are going to be a premium this year in our most eastern Great Lake.


For what it is worth, the fishing on Lake Ontario (Canadian Side) was the poorest that the regulars could remember. We caught some nice kings and beautiful steelies,
but the numbers of large kings was WAY down. That was the first 2 weeks of the GOSD.
It may have gotten better later, but those weeks were poor.


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## WoodyMG (May 29, 2013)

On Lake Huron with all its bays and shallow water a return of natural species might be great. But on the south end of Lake Michigan there are no bays for bass, walleye, pike, etc... I'm afraid we would find ourselves with just lake trout to chase around. Maybe the steelhead would stick around as a replacement for grayling. Otherwise there wouldn't be an open water predator worth chasing around all weekend.


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## Robert Holmes (Oct 13, 2008)

Chasin said:


> I'm all for a balanced fishery in Lake Huron but after fishing the tournements this spring one thing is clear. Without the coho and Kings in some form the draw to fish simply isn't there. Getting a king so far this spring has been like winning the lottery for the boats here. It would mean so much if we could get some kind of salmon program off the ground. Will Atlantics be an answer? I don't know but talking to everyone in the tournemts so far this spring after the Can to Can this weekend everyone I know is heading to lake O or Erie for steel and walleye. Slips are going to be a premium this year in our most eastern Great Lake.


It took about 15 years to get Atlantics going good in the Sault. They might take off in SE Michigan who knows time will tell for sure.


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