The invasive sea lamprey, which sucks the blood from its native fish victims, is reportedly making a comeback in the Great Lakes, because consistent population control operations virtually ceased during the Covid-19 pandemic. The threat to fisheries must be addressed now.
There’s heightened concern that this parasitic fish, nicknamed the “vampire fish,” will impact the $7.5 billion annual recreational and commercial fisheries in the Great Lakes.
Sea lampreys gained access to Lake Ontario through the St. Lawrence Seaway in the early 19th century. Niagara Falls prevented their access to the other four Great Lakes until the Welland Canal was completed in the early 1900s to provide a commercial connection between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie.
In less than a decade, sea lampreys were in all five Great Lakes, decimating such fisheries as trout, whitefish, perch and sturgeon. By the 1960s, they reduced the commercial catch of trout in the upper Great Lakes from 15 million to a 500,000 pounds a year.
Sea lampreys have no natural predators. These eel-like fish latch onto native host fish with their concentric rows of teeth, then suck out the blood and other vital fluids, killing the fish. Sea lampreys eat up to 40 pounds of fish in their lifetime, and females lay as many as 100,000 eggs.
The Great Lakes Fishery Commission was formed in 1955 and began collaborative work with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and Fisheries & Oceans Canada. A top priority was to institute programs that would manage the lamprey population, including the application of pesticides where the fish spawn. The efforts reportedly reduced the sea lamprey population by 90% in most areas of the Great Lakes, Joseph Barrett recently reported in The Wall Street Journal.
However, the pandemic triggered travel restrictions and funding shortages that seriously interrupted the ability to perform the critical annual management operations. Fisheries managers say the population of the parasitic fish has already increased across the Great Lakes.
Adding to the problem, funding for the Great Lakes Commission from the Canadian government was cut off. Recently, a group of U.S. lawmakers appealed to Canada to renew full commission funding, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has done that for this year, but permanent, long-term funding renewal is lacking.
“Fishing means big business for our marine industry, so this issue a huge concern,” says Michelle Burke, executive director of the Boating Association of Ohio. “Ohio and the other seven states that border the five Great Lakes combine for one-third of the marine industry’s annual boat sales.”
Controlling lampreys is estimated to cost $15 million to $20 million a year, a seeming bargain to protect the $7.5 billion fisheries. The commission needs full funding. “As a result of its past work, our fishing today may be the best it’s ever been, and we must keep it that way,” Burke says.
My wife and I fished on three of the Great Lakes for 40 years and occasionally pulled in a trout with a lamprey attached. It would let go and drop to the deck, slithering around until I managed to chop it up. It wasn’t pretty.
The commission has not convened for more than a year, and regular programming has not been set since November 2020. What’s needed now is a long-term solution to resume normal operations as quickly as possible.
