((PKG)) SEA LAMPREY
((Banner: Saving the Fish))
((Reporter/Camera: Ailin Li))
((Map: Millersburg, Michigan))
((NATS, MUSIC))
((Scott Miehls, Fish Biologist, USGS))
The most obvious feature of the sea lamprey is the suction
cup shaped mouth. We call it the oral disc. It's just a
perfectly round mouth. The sea lamprey mouth is
completely lined and ringed with teeth, has about 150 teeth
inside that mouth and that allows them to really latch on and
hold onto a prey fish.
((NATS))
((Scott Miehls, Fish Biologist, USGS))
My name is Scott Miehls. I'm a fish biologist with the U.S.
Geological Survey stationed here at the Hammond Bay
Biological Station in northern Michigan.
((NATS))
((Scott Miehls, Fish Biologist, USGS))
The sea lamprey is an ancient jawless fish. It's a very
snake-like fish. A lot of people confuse them with eels
because they do look very eel-like but they're a completely
different family. The sea lamprey are called the vampire of
the Great Lakes because they attach and drink the blood of
our native fish species here. They use their suction cup-
mouth to attach onto the side of the fish. They're able to
create a suction force about seven times greater than your
average household vacuum cleaner. And then they can also
rasp into the side of the fish with the teeth that line that
suction cup mouth. They'll stay attached to the prey fish as
long as that prey fish is healthy. They end up ultimately
draining so much blood and juice from the fish that they kill
it. A single sea lamprey will kill about 40 pounds [18 kg] of
fish prey in its lifetime which occurs in about an 18-month
period. In Lake Huron behind us, there are anywhere from
80,000 to 150,000 parasitic sea lamprey swimming around
right now.
((NATS))
((Scott Miehls, Fish Biologist, USGS))
Probably the sea lamprey is one of, if not the most,
devastating species to have invaded the Great Lakes. The
sea lamprey actually swam or hitched a ride into the Great
Lakes through the canal system. So, as the canal systems
were being built to connect the Great Lakes to the East
Coast to the Atlantic Ocean, from there, it only took a
decade or two to really completely infest all five of the Great
Lakes and wipe out the native fish populations.
((NATS))
((Scott Miehls, Fish Biologist, USGS))
Specifically, one of the research projects that we have
underway is trying to develop a tool where we can
selectively pass fish. So, right now, we're actually using one
of the Whooshh Innovations’ scanning devices and we're
traveling around to various locations around the Great
Lakes, working with state management agencies, collecting
the fish and collecting images of those fish. Those images
are then going to be used to develop an algorithm. We're
developing fish recognition technology I guess you could
say.
((NATS))
((Nick Johnson, Research Ecologist, USGS))
Sea Lamprey control has two primary methods. The first is
to use barriers and dams to keep adult sea lamprey from
reaching spawning habitat. Where larvae are produced,
there's a lampricide which is a compound that specifically
kills larval sea lamprey that's applied and removes larval sea
lamprey from the streams before they metamorphose and go
out into the lakes and kill fish.
((NATS))
((Ed Benzer, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service))
So, here we're sorting according to the male and female.
So, the females, the way we can tell is, of course, they're full
of eggs, from 60,000 to 80,000 eggs in there. And then the
male is a tighter belly and a dorsal rope on the top.?There's
a good example of one right there.
((NATS))
((Nick Johnson, Research Ecologist, USGS))
The work we're researching is whether or not we can reduce
reproduction. So, the males come in from the trap sites and
we make sure that all the males are sorted from the females.
So, we're only injecting males. They then get transported
inside the facility where they're injected with a chemo
sterilant. We just kill the female and we release the sterile
males. The reason we fin-clip the animals is so we can tell
they are sterile. If we catch a lamprey in a trap and it has
fin-clips, then we release it because it's on our side.
((NATS))
((Researcher))
So, this is the top fin here. This is the tail fin.
((NATS))
((Nick Johnson, Research Ecologist, USGS))
These animals are our secret agents or double agents.
They don't know they're sterile. And when we release them,
they go out and find the females in these huge river systems.
It would be extremely hard for people to go out and find
these animals, but these males are doing all the hard work
for us and they don't even know it, and they don't need to
know it. It's a very humane way for them to finish their life, in
some ways.
((NATS))
((Andrea Miehls, Communications Associate, USGS))
There we go. All right. That's a bigger one. Oh, it's so
slippery. When sea lamprey first invaded the Great Lakes,
many people suggested, "Have you considered actually
fishing for sea lamprey? Maybe people would be willing to
eat them." But unfortunately, that method failed for multiple
reasons. People in the Great Lakes region simply didn't
have the palate for sea lamprey. Now interestingly, sea
lamprey are considered a delicacy in other parts of the
world. Spain and Portugal, you could find sea lamprey on a
menu as the high dollar market price item. So many people
ask, "Will a sea lamprey attack me while I'm out swimming in
the Great Lakes or in one of the streams?" And the answer,
thankfully, is no. Sea lamprey can tell the difference
between warm and cold-blooded organisms. We are warm-
blooded and the fish that sea lamprey feed on are cold-
blooded. Most sea lamprey would swim very quickly away if
they came near a human. The fishing economy is very
valuable to the Great Lakes region. It's the part of our way
of life within the Great Lakes and that way of life, the Great
Lakes as we know them, would not be as they are today had
it not been for sea lamprey control.
((NATS))
((Banner: Saving the Fish))
((Reporter/Camera: Ailin Li))
((Map: Millersburg, Michigan))
((NATS, MUSIC))
((Scott Miehls, Fish Biologist, USGS))
The most obvious feature of the sea lamprey is the suction
cup shaped mouth. We call it the oral disc. It's just a
perfectly round mouth. The sea lamprey mouth is
completely lined and ringed with teeth, has about 150 teeth
inside that mouth and that allows them to really latch on and
hold onto a prey fish.
((NATS))
((Scott Miehls, Fish Biologist, USGS))
My name is Scott Miehls. I'm a fish biologist with the U.S.
Geological Survey stationed here at the Hammond Bay
Biological Station in northern Michigan.
((NATS))
((Scott Miehls, Fish Biologist, USGS))
The sea lamprey is an ancient jawless fish. It's a very
snake-like fish. A lot of people confuse them with eels
because they do look very eel-like but they're a completely
different family. The sea lamprey are called the vampire of
the Great Lakes because they attach and drink the blood of
our native fish species here. They use their suction cup-
mouth to attach onto the side of the fish. They're able to
create a suction force about seven times greater than your
average household vacuum cleaner. And then they can also
rasp into the side of the fish with the teeth that line that
suction cup mouth. They'll stay attached to the prey fish as
long as that prey fish is healthy. They end up ultimately
draining so much blood and juice from the fish that they kill
it. A single sea lamprey will kill about 40 pounds [18 kg] of
fish prey in its lifetime which occurs in about an 18-month
period. In Lake Huron behind us, there are anywhere from
80,000 to 150,000 parasitic sea lamprey swimming around
right now.
((NATS))
((Scott Miehls, Fish Biologist, USGS))
Probably the sea lamprey is one of, if not the most,
devastating species to have invaded the Great Lakes. The
sea lamprey actually swam or hitched a ride into the Great
Lakes through the canal system. So, as the canal systems
were being built to connect the Great Lakes to the East
Coast to the Atlantic Ocean, from there, it only took a
decade or two to really completely infest all five of the Great
Lakes and wipe out the native fish populations.
((NATS))
((Scott Miehls, Fish Biologist, USGS))
Specifically, one of the research projects that we have
underway is trying to develop a tool where we can
selectively pass fish. So, right now, we're actually using one
of the Whooshh Innovations’ scanning devices and we're
traveling around to various locations around the Great
Lakes, working with state management agencies, collecting
the fish and collecting images of those fish. Those images
are then going to be used to develop an algorithm. We're
developing fish recognition technology I guess you could
say.
((NATS))
((Nick Johnson, Research Ecologist, USGS))
Sea Lamprey control has two primary methods. The first is
to use barriers and dams to keep adult sea lamprey from
reaching spawning habitat. Where larvae are produced,
there's a lampricide which is a compound that specifically
kills larval sea lamprey that's applied and removes larval sea
lamprey from the streams before they metamorphose and go
out into the lakes and kill fish.
((NATS))
((Ed Benzer, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service))
So, here we're sorting according to the male and female.
So, the females, the way we can tell is, of course, they're full
of eggs, from 60,000 to 80,000 eggs in there. And then the
male is a tighter belly and a dorsal rope on the top.?There's
a good example of one right there.
((NATS))
((Nick Johnson, Research Ecologist, USGS))
The work we're researching is whether or not we can reduce
reproduction. So, the males come in from the trap sites and
we make sure that all the males are sorted from the females.
So, we're only injecting males. They then get transported
inside the facility where they're injected with a chemo
sterilant. We just kill the female and we release the sterile
males. The reason we fin-clip the animals is so we can tell
they are sterile. If we catch a lamprey in a trap and it has
fin-clips, then we release it because it's on our side.
((NATS))
((Researcher))
So, this is the top fin here. This is the tail fin.
((NATS))
((Nick Johnson, Research Ecologist, USGS))
These animals are our secret agents or double agents.
They don't know they're sterile. And when we release them,
they go out and find the females in these huge river systems.
It would be extremely hard for people to go out and find
these animals, but these males are doing all the hard work
for us and they don't even know it, and they don't need to
know it. It's a very humane way for them to finish their life, in
some ways.
((NATS))
((Andrea Miehls, Communications Associate, USGS))
There we go. All right. That's a bigger one. Oh, it's so
slippery. When sea lamprey first invaded the Great Lakes,
many people suggested, "Have you considered actually
fishing for sea lamprey? Maybe people would be willing to
eat them." But unfortunately, that method failed for multiple
reasons. People in the Great Lakes region simply didn't
have the palate for sea lamprey. Now interestingly, sea
lamprey are considered a delicacy in other parts of the
world. Spain and Portugal, you could find sea lamprey on a
menu as the high dollar market price item. So many people
ask, "Will a sea lamprey attack me while I'm out swimming in
the Great Lakes or in one of the streams?" And the answer,
thankfully, is no. Sea lamprey can tell the difference
between warm and cold-blooded organisms. We are warm-
blooded and the fish that sea lamprey feed on are cold-
blooded. Most sea lamprey would swim very quickly away if
they came near a human. The fishing economy is very
valuable to the Great Lakes region. It's the part of our way
of life within the Great Lakes and that way of life, the Great
Lakes as we know them, would not be as they are today had
it not been for sea lamprey control.
((NATS))
