Is Conservation of Our Fisheries Based on Fear and Restraint?

Conservation of our fisheries resources, whether it is the Great Lakes or the tiniest lake or stream, has always been based on the fear of loss of what once was. What it once was, is the scenario that thousands of years of time had created to channel the nutrients of life to what we once viewed as the “balance of nature” on the land and the water connected in harmony. So, conservationist at first created restraints to avoid the exhausting of the fishery, but also as we used the resource mechanisms that supported them seemed to get out of order and disappear or deteriorate before humans had a chance to exhaust them. We need a new way to approach conservation that is not based on fear of loss and the reaction of restraint.

History always has lessons on how we got to today’s management of our resources. These history lessons should be remembered and combined with the new knowledge of time to provide to make valuable resource management decisions today. To the best of their ability in the late 1800’s the governments in Canada and U.S. documented the Great Lakes commercial catches of most abundant species: Whitefish, Trout, Herring, and Sturgeon. In general, at the turn of the century these species populations declined, there was a shift to pickerel, walleye, and perch species in the commercial harvest. All the data was focused on commerce and supply to the growing populations of humans and the ability of our natural resources to feed them. Because this was an inventory of harvest, supply, and demand this shift in species was blamed on over harvest or over exploitation of the fisheries resource. Government reacted by developing management scenarios to restrict fishing and catching. It then created hatcheries that were slated to restore this original Great Lake’s fishery. It never happened.

But there were also man-induced fish disturbances with the introduction of alewife, lamprey, and carp. The alewife is in the herring family and were both sea-run (anadromous) and landlocked species of the Atlantic Coast. Now they became considered an invasive because they competed with the native lake herring, chubs, and whitefish for native zooplankton (which in return were depleted causing massive algae blooms) (or was its nutrient loading from agriculture or human waste disposal). Alewife devoured the eggs and larva of native game fish (yellow perch & lake trout). Added to this decreased production of these fish, those predators (including lake trout) that fed on alewives heavily induced Vitamin A (thiamine) deficiency that further lowered reproductive success. But alewife then fell to massive die-offs due to rapid water temperature changes and lack of food. This is the plight of invasives to an ecosystem developed over evolutionary time.

Enter fish propagation and stocking to solve the problem of over harvest and polluted waters. The focus was still on the production and maintenance of wild stocks for commercial harvest to feed the urban growth demand. The first hatcheries focused on whitefish and trout. Native lake trout and brook trout hatcheries were built to boast declining populations. Non-native German brown trout were added to the hatchery propagation for the ability to tolerate higher temperatures and suspended silt cause by agriculture runoff. Fast-growing Asian carp were added hatchery propagation/ stocking list as an answer to create a commercial fishery and food for the growing urban demand for fish.

Carp was also touted as a replacement for the declining inland lake and stream populations due to both pollution from timber harvest runoff and processed waste. Instead, the introduction of carp became an ecological disaster decimating native species and their habitat. The answer to this dilemma was to raise the species that were decimated in hatcheries. Eventually, we have expanded cold water specie hatcheries to cool and warm water fish species. We needed more predators to replace the then the declining lake trout decimated by lamprey, so we began culturing brown trout, steelhead, coho, chinook to be stocked in the great lakes as well as inland water bodies. All are exotic species that are contributing to fisheries, yet the aquatic ecological mechanisms still churn the evolutionary systems to favor original species despite our efforts.

In this new environment of commercial overharvest, pollution, and spawning with the most abundant fish species(whitefish, lake herring, and chubs) that were now in decline were replaced by “rough fish” that in the early 1900’s not only included carp and suckers but northern, walleye, and yellow perch. What we have done in haste still haunts our water resources today. But we will always fish and these “game” fish today as we move forward towards trophy management and consider their connection as food of the sportsmen that is still connected to the land.

But what is the scenario we have created today? Please consider this same scenario as repeating itself in the management of our inland fisheries but always with a twist. Hatcheries now produced fish that are competing with our native fish. Hatchery raised- fish of the same species that not only compete for limited food supply but are not able to reproduce. Pollution and exotic entries into our waters and our fish management that caused the shifts in species and populations are still happening. Are we moving towards catch and release fishing and trophy management because we no longer can safely eat the fish we catch?

A new ecological approach would be to consider humans’ place in the management of our lakes and fisheries as harvesters of fish to reduce nutrient loading that improves the water quality that fish need to live. It is also a time to move away from our management by constraint and be brave enough to place our efforts on the knowledge we have gained to actually solve problems that do not create new ones.