![]() Fish and Wildlife Service and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and those governments are assisting on some projects, Kevin Donner said the bulk of the work has been carried out by the Anishinaabe tribes. ![]() While the tribes are in touch with the U.S. It’s not worth the fuel to take the boats out. Already many Native American fishers have stopped catching whitefish. That not only means fewer whitefish for tribal members, but less revenue for the tribal communities. There’s a certain urgency because –with the exception of Wisconsin’s Green Bay- whitefish are not reproducing enough to sustain the fish population at a level that can be harvested commercially in the future. Michigan Radio Kris Dey, fish hatcher manager, takes a sample from a tank of recently hatched whitefish as Kevin Donner looks on. That's something that ten years ago, I think only like the people in Finland were doing it and it seems to have worked out quite well for those guys and hopefully that might be an option for restoration.” “We're working with Sault Tribe right now and we're taking the fish and putting them into walleye ponds, basically. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians and Lake Superior whitefish. Kris Dey said, that includes one with the Sault Ste. Altogether there are about 17 research projects are going. Researchers at universities in Michigan and other states are helping Anishinaabe tribes working on the whitefish reproduction problem. And a whitefish food source, a small crustacean called diporeia, has nearly disappeared. The invasive quagga mussels are also damaging the bottom of the food web. Climate change is also affecting the very bottom of the food web. Climate change is affecting the Great Lakes in ways that threaten egg survival. The Odawa tribe is looking at other issues such as possible bacterial infections in eggs, whether getting the fish out of the sterile hatchery tanks and into rivers might help.īut even in the wild, whitefish are challenged. “So, we’ll see that if the food that we have been giving them, if their bodies are set up to be able to digest that well or if we need to come up with something new that's better suited for their digestion and such.” Maybe there’s an essential nutrient missing or some other problem. ![]() Kelsi Wygant is working with a researcher from the University of Maine to see if it might be the food. It's one of many projects to help sustain the whitefish population. There are openings just large enough for larval fish to escape into the river. Michigan Radio Kelsi Wygant holds a plastic incubator which is placed in a river. ![]() In a tank, recently hatched fish not much bigger than a grain of wild rice swim around.Īs is often the case in hatchery reared fish, the whitefish have some deformities. Many of the rivers are not as free flowing and the whitefish have stopped –for the most part- spawning in them.Īt the hatchery, they’re concentrating on raising fish from eggs. The Michigan side of Lake Michigan has a problem. Reproduction in the Green Bay is good because some of its rivers are free flowing for miles upstream before fish are stopped by a dam. We're trying to get that going on this side of the lake,” Dey said.īy “recruitment,” Dey is talking about the annual reproduction of the fish. And so we're trying to kick start that again. “We know that they're doing quite well in Green Bay and research suggests that most of the recruitment happening in Green Bay is actually coming from the river. “There's so much we don't know,” Kris Dey said. The popular fish's reproduction rates have declined to the point there's concern about whether commercial fishing will be viable in the future. Michigan Sea Grant Lake whitefish on ice.
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