LoginTime running out for Great Lakes whitefish. Can ponds become their Noah’s Ark?
This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from Bridge Michigan, sign up for a free Bridge Michigan newsletter here.
Western religions say it worked once. Now, some are exploring a Noah’s Ark strategy to save whitefish from collapse in lakes Michigan and Huron.
Once abundant in these lakes, stocks have plunged so sharply that scientists fear entire bloodlines could vanish within years. With no cure in sight for the mussel invasion that has made the big lakes so unlivable, some want to move whitefish to inland lakes or ponds, where they would live as refugees until conditions improve.
“We need to make sure that, 20 years from now, if the lake is ready again, we can return the descendants of fish that came from here,” said Jason Smith, a scientist with the Bay Mills Indian Community who is winning some early interest in his “genetic rescue” strategy.
Modeled in part on a successful pond stocking program in the Upper Peninsula, the idea echoes a global trend. As human-caused harms push millions of Earth’s species to the brink, interventions that once may have seemed far-fetched are becoming routine.
“We’re going to see more of this,” said Gregory Kaebick, a senior research scholar at the Hastings Center for Bioethics, a nonprofit think tank based in Garrison, New York.
“The extinctions right now are almost entirely due to human intervention in the first place. So there’s a sense that if we’ve caused the problem, then we ought to be contributing to trying to fix it.”
The pond rescue idea is just one among many to save whitefish, none of which are sure bets. But there’s evidence it could work: For several years, the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians has reported success raising small numbers of whitefish in ponds, then releasing them into lakes when they are larger.
“It’s more hands-off and the fish are exposed to the environment,” said Rusty Aikens, the tribe’s fisheries enhancement coordinator.
Expanding upon that methodology to keep the fish in ponds indefinitely would require millions of dollars and coordination among the tribal, state and federal agencies that co-manage the Great Lakes fishery.
But the idea speaks to desperation to prevent a loss that would not only corrode a key piece of Great Lakes culture but ripple through the food web and regional fishing economy.
“We think of Atikameg as the canary in the coal mine,” said Smith, using the Anishinaabe word for whitefish. “They’re the ones struggling first, but we would be foolish to think they’re the only ones.”
Whitefish in exile
Whitefish are endangered by tiny quagga and zebra mussels, natives of Eastern Europe that came to the Great Lakes in freighters and were first spotted here in 1989. They now blanket the bottom of four out of five Great Lakes, siphoning nutrients and plankton and leaving behind crystal-clear water with barely anything for whitefish to eat.
Scientists are searching for a solution, but a breakthrough could be decades away, and the effort is poorly funded compared to other Great Lakes threats.
Though whitefish remain stable in Saginaw Bay, lower Green Bay and Lake Superior, scientists fear the mussels could eventually harm those fish, too. Even if not, shrinking a deep gene pool down to a few smaller populations creates a risk of lost fitness and inbreeding. And tribes leading the whitefish rescue effort say it’s about more than ecology.
The fish are kin, deserving protection in exchange for the millenia they have spent sustaining human diets.
“If they’re extirpated, or if they’re diminished such that we don’t have access to them, we’d be lesser as a community,” said Doug Craven, natural resources director for the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians.
Advocates of pond-rearing view it as a cheaper, more humane and more promising alternative to raising fish in hatcheries, where they are often packed into concrete raceways or plastic tanks that require lots of electricity and constant monitoring.
Studies also show that fish raised in these tightly controlled environments have less knack for surviving in the wild.
For the past five years, the Sault Tribe has been raising small numbers of whitefish in ponds near Sault Ste. Marie (225,000 this year) until they are several months old, at which point they’re trucked to the north shore of lakes Huron and Michigan. It’s a workaround, meant to protect them from the zooplankton shortage that kills hatchlings in the Great Lakes.
Unlike hatchery-raised fish, these fish must learn to feed themselves, steer clear of predators and deal with changing weather and other variables. The mortality rate in ponds is higher than in hatcheries. But Aikens said that’s not necessarily a bad thing:
“The ones that do make it to this point? They’re fitter,” he said as Sault Tribe scientists netted the 3-inch fingerlings in preparation for transport to Lake Huron.
The trouble is, the stocking program is tiny. And it will take years to know if it’s working. Young whitefish disappear into the deep water and typically aren’t seen again until they return ashore to spawn years later.
“There’s a lot of hurdles they need to overcome between now and then,” Aikens said.
So from Smith’s perspective, there’s a need for a backup plan.
Encouraged by the promise of pond-rearing, he began talking with U.S. Forest Service officials last year about finding some ponds in the Hiawatha National Forest where whitefish could hunker down indefinitely, perhaps for multiple generations, until the mussel invasion subsides.
“Time is of the essence to see if there’s consensus that we should do this or some other preservation measure,” Smith said. “It’s not simple, it’s not inexpensive, but it might be really important.”
Officials with the Little Traverse Bay Band are open to partnering on such a project, while state regulators and The Nature Conservancy have also shown some interest.
One barrier to more coordinated action: There is no comprehensive rehabilitation plan for whitefish, unlike lake trout and sturgeon. Tribal, state and federal experts have begun discussing whether it’s time to write one, said Steve Lenart, a fish biologist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
“I don’t think anybody’s thinking that it’s not a pretty urgent topic,” Lenart said, but “coordination and collaboration — those things take time.”
Get used to it
If circumventing species loss by moving fish to a whole new environment sounds radical, get used to it.
Human forces including habitat loss, climate change and the spread of invasive species are pushing nature to the brink, forcing emergency rescues and heartbreaking decisions about what not to save.
Life on Earth is vanishing at a rate unmatched in human history, with some 28% of species assessed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature at risk. In Michigan, state officials have designated 407 species as threatened or endangered.
“We are in an extinction crisis, no question about it,” said Budhan Pukazhenthi, a scientist with the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. “But the challenge is also, what can we do to either slow it down or to completely stop it?”
Groups like his have cloned endangered animals. Governments are freezing animals’ tissue samples “just in case” and establishing massive seed libraries like the “doomsday vault” on the island of Spitsbergen, Norway. Zoos around the globe — including in Michigan — are breeding and releasing rare animals into the wild.
Still, it won’t be feasible to save everything. Some officials have begun using a framework known as Resist, Accept Direct to help them decide when and how to intervene.
“We know these systems are changing,” said Abigail Lynch, a scientist with the USGS National Climate Adaptation Science Center. “We can either acknowledge these difficult issues now and make more informed decisions, or we can ignore them and let those decisions be made for us.”
Time is running short for many of the lower lakes’ whitefish. In some areas, almost no hatchlings have survived to adulthood for nearly two decades. Most whitefish left in those waters are grandparents that will soon die of old age.
In Little Traverse Bay, the average whitefish caught in fishing nets is more than 20 years old. It’s growing difficult to even catch enough fish for experiments that aim to save this genetically distinct population.
Smith knows some might see the pond rescue idea as extreme. But to him, risking the fish’s disappearance from the lower lakes is far moreso. Money, time, uncertainty about whether it will work — he sees those all as worthwhile sacrifices to save an icon of the Great Lakes.
With one caveat:
“If we do it, does that absolutely obligate us to bust our ass to fix the lakes?” he said. “One-hundred percent.”
Time running out for Great Lakes whitefish. Can ponds become their Noah’s Ark? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
