By Alice Rossignol and Rachael Gleason
Editor’s note: Great Lakes SmackDown! is an ongoing Great Lakes Echo series.
Round 2, Bracket 2
The second round of invaders now duel in the SmackDown! semi-finals:
Now the alewife and the sea lamprey face off!
The alewife likes to prey on things like young fish. The lamprey parasitically preys on fish by latching on to them with its vampire-like grip.
And they share a history.
The two foes entered Lake Erie around the same time through manmade canals. The lampreys affected the population of fish like the lake trout, burbot and whitefish. Due to the lamprey’s work on the lake trout, a predator to the alewife, the Impale-wife’s population skyrocketed.
Humans also have controls against the two. Lampricides are used to control the lampreys and alewives are mainly controlled by stocking salmon and trout that eat them.
Both competitors won by more than 80 percent in the polls, but the lamprey took its last foe by a landslide in the brackets at 91 percent. The alewife just snuck by at 54 percent.
Together they may be an invasive super power. Can you single one out and answer the question: Which one is worse for the Great Lakes?
The sea lamprey takes on the alewife. Photo: U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Sea “THE GREEN LAMP-REY” Lamprey
Legal name: Petromyzon marinus
Home Turf: Atlantic Ocean, New York and Vermont’s Finger Lakes and Lake Champlain
U.S. Fighting Debut: 1830s by way of the Lake Ontario canals and locks
Preferred fighting arena: All five Great Lakes
Agent: Canals and locks
Weight/Size class: 18 to 24 inches
Fighting Skills:
– Primitive and predacious behavior.
– Lampreys latch on to their opponents and suck the life out of them.
– They spend more than a year picking lake fights with unsuspecting fish.
Life Expectancy: From 6 to 20 years
Offspring: Lampreys produce many babies, but they only lake fight as adults.
The alewife is set to fight the sea lamprey. Photo: U.S. Geological Survey, Great Lakes Science Center.
Alewife “VLAD THE IMPALE-WIFE”
Legal name: Alosa pseudoharengus
Home Turf: U.S. Atlantic coast and some inland areas on the east coast.
Great Lakes Fighting Debut: 1873 in Lake Ontario but some scientists claim that the fish is native to this lake. In that case, they started fighting invasively in 1931 in Lake Erie.
Agent: The fish entered the lakes through manmade canals.
Preferred fighting arena: All the Great Lakes — though it’s less feisty in Lakes Superior and Erie.
Weight/Size class: 6 inches, 4 ounces.
Fighting Skills:
– These little guys love to munch on things like zooplankton, stealing food from the mouths of native fish species.
– Alewives find strength, and do damage in numbers. They clog industrial intake pipes and when they die in mass they then wash up on the beach.
– As bottom feeders, toxins build up in their systems.
Life Expectancy: Adulthood is reached between 2 and 3 years. At 5 years they see the light at the end of the water intake pipe.
Offspring: Females lay 10,000 to 360,000 eggs in one session.