Sea lamprey from a trap site on the Cheboygan River in northern Michigan. Image: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
By Kayla Smith
The dramatic drop of invasive sea lampreys in the Great Lakes can be tracked with a new app made by the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.
The app is a couple weeks from full scale roll out, but it has already created a new way of presenting interactive data.
“We want to present this information in a way that all types of people can learn from it,” said Marc Gaden, communications director of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.
Sea lampreys from the Atlantic Ocean entered the Great Lakes in 1835 and severely harmed native populations of lake trout and other Great Lakes fish. Sea lampreys are parasitic and drain fish of blood, typically killing them or leaving them prone to infection.
The app was created to allow the public to monitor the success of the commission’s research and removal strategies of sea lamprey in the Great Lakes.
The commission has reduced lamprey in the Great Lakes by almost 90 percent, using a variety of techniques, such as electrofishing and pesticide control. The use of lampricides like TFM, kill lamprey larva. Their affects on environment and the general population have been tested by the Environmental Protection Agency and Health Canada Pest Management Regulatory Agency, and deemed to be safe.
The Great Lakes Fishery Commission is determined to control lamprey populations to save Great Lakes fisheries from the invasive species, Gaden said.
In 2015, lamprey populations in Lake Huron reached 30 year lows and in Lake Michigan reached 20 year lows, Gaden said.
The application is easy to use. Created using ShinyApps, a graph is generated by choosing a Great Lake and a couple variables (lamprey populations, lake trout populations, population of fish with lamprey wounds and rates of pesticide applications).
Users can track the number of lampreys, the fish they wound and the amount of pesticide used to control them in all five Great Lakes since 1976.
Users can also see the target numbers the commission hopes to reach, and the amount of Great Lakes Fishery Commission research staff involvement per year.
“Everyone’s interested if we’re getting close to target,” Gaden said.
The information in the app is a lot more accessible than a PDF or a wordy research report, Gaden said. Among the groups that may find it useful:
- State and provincial resource agencies can determine new strategies in fishery management.
- The public can track pesticide use the number of fish wounded by lamprey in a specific area.
- Politicians and funders can see the progress of the Fishery Commission, which can be useful when requesting federal research funds.
Track the status of sea lamprey or control methods in each or all of the Great Lakes using the checkboxes below: