Wildlife
Sturgeon studies and students
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Researchers studying the threats to lake sturgeon are using their findings to teach kids about the environment.
Echo
Muskegon and White lakes reach cleanup milestones
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Cleanup efforts at two Michigan Areas of Concern, Muskegon Lake and White Lake, have reached important milestones, according to the Michigan Office of the Great Lakes. The Environmental Protection Agency on Feb. 26 lifted Beneficial Use Impairments on both lakes pertaining to fish consumption, allowing local residents and anglers to fish these lakes with fewer restrictions. Recent studies by Grand Valley State University on the lakes revealed that fish there did not possess higher concentrations of PCBs or mercury than fish in lakes that were not listed as Areas of Concern. Both lakes remain subject to the same fish consumption advisories as the other lakes in the area.
Wildlife
Black Lake sturgeon season ends with six fish landed
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These fish live more than 70 years and grow to be more than six feet long. But they are so rare that the season ended this year once six were landed. The Black Lake Shivaree festival celebrates the prehistoric species.
Wildlife
Michigan expands Great Lakes muskie stock
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The muskie production program of the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has turned a huge corner by stocking only Great Lakes muskies. The department has raised muskellunge for stocking for decades but had always used northern muskies. This is the second year it produced strictly Great Lakes muskies.
Wildlife
New St. Clair River reefs to spur sturgeon spawning
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Alright, sturgeon … they made your bed, now spawn in it.
Michigan organizations and agencies are building nine rock reefs in the Middle Channel of the St. Clair River to bolster native fish spawning and restore habitat.
Wildlife
Sex, water and rock and roll: Sturgeon spawn while singing on the rocks
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How does a scientist use sound to save a 150-million-year-old fish? In Wisconsin, Ron Bruch and Chris Bocast are trying to help restore sturgeon stock by listening for the sound they make when spawning that some call “thunder.” The sound can be heard here. “It’s a real low frequency, you can almost feel it instead of hear it,” said Bruch, fish supervisor with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. “One of the important measures of success is knowing your stock is spawning.”
Bocast, a University of Wisconsin-Madison doctoral student in acoustic ecology, discovered the sound while working on an audio book about sturgeons.
Echo
Canadian, US scientists trying to revive Atlantic salmon in Lake Ontario
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Atlantic salmon once thrived in Lake Ontario but went extinct when their habitat and spawning grounds were ruined. U.S. and Canadian scientists are now trying to bring the species back.
Echo
Efforts to bolster lake herring populations in Lake Huron may be stunted by deadly disease
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The bolstering of lake herring in Lake Huron may be stunted by an emerging fatal fish disease.
Wildlife
Great Lakes eels are a conservation challenge
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Something slithers beneath the surface of the Great Lakes and it’s not a sea lamprey.
It might look similar, but the mysterious American eel isn’t a sucker.
And it’s in trouble. Its population is decreasing dramatically and no one is sure why.
Wildlife
Volunteers fight plant invaders, sturgeon poachers
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Environmental agencies and organizations are enlisting the public’s help to protect native species and get rid of invasive ones.