Environment

Can cormorants help control Great Lakes invaders?

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING — Double-crested cormorants are the bane of many Great Lakes anglers, devouring prize game fish and damaging the sport and commercial fishery. At least that’s a widely held belief about these birds — and a generally wrong one, Northern Illinois University researchers say. Cormorants’ fish-stealing rep may be a bum rap — and the truth is more complex, as the first dietary study of cormorants in southern Lake Michigan shows. Even better news: The cormorants are chowing down instead on invasive species — mainly alewife, round goby and white perch — which together accounted for 80 to 90 percent of their diet. “Because this is the first such study to be completed in southern Lake Michigan, its results will help to inform discussion among local stakeholders and will provide valuable data to other researchers studying cormorant diet in the region,” said lead author Patrick Madura, who led the study as a master’s student.

Environment

Lake Michigan turtles can’t get the lead out

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By MARIE ORTTENBURGER
Capital News Service
LANSING — You likely won’t find any painted and snapping turtles headbanging to Metallica in Lake Michigan wetlands. But heavy metal runs in their veins. These turtles accumulate heavy metals in their tissues, according to a recent study in Environmental Monitoring and Assessment. Some of those metals come from local industries such as smelters, refineries and foundries, as well as landfills, storm sewers and farm runoff. “There’s reason to believe the levels of metals like cadmium, chromium, copper and lead are impacted by anthropogenic sources,” said Matt Cooper, a research scientist at Northland College’s Burke Center for Freshwater Innovation in Ashland, Wisconsin, and co-author of the study.

Environment

Coldwater bacteria threatens Great Lakes salmon

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING — A bacterial disease that sickens fish whether raised in captivity or in the wild is imperiling popular salmon species in the Great Lakes Basin, a new study shows. The findings are based on testing lake, brook, brown and rainbow trout and Coho, Atlantic, chinook and steelhead salmon from the Lake Huron, Lake Michigan and Lake Superior watersheds, as well as fish used for breeding at state hatcheries in the Upper Peninsula and northern Lower Peninsula. Bacterial coldwater disease “threatens wild and propagated members of the salmon family worldwide” and can cause substantial economic damage, according to the study by scientists at Michigan State University. It’s the first comprehensive examination of the prevalence of the bacterium in the Great Lakes Basin. The disease is caused by a bacterium known as Flavobacterium psychrophilum, which has been associated historically with more fish deaths “than all other fish pathogens combined” at state hatcheries, according to the study.

Agriculture

Great Lakes cities swallow streams

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By KEVIN DUFFY
Capital News Service
LANSING — Developers have buried more than 350 miles of streams in Michigan over the last century, creating large areas researchers call “urban stream deserts.”
These riverless areas favor concrete connections over urban parkways. They submerge surface streams, sometimes swallowing entire river systems.

“Urban rivers have value, and when cities start to systematically remove them, they remove viable ecosystem services, like flood control,” said Jacob Napieralski, an associate professor of geology at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Detroit has lost 86 percent of its surface streams since 1905, according to a study Napieralski recently submitted to the Journal of Maps. That’s roughly 180 miles of stream. Other Michigan cities, including Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids, have seen declines with up to 60 percent stream loss.

Environment

Spiny water flea clouds lake and its future

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By MORGAN LINN
Capital News Service
LANSING — The spiny water flea is a small invader of lakes in Michigan that could cause big and expensive problems.
A recent study of a Wisconsin lake reveals what may be in store for inland lakes throughout the Great Lakes region. The crustacean has clouded that state’s Lake Mendota after boaters transported it there from Lake Michigan, said Steve Carpenter, director of the Center for Limnology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The damage it has done to water clarity could cost millions of dollars to restore, according to a new study co-authored by Carpenter and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. The research has implications for other lakes in the region, such as inland lakes in Michigan. The spiny water flea was introduced into the region in the 1980s and has proliferated through all five of the Great Lakes, according to the study.

Environment

Great Lakes ports open their docks for cruise lines

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By KAYLA SMITH
Capital News Service
LANSING — A cruise on the Great Lakes is comparable to, if not better than, a tour of the Galapagos Islands. That’s the assessment of one seasoned cruise couple arriving in Duluth, Minnesota, after an excursion through the Great Lakes. “They said the quality of the lectures, to the amount of time at each stop and the fact that every coastline was completely different made it better than any cruise they had been on,” said Adele Yorde, public relations director at the Duluth Seaway Port Authority. More cruise-savvy travelers may have that Great Lakes option this summer. Cindy Larsen, president of the Muskegon (Michigan) Lakeshore Chamber of Commerce, is planning for a boost in cruise line tourism in her city.

Environment

Flame retardant problems linger in Lake Erie smallmouth bass

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By MORGAN LINN
Capital News Service
LANSING — Levels of hazardous flame retardants in most Great Lakes fish are declining – or at least researchers thought they were. But a new study shows that this isn’t the case for Lake Erie smallmouth bass, an important game fish. And the contaminated fish threatens the health of some people who eat them. Smallmouth bass: Credit: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are flame retardants that were commonly used in furniture, electronics, construction materials and textiles, said Michael Murray, a staff scientist for the National Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes office in Ann Arbor.

Environment

Weather, water conditions pose threats to Isle Royale

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By COLLEEN OTTE
Capital News Service
LANSING — The introduction of invasive species and the decline of native species are among the most pressing issues facing Isle Royale, according to the national park’s top administrator. And rising temperatures make those problems even worse, Park Superintendent Phyllis Green said. “Some things that factor into the islands pretty heavily are that winds over the Great Lakes are stronger – Lake Superior being about 12 percent higher than it was in 1985,” Green said in a talk at Michigan State University. “And the waters in the Great Lakes are hotter, increasing faster than the air temperatures.”

Lake Superior’s temperature rose 4.5 degrees from 1979 to 2006, double the air temperature increases. The added heat could help with the survival of aquatic invasive species, Green said.

Agriculture

First, they lure the lamprey, then they stage the battle

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By LIAM TIERNAN
Capital News Service
LANSING — It’s no secret that sea lamprey are one of the most costly and destructive invaders in the Great Lakes region – vicious bloodsuckers that ruin lake trout and whitefish fisheries across every Great Lake, shutting down fisheries in the mid-20th century and continuing to demolish native species today. But better understanding of the functions and behaviors of these animals has given researchers a new way to try to combat this invasion, including the first vertebrate biopesticide ever discovered. The Environmental Protection Agency registered 3kPZs, a lamprey pheromone, as a biopesticide in December, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. This is a lamprey’s love call. “A pheromone is a chemical cue for communication,” said Michael Wagner, associate professor in the Michigan State University Fisheries and Wildlife Department.

Environment

Lake bottoms, visible from space, may hint at trout comeback

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By COLLEEN OTTE
Capital News Service
LANSING — It might seem counterintuitive, but when trying to examine the bottom of Lake Huron, researchers discovered it is helpful to take a look from space. Satellite imagery offers a new tool for identifying nearshore habitats where lake trout spawn across broad areas of the Great Lakes, according to a recent study in the Journal of Great Lakes Research. Researchers have been using satellite imagery to look at how the distribution of lake-floor algae in the Great Lakes is changing, said Amanda Grimm, lead author of the study and an assistant research scientist at the Michigan Tech Research Institute in Ann Arbor. While studying lake trout rehabilitation in the Drummond Island Refuge in northern Lake Huron, U.S. Geological Survey researchers noticed that the stony reefs, where they found lake trout laying eggs, were cleaner of algae than surrounding areas, Grimm said. They realized the difference might be seen from satellite, which would help find good lake trout spawning grounds.