Lake Erie Surprises
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Surprisesby Linda Steiner Lake Erie is full of surprises–literally. The Great Lake is a great lake for meeting rare, strange, and unusual fish. It’s like no other waterway in Pennsylvania. photo-Linda Steiner Roger Kenyon’s “beat,” as a Pennsyl- that he’s become shockproof at Lake vania Fish and Boat Commission Erie’s unending changes, or at least has fisheries biologist, is like no other fish- learned to adapt himself and roll with eries biologist’s in the state. For nearly what the waves turn up. 30 years, Kenyon has been involved in No wonder tales and ballads have fisheries management in the Pennsyl- come out of the Great Lakes. They are vania section of Lake Erie. Yet, those all giants–even “little” Lake Erie, just years could never be boring–Lake Erie 250 miles long and 50 miles wide. is always something new and different. When seen for the first time by those to “Lake Erie drives you nuts. When whom a lake is a sedate pond with all you’re used to fishery stability in other shores visible, the Great Lakes astonish waters, this lake is all over the map,” and humble. Like the others, Lake Erie says Kenyon. “Any freshwater ecologist is a landscape of water, sky, and expec- or limnologist should come here for a tation. What’s going to happen next? real education. Pull one brick, one spe- Pennsylvania’s Lake Erie frontage is cies out of the ecosystem link, and the mostly on what is known as the Central whole thing changes.” Basin. Biologists consider the lake to Roger Kenyon In his career, Kenyon has seen a lot have three distinct sections, though of “bricks” added and removed from from above it looks like just one huge the Lake Erie fish community. He’s pool. The Western Basin is the shallow- almost constantly had to revise his un- est, with some extended shoals only 20 derstanding of how that inland feet deep, which makes it the most freshwater sea’s web of aquatic life and prone to pollution problems. The East- energy responds. Guess you could say ern Basin is the coldest and deepest, www.fish.state.pa.us Pennsylvania Angler & Boater 41 Lake sturgeon Surprises photo-Rob Criswell plunging in some spots more than 200 and Canada in 1955. For more infor- “dug” the lake, and changed the direc- feet. Pennsylvania’s Presque Isle penin- mation on the commission, visit tion of rivers flowing into and out of sula and its counterpart across the lake www.glfc.org. the region. Fish and other aquatic spe- in Canada, Long Point, seem to divide On average, Lake Erie is the shallow- cies that already lived in those rivers the Central from the Eastern Basin. est of all the Great Lakes; off Erie were added to the new Great Lake; it Lake Erie has shoreline in Michigan, County, Pennsylvania it averages only was probably a strange mix from the Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and the 70 feet deep. But that’s enough depth start. Later, intentional and accidental province of Ontario. Management and to give it both coolwater and alien introductions (still going on to- monitoring involve five political enti- warmwater fishery types with unusual day) made it an even more chaotic ties. Their diverse views on what the species variety, Kenyon says. assortment. Yet, the whole, in some lake’s fisheries and their use echo the Why so many different fish? One way, works. As Kenyon says, there’s complexity of the lake’s fisheries. reason is that the lake is the child of just so much energy present in the lake. Helping to coordinate it all is the Great monumental ice movements across Which species are passing it around, as Lakes Fishery Commission, established northwestern Pennsylvania terrain, tens their populations rise and fall, appear by treaty between the United States of thousands of years ago. The glaciers and disappear, is always changing. Spotted gar. Like sturgeons, gars are primitive, prehistoric relicts. As a leftover survival technique from the ancient days, they can use their swim bladder as a spare breathing apparatus, a sort of “lung” that can be put into action when oxygen levels are low in the water around them. Then they come to the surface and gulp air from above. photo-Rob Criswell 42 Pennsylvania Angler & Boater www.fish.state.pa.us Lake sturgeon Gar “Some of these primitive fishes may Some Lake Erie water life is insanely Lake Erie even has its own version of also have been in other large lake sys- abundant; others are vanishingly rare. an “alligator”–the gar. The spotted tems, but died out,” says Kenyon. “In Take the lake’s version of the Loch and longnose gar are not reptiles, but something the size of the Great Lakes, Ness Monster. At least, says Kenyon, they are heavily scaled, predatory fish they could find quiet backwaters where that’s what some observers report with a long “beak” full of big teeth. they were not subjected to the same when they see the wave-wake of a huge This gave them the nickname “gar stresses as their populations elsewhere.” body moving just below the surface. pike,” but they’re not related to Actually, they’ve been close to a Penn- northerns or muskellunge, either. Glacier sylvania endangered species, the lake Surprised anglers sometimes catch gar, When the last glacier pulled back sturgeon. In summer, when the lake is especially in weedy Presque Isle Bay. from Pennsylvania some 15,000 years quiet, a small group of sturgeons may The fish also enter Lake Erie tributary ago, it left a legacy of new stream direc- rise to the surface and feed on midges, streams to spawn, where basking tions, some totally reversed from their tiny insects. Because these fish can 4-footers startle onlookers. former course. The Upper Allegheny, grow 6 feet long, some people think Like sturgeons, gars are primitive, Tionesta and Beaver-Monongahela they’ve seen a sea monster, says prehistoric relicts. As a leftover sur- drainages had flowed north into what Kenyon. vival technique from the ancient days, scientists call the “Erian River.” After Lake sturgeons, as a species, are 350 they can use their swim bladder as a the glacier, these major watersheds fed million years old, a prehistoric relict, spare breathing apparatus, a sort of the Ohio River. Today, the Pennsylva- which alone makes them an oddity. “lung” that can be put into action nia tributary streams to Lake Erie are They were once quite numerous in when oxygen levels are low in the water all short. The divide between the Lake Lake Erie, says Kenyon, and commer- around them. Then they come to the Erie and Ohio River drainages is only cial fishermen used to throw the fish surface and gulp air from above. about 20 miles from the big lake. Sea lamprey photo-Rob Criswell away if they got caught in the nets. The glacier allowed some species to Sturgeons were also killed for their Bowfin push south, while others went north, caviar and their air bladder, which The bowfin is another heavily “ar- says Kenyon. The Iowa darter, another was used to make isinglass, a semi- mored,” primitive-looking fish. It has special protection candidate, is a relict transparent gelatin that clarifies hard, bony head plates, a wavy back fin of glacial times that is found in jellies and glue. that stretches all the way to its tail, and Presque Isle Bay. The salmonids (trout The lake sturgeon became imper- lots of sharp teeth. Sometimes called relatives) that are native to Lake Erie iled primarily by degradation of its “dogfish,” the bowfin is a candidate are also remnants from the Ice Age. spawning sites, says Kenyon, when species for special protection in Penn- Needing a coldwater habitat, “this is as silt covered the gravel where the fish’s sylvania. Although bowfins are seldom far south as the whitefish and lake eggs were laid. Right now there is encountered elsewhere in the state, trout got,” explains Kenyon. renewed interest in restoring the stur- they’re fairly common in Erie’s Presque The original lake trout were extir- geon, he says. A large effort is being Isle Bay, says Kenyon. Bowfins are a pated in (gone from) Lake Erie by the made to locate the sturgeon’s pre- leftover from the Devonian period of 1930s, the victims of a combination of ferred spawning grounds, find out prehistory and are one of a kind. The commercial fishing, degradation of where they live, and get an overall family Amiidae is represented by a spawning reefs, and parasitism by the estimate on just how well or how single species. accidentally introduced sea lamprey. poorly they are doing. For all their Why are these prehistoric fish still Lake trout are currently under a resto- size, lake sturgeon feed on tiny inver- living in Lake Erie, in the age of com- ration program in Lake Erie, which is tebrates–human swimmers are safe. puters and space flight? revised every few years to keep current www.fish.state.pa.us Pennsylvania Angler & Boater 43 with lake conditions and prospects for over-fertilization, mostly phosphate bringing the fish back, says Kenyon. loading, and pollution. “The control of phosphate loading under the Great Sea lamprey, whitefish Lakes Water Quality Act,” says Kenyon, Sea lampreys still remain a limita- “was one of the greatest success sto- tion on populations of salmonids in ries.” But then in came the zebra Lake Erie, says Kenyon. They slipped Surprises mussel, a true stowaway, and a spoiler into the Great Lakes via the Welland Surprises as far as fisheries are concerned.