Monday, November 27, 2017

St. Lawrence River, the lake sturgeon

For the lake sturgeon to be taken off the state’s list of threatened species, the DEC’s proposed Lake Sturgeon Recovery Plan requires at least 750 sexually mature sturgeon to be documented in six of the DEC’s seven management units statewide as well as evidence of at least three years of wild reproduction of the fish over a five-year period.
Lake Erie – including Cattaraugus Creek, Buffalo Harbor and the upper Niagara River – is considered to be one of those six areas.
Lake Ontario, from the lower Niagara River and the lake to about Rochester, is another.
In the St. Lawrence River, the lake sturgeon has come all the way back. More than 1,000 sturgeon have been located at Massena.
It was that discovery – and vast new research into the lake sturgeon’s spawning tendencies, range and other data – that prompted the DEC to revisit its recovery plan for the fish that was last updated a dozen years ago.

Friday, November 10, 2017

Zebra and quagga mussels

When they picked up cargo further up the Great Lakes system, that ballast water was drained. This is probably how zebra mussels and quagga mussels found their way from the Caspian Sea into the very hospitable environment of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River. These tiny mollusks have destroyed many of the fisheries of the Great Lakes, and clog up water intakes of cities and towns along the shores. To make matters worse these mussels exited the Great Lakes “back door”, a canal in Chicago that connects to the Mississippi River watershed. Zebra and quagga mussels now damage that mighty river system and have even spread to the giant western reservoirs of Lake Powell and Lake Mead.