schreckstoff

There are 3 new buoys in front of the power plant just northeast of Oswego NY. They are yellow 'spar' buoys like the image below and are in depths of 50, 150, and 300 feet. They have gone through the Coast Guard permitting processes but we wanted to make local anglers aware of them. They are part of a Dreissena mussel growth experiment, lead by the NOAA Great Lakes Office and assisted by the local USGS office. Growth 'pods' on the lake bottom contain measured mussels of different sizes. We'll check the mussel sizes in the fall, then set them without surface buoys and check them again next spring to understand how mussels grow over a season. The vertical lines have been kept as tight as possible but please stay clear of them. There is a short (15 foot) surface line to help us hoist them out of the water. After finally setting up my first wire dipsy rods, I know first hand how expensive it could be to snag and lose a rig. If you would like more info pm or email me. bw

This is one of the best figures I know of for illustrating Great Lakes phosphorus trends. It’s from a paper by Dove and Chapra published in 2015, freely available, link below. When my colleagues say “oh no preyfish are declining in all Great Lakes” I point to this figure and reply, “Yes they have to be”! Figure Caption: Trends of open lake, spring (April–May) total phosphorus (TP) concentrations (μg P/L) for the Great Lakes. The existing GLWQA TP target concentrations are shown as the horizontal dashed lines. The additional data points (circles) for Lake Michigan prior to 1983 are taken from Chapra and Dobson (1981), Scavia et al. (1986), and Lesht et al. (1991). The whole paper can be read here: https://aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/lno.10055 Great discussion

Has anybody been looking? I bet the prey fish biologists would be interested to know if Alewife or Goby, or anything else was in those stomachs.

GillT singlehandedly fueled the weary Kaho crew with donuts & a gallon of coffee! What a great 2 days. Thank you Capt Pierleoni, Nick & Chad for taking the time to see our work and the great conversations & ideas. Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United

One of the best is out of Wisconsin. Wiscfish.org - which apparently now bounces to this site: http://www.seagrant.wisc.edu/home/Default.aspx?tabid=604 Most of it was developed by John Lyons, an eminent fish biologist. The pictures are amazing, especially those that focus on distinguishing characteristics. Wisco fishes are fairly similar to NY's.

Looks like a Brook Stickleback. They are fairly common and tend to be found in places with decent water quality & cool water especially with vegetation. Lots of predators eat them. Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United

A great discussion, lots of interesting posts. One point I would add is there is not an abundance of data that suggests Chinook will consume large portions of bloater if they become reestablished in Lake Ontario. Information from Lake Michigan in the 2000's suggests bloater are a very small portion of Chinook diets (attached picture). Across this time both alewife and bloater biomass density in LakeMichigan ranged from 10 to 1 kg/ha...so similar amount of each in the lake...yet in the picture, Chinook diets had very few bloater (red) relative to alewife (dashed green). Link to Jacobs Chinook feeding paper: http://www.fws.gov/northeast/fisherycenter/pdfs/Jacobs%20et%20al%202013.pdf Link to L.Mi. Prey fish report: http://www.glsc.usgs.gov/sites/default/files/product_files/2012LakeMichiganPreyfish.pdf