Ancient Strain of Lake Trout Discovered in Elk Lake

[Vollmer]

[h=1]Ancient Strain of Lake Trout Discovered in Elk Lake[/h]By JEFF SMITH on December 13, 2016
Tagged Antrim County, Chain of Lakes, Elk Rapids, Environmental Preservation, Fish, Outdoors, Vacation
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Photo by J. Ellen Marsden & Bret Ladago​

Native strain of lake trout in Elk Lake​

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[FONT=&quot]What do we like? Good news stories about the environment, and here is one about lake trout that we like a lot.
Fish researcher Jory Jonas, of MDNR’s Charlevoix Fisheries Research Station, was on a fish-sampling excursion on Elk Lake in summer 2016 when she noticed the two lake trout brought up in the trap net did not look like the gazillion hatchery lake trout she’d seen during the course of her career. “I started asking questions,” she says. And after some follow up research that included DNA testing, she and her team came to realize they had discovered a remnant population of native lake trout, a species that had long been presumed extirpated from the Lake Michigan basin. Elk Lake is a deep (192 feet at deepest point), 12-square-mile lake about 10 miles northeast of Traverse City. The lake empties directly into Lake Michigan, but a dam protected the lake’s fish from the sea lamprey that decimated Great Lakes trout in the 1930s and ’40s.
Hear Jonas discuss the finding and what it might mean for restocking lake trout populations in Lake Michigan by watching this video, produced by Joe VanderMeulen at NatureChange.org, an organization devoted to telling the stories of Northern Michigan’s evolving natural environment and of people devoted to protecting it. “Like” NatureChange on Facebook.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnrvihK8qcI
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[KDM]

WOW!! Hope they don't let anyone fish that pond for a bit and get that population back into the big lake. Good to hear!!!!

 

[camoman]

Very cool. My only thoughts on the matter reach in quite a different direction though. Which of the sources of extirpation caused the greatest decline of Lake Michigan lake trout - overharvest or sea lamprey? If the sea lamprey are still present in the lake, I don't feel that a reintroduction would be all that successful. The fish from Elk Lake are the same genetic line of fish that were extirpated from Lake Michigan, meaning they too have no co-evolutionary traits to aid in their survival of lamprey attachment like ocean dwelling fish. In addition, how will reintroduction of these fish affect the currently existing strain of lake trout in Lake Michigan. Too many questions unanswered in my opinion to be rushing into reintroduction. Maintain their population in Elk Lake, absolutely, relict fish are awesome, but be vary careful about how you manage their introduction (reintroduction) to another water body.

 

[svnmag]

I LOVE stuff like this!

 

[NM 24]

http://www.glfc.org/sealamp/how.php

 

[camoman]

http://www.glfc.org/sealamp/how.php

I understand all of that. The thing is though, they have to continue doing it year after year. What does that tell you?

 

[Bed Wetter]

Wow! That's one crazy lookin trout! It's like the piebald deer of trout.

 

[Kickemup]

Cool story. Lake trout are one of my favorite fish to eat.

 

[Bed Wetter]

Groovy critter.