For 25 years I was a fisheries biologist at the DNR’s Lake Huron Research Station in Alpena. One of our many projects was netting lake trout to assess their health each year. To see the fish coming aboard gives the first inkling of what the survey year will tell.

I remember in the early 1990s finding important evidence of lake trout recovery: wild lake trout spawning on a reef in Thunder Bay. We were excited to see this first evidence of reproduction but when I hefted one nice female lake trout most of her eggs flowed out of lamprey holes in her side. That fish set the tone of the next several years: lamprey wounding rose despite the Great Lakes Fishery Commission’s and their partner agencies’ best efforts at sea lamprey control. There was a large, uncontrolled population of sea lampreys in the St. Marys River, the huge tributary through which Lake Superior drains into Lake Huron.

The Great Lakes Fishery Commission, together with Michigan DNR, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Environment Canada, and the USGS Hammond Bay Biological Station found that source and devised the prescription.

Hammond Bay Biological Station led the mapping of St. Marys “lamprey hot spots” and an interagency team plotted our attack. The treatment, which would cost nearly $5 million, was successful. But sea lamprey suppression is forever. Treatments of the St. Marys River and dozens of other tributaries to Lake Huron will need to be carried out every year without interruption. Failure to do so would be more dead lake trout, the potential loss of multibillion-dollar fishery for Michigan, and possibly the fouling of our beaches, such as what happened in the 1960s.

You need to be a baby boomer to remember the ultimate consequences of uncontrolled sea lampreys. In July, 1967, over 20 billion dead alewives were strewn in windrows over Lake Michigan’s beaches between Chicago and Mackinaw. The stench assaulted unsuspecting visitors. The beaches had to be closed during the height of the tourist season. The economic impact to Michigan was enormous.

Governor George Romney told the DNR Director to “do something, anything,” to control this invasion and bring back our beaches. Like lampreys, alewives are an invader from the Atlantic Ocean. They are prey fish, meaning they are meant to be eaten by larger fish, and prolific enough breeders to populate the Atlantic Ocean. The invading sea lampreys had killed almost all large fish in the Great Lakes; there were no predator fish to naturally control alewives, which were dying of old age. I was there. I hope to never again experience such repulsive waste of our beaches. Fortunately, about this time sea lampreys were finally being suppressed and the DNR stocked salmon from the Pacific, as well as our native trout and walleye, to control the fecund alewives. Thanks to sustained sea lamprey control, continued stocking, and restoration of balance between predator fish and their prey, a massive alewife kill of the scale of 1967 was never repeated.

A collaboration of federal and state resource agencies discovered ways to control sea lampreys, carry out a comprehensive annual control program, restock the lakes with lake trout, walleyes, and the introduced salmon, and protect and restore those species so that they could become self-sustaining. The Great Lakes now represent a $7 billion economic engine for the Great Lakes region.

So far, so good. But now comes news that this progress could come apart, as critical elements of the Great Lakes recovery are scheduled to lose their funding. Many of Michigan’s federal partners have already lost their jobs.

Let’s just look at sea lamprey – the potential decimation of other crucial federal Great Lakes roles are topics for another day. The Great Lakes states insist that sea lamprey control is a federal responsibility. Lampreys navigated federally funded navigation canal systems to find their way into the Great Lakes (as did over 180 other aquatic invaders) and the feds, NOT the states, should pay the price. Besides, lampreys don’t respect borders, and the control effort needs to be lakes-wide, requiring an interstate/international approach. This understanding has prevailed for about 80 years. Fortunately, sea lampreys are so unlikeable (have you ever seen one?) that their control has always had bipartisan support. At this point it appears the control program has been spared most of the draconian reductions other federal Great Lakes programs are facing. But nothing is certain.

However, the research and development side of sea lamprey control is in serious jeopardy. Sea lamprey research and development is imbedded in our Northeast Michigan heritage – it was at the Hammond Bay Biological Station that a guy named Vern Applegate and his crew sorted through thousands of candidate pesticides to finally discover one that selectively removed sea lampreys. It was the Hammond Bay Biological Station that led the design of the St. Marys River lamprey treatment. It is Hammond Bay and its collaborations with our universities that is designing future control methods – methods that will improve effectiveness, reduce costs, and stay ahead of the lampreys’ growing resistance to standard treatment methods. Hammond Bay Biological Station, along with the other USGS Great Lakes offices, is in the cross hairs for elimination. Eliminating Hammond Bay will mean lamprey control will be operating without a compass and cost more, not less, in the future.

If you care about this, be sure to write to your members of Congress who are deciding now the budgets for Michigan’s federal partners in resource stewardship and, thus, the future of our Great Lakes.

Jim Johnson is a retired DNR fisheries biologist. He is currently a member of the Besser Museum Board of Trustees where he leads the Museum’s Fishery Heritage Exhibit.