William Rapai - Lake invaders : invasive species and the battle for the future of the great lakes

GREAT LAKES BOOKS

EDITOR

Thomas Klug, Marygrove College

ADVISORY EDITORS

Fredric C. Bohm, DeWitt, Michigan

Sandra Sageser Clark, Michigan Historical Center

Thomas R. Dilley, Grand Rapids, Michigan

Brian Leigh Dunnigan, Clements Library

De Witt Dykes, Oakland University

Joe Grimm, Michigan State University

Laurie Harris, Pleasant Ridge, Michigan

Charles K. Hyde, Pittsfield, Massachusetts

Susan Higman Larsen, Detroit Institute of Arts

Philip P. Mason, Prescott, Arizona and Eagle Harbor, Michigan

Dennis Moore, Consulate General of Canada

Erik C. Nordberg, Walter P. Reuther Library

Deborah Smith Pollard, University of MichiganDearborn

Michael O. Smith, Bentley Historical Library

Arthur M. Woodford, Harsens Island, Michigan

A complete listing of the books in this series can be found online at wsupress.wayne.edu

LAKE INVADERS

INVASIVE SPECIES AND THE BATTLE FOR THE FUTURE OF THE GREAT LAKES

WILLIAM RAPAI

2016 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America.

20 19 18 17 16 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978-0-8143-4124-7 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-8143-4125-4 (ebook)

Library of Congress Cataloging Number: 2015958674

Designed and typeset by Bryce Schimanski
Composed in Adobe Caslon Pro

To my father, the old fisherman
He may be gone, but fish still tremble at his name

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The best thing about a project like this is the ability to meet interesting people who are doing cool things. In the course of writing this book, Ive interviewed more than a hundred people from the United States and Canada, and I can honestly say I have not met one that I didnt like.

It would be impossible for me to list all the people and thank them individually, so let me just issue a blanket statement: Thank you all. I appreciate everything youve done for me. I appreciate your guidance, your answers, your thoughts, your frankness, your effort, and your time.

Nevertheless, I must thank a few people in particular for their special contributions:

Erika Jensen for your patience and competence, and for never running away when you saw me coming.

Sarah LeSage and David Reid for keeping me from drowning in ballast water.

Mike Hoff for your dedication, insight, and good humor.

Lindsay Chadderton for answering my dumb questions with a smile and not a smirk.

And finally to David Jude for reminding me that theres still wonder in the world around me, and its okay to get excited about it.

The biggest thank-yous go to my family. To Maggie and Julia, thank you for keeping me on my toes, for being patient, for helping me to keep perspective, and for not losing faith in your old dad. Of course, the biggest thank-you of all goes to The Lovely Joann. I appreciate you looking over my shoulder, keeping me on track, and giving me inspiration every day. Instead of forcing me to take a soul-crushing job in a windowless cubicle, you have allowed me to go off on two quixotic journeys that, well, havent provided much help when it comes to paying the bills. But for giving me the freedom to explore and follow my curiosity, I shall always be grateful.

INTRODUCTION

Lurking in the murky brown-gray water of an Illinois river, just fifty-five miles from Lake Michigan, is a swarm of creatures so scary, so disgusting, that many people want them exterminated.

Theyre slimy and ugly. They jump at the approach of humans, and if one hits you, it could break your nose. They breed like crazy, capable of producing millions and millions of offspring in a single year. Once you have them, you cant get rid of them; despite their huge population, they are hard to find and hard to catch. And theyre hungry. They are so hungry in fact that theyre stripping rivers clean of food, and biologists fear what these hungry beasts could do if they were to reach the Great Lakes.

While these carpsthese vandals at the gatesreceive massive attention, other invasive species have been attacking, doing massive damage to the Great Lakes for seventy years, often without notice. More than 180 exotic species are in the Great Lakes. Some, such as green algae, the Asian tapeworm, and the suckermouth minnow, have had little or no impact so far. But a handful of otherssea lamprey, alewife, round goby, quagga mussel, zebra mussel, Eurasian watermilfoil, spiny water flea, and rusty crayfishhave conducted an all-out assault on the Great Lakes and are winning the battle. In the process, they have changed the populations of native fish and planktons. Theyve changed water clarity and water chemistry. Theyve changed the food web and the nutrient cycle.

The carps? In reality, if they were to enter the Great Lakes, they would only be shooting the wounded.

Of course, we humans are not aquatic animals, so the changes occurring as a result of these introductions are not something we can easily see. But if we lived under the surface of the water, we would be shocked by what we see today: strange and foreign creatures now have prominent positions in the Great Lakes ecosystem, including a fish with a hundred teeth arranged in a terrifying whorl and a tiny crustacean with a barbed sword for a tail.

For centuries, the Great Lakes were safe from these outsiders. The flow of water from Lake Ontario down the St. Lawrence River to the ocean kept floating organisms from entering. Any fish that was able to fight its way into Lake Ontario could not pass the impenetrable wall of Niagara Falls. But the lakes natural protection was compromised in the eighteenth century with the opening of the Welland Canal, a waterway in southern Ontario that gave aquatic speciesas well as vesselsa path around the falls. Then, in 1959, rapids on the St. Lawrence River were bypassed with the opening of a system of locks that gave foreign organisms access to the farthest reaches of the Great Lakes.

Many of those organisms entered the Great Lakes in the ballast tanks of international shipsfreighters that might as well have been floating aquariums, transporting organisms from Europe, South America, or Asia along with their cargoes. As those ships traveled through the Great Lakes and stopped in ports, they discharged the water that they had taken in elsewherewater that helped the ships stay balanced as they crossed oceans. Animals, bacteria, and viruses from all over the world, welcome to your new home.

Not all the species that have been introduced to the Great Lakes are invasive. In fact, most of the new species in the lakes arent considered invasive because they have not had visible or measurable impacts on the ecosystem. An organism is considered to be exotic if it somehow finds its way into an area beyond its native range or region. Although there are no hard and fast rules, three things can happen to exotics when they enter a new environment.

They can die out because they cannot adapt to the climate and conditions or have no way to reproduce. Perhaps the organisms need salt or brackish water. Perhaps there are predators that will eliminate them before they can become established. Perhaps they cant survive the frigid temperatures of winter or the relatively cold water of a temperate climate. In fact, very few introduced species will survive in the Great Lakes.