Giant man eating goldfish(David) was Re: [Cal_Boats] dEmO, smelt(Chris C.)

Clear water and giant gold fish? Sounds like the Great Lakes, and next, the entire American fresh water system, lakes, ponds, rivers, is becoming a gigantic goldfish bowl. Gulp! (gag) Jerry --- On Sun, 2/15/09, david dobbs <tm… [at] yahoo.com> wrote: From: david dobbs <tm… [at] yahoo.com> Subject: Re: [Cal_Boats] dEmO, smelt(Chris C.) To: Ca… [at] yahoogroups.com Date: Sunday, February 15, 2009, 10:34 PM Chris, Yeah, we thought the Zebra mussels were bad but the Quaggas are even worse, the water is so clear you can see the bottom sometimes to 20 feet. This has changed the environment so radically that I'm not sure that anyone knows where it's going. Then there's the Asian carp on the verge of entering the Great Lakes. That's enough depression for one day. Regards, Dave Dobbs --- On Sun, 2/15/09, Chris Campbell <clcampbell@charteri nternet.com> wrote: > From: Chris Campbell <clcampbell@charteri nternet.com> > Subject: Re: [Cal_Boats] dEmO, smelt > To: Cal_Boats@yahoogrou ps.com > Date: Sunday, February 15, 2009, 12:55 PM > david dobbs wrote: > > > > Timm, > > The smelt were introduced in the Great lakes by some > moron, they loved it reproduced like crazy, and fishermen > caught them, etc. Then come the alewives, herring type fish > which choose to die during June and July in great numbers on > our beaches. Nasty. Okay, the DNR folks get a bright idea > to put salmon in the lakes to eat the alewives. Bingo, now > we have a sportfishing industry catching salmon. Well, the > salmon do a real good job, and now we have no more smelt, no > more alewives, and the salmon are looking for food. When we > mess with Mother Nature we never know what we'll get. > > > > > > > > > > > > > The alewife thing is strange. They came up the seaway and > through the Welland Canal and were a huge food source, as > you note, for the salmon that were stocked to control them. > But the population crash isn't apparently due to > over-predation by salmon. It's probably related to the > other recent invaders, zebra and quagga mussels. The > alewives were pretty fragile--even in the spring a slight > disturbance in ambient temp or oxygen caused 'em to die > off. > > They're dropping precipitously even in east coast > areas: http://ecosystems. mbl.edu/news/ alewife_story. htm. > > A Chicago newspaper says: "The alewife population -- > and the die-offs -- have been drastically reduced in recent > years because of state-stocked salmon that eat the oily, > bony fish, /and the influx of invasive zebra mussels, which > eat the algae that are at the base of the alewife food > chain/." (Emphasis added). > > The mussels, zebra and quagga, are just zapping the base of > the aquatic food chain. Last week I saw a video showing > mussels at 190 feet--in natural light! The water is clearer > now because of the mussel filtering of the native plankton. > The same videos showed Cladophera, that nasty algae that > dies off and washes up on the beach and rots, as deep as > that too. The other thing the videos showed was the huge > abundance of round gobies, the invading fish. They are > dense on the bottom of the lakes. > > Chris Campbell > > > > > > > > > > > ------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -