As a native of the Washington, DC area and relative urban and suburban life, until recently, my depth of familiarity with maritime life, resources and economies was truly slim. I will be honest in having a hazy understanding of the word fishery, hatchery, or what was meant when mentioning the work of fish management. While my knowledge is still not deep, I have learned much more through my Great Lakes exploration of the past three years.

Here is the mission of the Fish and Aquatic Conservation program of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: We are committed to tackling the nation’s highest priority aquatic conservation and recreational challenges to conserve, restore, and enhance fisheries for future generations.

My lack of clarity around the word fishery is actually understandable. The word is used in a number of different, and sometimes inconsistent, ways. According to Wikipedia, Fishery can mean either the enterprise of raising or harvesting fish and other aquatic life or, more commonly, the site where such enterprise takes place (a.k.a., fishing grounds). Commercial fisheries include wild fisheries and fish farms, both in freshwater water bodies (about 10% of all catch) and the oceans (about 90%).

Last post I shared about the infamous, massive alewife die-off of 1967 in Lake Michigan waters and shores. I ended with the question: What did they do about it?

In this case the “they” ends up being the Michigan Department of Conservation. And what they did was initiate one of the largest bioengineering endeavors of all time. States around the Great Lakes agreed to introduce coho and Chinook salmon from the Pacific Ocean into the lakes to bring the alewife population under control. It was a successful effort to redesign the Great Lakes fishery. Alewives were back to more controlled numbers by 1971.

Introducing salmon was the brainchild of Dr. Howard Tanner. In The Life and Death of the Great Lakes, Dan Egan writes a riveting chapter about Tanner – his environmental management expertise, his love for Michigan and the Great Lakes, his vision, and his streak of independent decision-making fostered by his time as a soldier in World War II.

As head of the Michigan Department of Conservation, he led the effort to introduce salmon in 1966. Biologists had already recognized the overpopulation of alewives by that time. Just one year later, by the fall of 1967, millions of salmon offspring appeared in Lake Michigan. The salmon grew large and heavy on the alewife diet. It created a frenzy of recreational fishing. Egan describes it memorably: “It was as if all the skiers in Michigan awoke one morning to find that their little hills had been replaced by the Rocky Mountains.” Recreational fishermen who had dreamed of one day fishing out West for salmon literally found them leaping out of the waters of Lake Michigan. Word spread of “coho fever”. Beyond successfully controlling the alewife population, the effort created a recreational boom in sport fishing and a new constituency of people invested in the Great Lakes. 

The Great Lakes have been known as a world class salmon fishery ever since. However, some danger signs have been flashing over the past thirty years. Nature constantly brings our attention back to cycles and interconnectedness – and sometimes seems to enjoy a little irony on the side. The alewife population is now dwindling.  And in dwindling, it may take the salmon with it given that they rely almost exclusively on alewives as their diet. That much despised little silver fish has been revisited, recognized, and respected for its role in the Great Lakes fishery.