Stuart Carlton 0:00
Are Cisco supposed to eat fish? Are we supposed to eat eels? Sharks are probably fish, but what if they're made of plastic? To find out, let's ask Dr fish.

That's right, it is ask Dr fish, welcome our twice every other month. Excuse me, live streaming show where we ask questions of our two doctors fish. My name is Stuart Carlton. I work with Illinois Indiana Sea Grant, and we're super excited to be here today. We are joined by our good friend, Carolyn Foley, Research Coordinator with Illinois Indiana Sea Grant, not a DR fish, Carolyn, how are you today?

Carolyn Foley 0:40
Doing well, and we are both sporting the hats today. But yes, I am definitely not a doctor.

Stuart Carlton 0:45
Fish, it's Monday, it's a hat day. It's a hat day. Friday, it's also a hat day. Anyway, the point is this, we got hats. You know, there's not enough doctors fishes here, so let's bring one on. First we're gonna bring on. Dr Titus seilheimer of Wisconsin Sea Grant. Dr, fish. SG, on Twitter, Titus, tell me about your shirt today. It looks like a fishy shirt.

Titus Seilheimer 1:03
It is. It's a little subtle fish. Kind of fish outlines, you know, something to wear around to that fancy event. But you also want to sport fish. I thought

Stuart Carlton 1:14
it was pronounced cuttlefish. So I guess we're already learning, already learning our next Dr, fish. Dr, Katie O'Reilly, the AIS aquatic invasive species outreach specialist with Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant, and one of my top two Dr fishes. Katie No fish shirt, though,

Katie O'Reilly 1:30
no fish shirt today, but I am currently in an apartment in Milwaukee looking at Lake Michigan, so I feel like that's kind of about the same thing.

Stuart Carlton 1:38
I'll be honest. I feel like it's better. I feel like it's better. So that's good. Excellent, excellent. So audience, who is out there listening live? You can go to ask Doctor fish.com/live, or maybe you're on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter. We're streaming live to more places now than ever before. We are setting records for our streaming, which is good. Our mics are hot and our streams are good, so we're ready to roll. If you have a question, just put it in a little comment thing, and that's good, and you can put it in there. And if you have a really great comment, we'll put it up on the screen, and we'll we'll talk about it if you're really important question, right? And all, I forgot our fancy slogan. We don't want just any questions. We want your fish questions. We want your science questions, and we want your life questions, all of those for our doctors. Fish, let's just get right to it. So what we do is we collect things on social media and other where big bits of fish news to send to our doctors, fish to talk about in this first one was started really interesting. There's a documentary coming out called called all too clear, which is about the water in this one's in Lake Huron, I think, and how much clearer it is, and, and, but they put out this video of Cisco. Now, before we show the video, what do we know about Cisco and their diets?

Katie O'Reilly 2:55
Cisco are a type of white fish that we have in the Great Lakes. And, you know, they can be kind of flexible in their diet, but generally they're more like, you know, eating plankton, eating invertebrates. But something that's been really cool that that we've started observing is they've also started incorporating more and more small fish into their diets, which, as kind of, in that documentary, all too clear, talks about ties into this bigger problem, or, you know, bigger change that's happening in places around the Great Lakes, where we're not having as much plankton in the water column because of invasive species. And so as there's the story of the Great Lakes, invasive species change a lot of things, and so they've changed the food web, and fish like Sisto are starting to, you know, be a little less picky. They're changing their diets around.

Carolyn Foley 3:47
I do believe we have some video of it, so I don't know if we want to run the video now and then, Titus, if you have anything you wanted to add to what Katie had,

Stuart Carlton 3:55
we'll run through it once, and then we could talk over it. Yeah. And this is courtesy of all too clear, a documentary coming out next year, I believe, and we're going to try to arrange to have them on teaching about the Great Lakes at some point as well. So if you want to talk about them with them, go for it. Okay, let's hear what we

got. Okay, so in there, I don't, I'm not going to lie. Which one of those was the Cisco

Titus Seilheimer 4:18
Seward. The Cisco, sort of the bigger, the bigger ones, the bigger silvery ones. So what we saw in that video, we see so lots of little fish that is a school of alewives. So they're, you know, schooling together, and then the Ciscos are the larger silvery fish swimming around trying to feed on them. So, you know, why is this unusual? And Katie started talking about that. I mean, they are planktivores. So they, you know, historically, would be eating things like mysis, which is possum, shrimp. They'd be eating di pariah. Di pariah has been, kind of, you know, used to be really based on the food web, really important for lots of species. Now it's less abundant than it was, and so. Cisco's have, you know, kind of find, found a way life. Finds a way. Recent research on these, you know, finding them eating small, round gobies early in the year, later on in the year they're they're eating small, kind of those younger the year, alewives. So, you know, when they're small, like you look at those alewives in this video, and you know, most of those are too big for a Cisco to eat, like they're really just homing in on the small, really small ones, because with lots of fish, you know, you can only eat stuff you can fit in your mouth. And Cisco's do not have a big mouth, but they can eat really small fish. So, and, you know, kind of the third interesting invasive food choice, not a fish, but spiny water fleas also have been shown to be kind of a, you know, later in the year, when they're eating little ale wives, they're also eating spiny water fleas. So, you know, it takes time, but, but fish discover these novel food sources eventually.

Carolyn Foley 5:53
And so I pulled up an image of di pariah so Titus mentioned some of the other things that that Cisco have eaten historically, and so this is

Stuart Carlton 6:05
why you have an image. Okay, Caroline's our invert nerve, just for those out there. Yeah. I

Carolyn Foley 6:09
mean, anytime I can bring an invertebrate in, I'm going to but this is the part of why you guys, I would imagine that part of why they eat the smaller fish, even though they're not used to eating fish is because they're used to eating little shrimp, like guys or Scuds, some people call them, and things like that. So yeah, I had to show an image of

Katie O'Reilly 6:28
diaper. I have to have to support the inverts here.

Carolyn Foley 6:31
Yeah, yeah, exactly, because

Titus Seilheimer 6:32
they are important food for fish. We love them.

Carolyn Foley 6:35
I have said that many times in my life that yes, because they are important food for fish.

Stuart Carlton 6:42
So the idea here is that there are fewer diporia, though, because the water is clear thanks to the invasive mussels. Is that sort of the basic story?

Katie O'Reilly 6:48
Yeah, I mean, the basic story is, you know, we've got these zebra and Plaga mussels that have come in and established in the last 30 ish years in the Great Lakes. And these guys are just like, super great at filtering the water. That's why, you know, some places you go, in the Great Lakes, Lake Michigan, it almost looks tropical water, like the super clear water. It's because the mussels are doing a really bang up job of filtering all of those zooplankton phytoplankton out of the water column, which, you know, good for the muscles, not so good for small fish that rely on on eating those zooplankton. And to, you know, become bigger fish. And so

Titus Seilheimer 7:33
that's why. And you also get fooled, because you're like, Oh, this looks beautiful. You jump in and it's freezing, so good luck with your swimming,

Katie O'Reilly 7:41
absolutely. And, I mean, that's, you know, the story of the Great Lakes is change, and a lot of species have, you know, started to eat different, you know, introduced species, I'm thinking, like the smallmouth bass that have started to eat Round Goby in some places, Goby being an invasive species and really capitalizing on a new food source despite some of the other challenges. So as as Titus said, life does find a way.

Titus Seilheimer 8:09
Yeah, and I think this, you know, also, because we're in the whitefish world and the Cisco world, you know, really the the flexibility of this group of species, we've seen similar things with like whitefish switching over to eating more round gobies. You know, people who are ice fishing for white fish out on Green Bay in the winter, they are using, like, it's like a little round goby lure, is how they catch them. So, you know, it is like white fish have kind of switched. Cisco's have shifted to more passive Re and, you know, if you, and really, you go talk about is, is a Cisco? A Cisco is, is all, are all these other deep water Cisco's, just Cisco's. And so there's a, you know, they're, they're kind of this whole group of forms in flux. Anyway. So I think it's not that or unexpected that they would be able to shift like this. Cool.

Carolyn Foley 9:00
So y'all are talking about shifting in response mostly to invasive species, but Katie mentioned, you know, all the other changes and things like that. So as we know, one of the big changes in the Great Lakes is related to adaptations to climate change and fish have to change. So we have a comment from one of our viewers, we have had severe droughts the past 10 years. I believe it was a Lake Ontario tributary three times. Creek dries to some underground and pools, but essentially dry never before in our farm diaries, 1875 and I will just double check Lake Ontario tributary that participates in lamprey eel monitoring and eradication from Canadians on our farm. So, so I guess you know, maybe I don't know if you guys want to comment a little bit on tributary fish and like severe droughts and what types of adaptations there are, or how they're responding, or different things like that baby

Titus Seilheimer 9:57
clearly monitoring and eradicating Canadian. Is something that's all on our minds these days. But, yeah, you know, I would say, you know, that is, it's definitely, you know, there's kind of this larger climate piece to that. And I would, I would think it's, you know, not just the droughts, but also, you know, to look in the watershed scale too, like what is happening in the watershed. I think a lot of you know, there's more intensive water use in a lot of our basin as well. So, you know, maybe historically, we have those droughts, but those creeks were more resilient because there was still more water available within the watershed. So yeah, that's definitely, you know, hard if you're a fish to live in a creek without new water.

Katie O'Reilly 10:37
Yeah. And I think what's also really interesting to me about that, and I'm so glad that viewer shared that, is thinking about kind of connectivity, like a lot of Great Lakes fish species use tributaries at different points in their life, you know, for spawning in the spring, like they run up these tributaries. And, you know, if things are changing, where they don't have access, you know, say it's really dry at a time of year, they need that habitat. What's that going to do for the population moving forward? I think that's something that, you know, we're starting to get a better handle on and try and understand, you know, what are going to be the implications when you you know you don't have water, so how are you going to get to the nice spawning ground?

Titus Seilheimer 11:19
Yeah, yeah. And I, you know, call out the the importance of these records, you know, a farm diary back to 1875 I mean, I think a lot of us, when we look at, you know, what's happening, and say, the creek that I monitor next to me, like I have a 10 year span that I've been here and looked at it. But, you know, to go back over, you know, over 100 years is, you know, really amazing. And I think that's, you know, scientists are looking for these types of records, so you can pull in this long term. You know, maybe the scientists weren't recording since 1875 but farmers are. And, you know, that's really valuable information. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 11:55
one thing we talk about a lot on teaching about the Great Lakes, is the value of government records and government like monitoring and things like that. And that's one thing. One thing, but big Dan's farm diary is another way of doing and it's also really, really valuable, and that's so that data is so important, and it's great to see it out there, but I

Titus Seilheimer 12:11
would buy a book called Big Dan's farm diary.

Stuart Carlton 12:16
So speaking of using habitat in different life phases, there's this article out recently in the conversation about eels and how they fascinated us for ages, but now we need to stop eating them. I've not eaten an eel given their tubular shape, I think you could maybe put them on a hot dog bun. We'll talk about this some other time. What do we know about eels in the Great Lakes? And is eating eels in the Great Lakes a problem? Katie,

Katie O'Reilly 12:40
oh my gosh. What do we know about eels in the Great Lakes? Well, other than the fact that they're just adorable, and I love them, eels in the Great Lakes are such a cool subject for me, because we have eel so just to be clear, the eel we're talking about is the American eel, which has this really cool life history. Basically, it's the reverse of a salmon. It is born in the ocean, but comes into coastal areas fresh waters as an adult. And so we have eels natively in Lake Ontario, because, you know, they could have access to the ocean moving up upstream. Fun fact about that too is also in the Great Lakes and Lake Lake Ontario, the only eels we have are female. The males, for some reason, tend to hang out just by the coast. They don't come in and lend so, you know, It's girl power in the Great Lakes when it comes to American eels. But in kind of my invasive species hat as well. So we had these eels in Lake Ontario when we opened up the rest of the Great Lakes. You know, when we built canals like the Welland Canal, the eels actually made it further up. So you can find American eels in other parts of the Great Lakes, not just Lake Ontario these days. All that to say, you know, other than just spewing eel facts at you, which I could do for an entire show, yeah, exactly. I'm

Stuart Carlton 14:09
gonna spew though, spew into this. Spew

Katie O'Reilly 14:11
into this. But the in when we're thinking about you're like, okay, cool. Am I gonna get to eat my eel sushi? Now, from the Great Lakes, there used to be a commercial fishery for American eel in Lake Ontario, but because of concerns about over fishing, the loss of habitat, because of dams, they actually had to close the fishery for American eels in Lake Ontario. And so right now, it's pretty you know, you're not really going to find Lake Ontario eels on the menu anytime soon. You may find them other places, but eels, both the American eels and they're really closely related cousin the European eels are are endangered because of a mix of over fishing and have. Tat so we can get into the subject of, you know, should you be eating eels? And the implications for that,

Stuart Carlton 15:08
I assume Titus said you have eaten eels as our residents, that's

Carolyn Foley 15:11
what I was gonna say. He always tells us he's eaten all of them. So, what does

Stuart Carlton 15:15
eel taste like, Titus? And have you had Great Lakes eel, or just this European eel?

Titus Seilheimer 15:19
I wish I had, you know, yeah, I'm not sure. I don't think I have had eels. I was going to say, you know eels. When you think Lake Ontario eels, you know the challenge for them. You've got dams blocking the way to get upstream. And then when those females do decide to head out to the sea, they get chopped up in the turbines of these power plants. So, you know, it is kind of a hard life. I so I do have one eel experience, and that was on coastal wetland in the eastern end of Lake Ontario, where we caught an eel. And it was, it was really big and adorable. They are absolutely adore, adorable. So, yeah, so, you know, decline of the commercial fishery, I think, where eels? Because you do see eels on, like, you know, sushi menus sometimes, and if you heard of the glass eel business. So glass seals are the the stage. When they're, they're kind of heading out. They've they're heading out to, are they heading in? No, they're heading fresh water going towards fresh Yeah, so they're, that's when they've kind of hit the shore, they're going up the tributary so they can get big. And I know in some places like Maine, they will, you know, catch those and, you know, they're really small, but they're, they're basically worth, you know, more than their weight in gold, because they catch these small eels, and then they put them on a plane, send them to these farms and places like Japan, where they will grow the eels up to large size. And I think that is probably, you know, one of the big sources of of, you know, why we shouldn't eat them because of this, you know, catching the small ones, then those are not making it up to the habitat and growing to be large, and they will not contribute in the future. So, yeah, you know it, it's, you know, back to the sustainability fisheries, you know, I think every time we select a fish that we're going to eat, we should probably be informed and, you know, make a good decision. Is it managed well? And if it is, eat it. If it's not, well, maybe look for an alternative.

Carolyn Foley 17:22
Thanks. And so there's a comment here, like before we go. So I want to acknowledge that in the comments, a couple of people are talking about how they have enjoyed eating eels or things like that before, too. And there I have the benefit of seeing the background document where we put some of the questions. And there's a note on here that all eels are born in the same place, the Sargasso Sea. And as a like Jane air lover, I'm always like, Oh, the white Sargasso Sea. So, so can you talk just really, really briefly, Katie, maybe, about that place and and what it means for like, all eels. What do you mean by all eels?

Katie O'Reilly 18:03
So all of the eels within this genus Angela, which is like a freshwater eel, so both the American and their European cousins, and for those who aren't familiar, the Sargasso Sea is a part of the Atlantic Ocean, kind of around Bermuda, and it's, it's a sea because it's got this kind of current system that sort of keeps it somewhat contained. But what's cool about the European and American eels is they're like, considered pan my dick, which is a weird word, but essentially, you know, that they because they're all spawning in this one location, there's the exchange of, like, you know, you know, genetics among essentially different fish because they're all coming back to this location. But then those same currents that help kind of define the Sargasso Sea are the currents that help take them back to, you know, the Atlantic coast, or up to Europe, you know, around Spain, Portugal. And so they, they kind of jump on those as a super highway to bring them, bring them back to the shore, and then, you know, similarly, thinking about, okay, when it's time to go back to the Sargasso Sea at the end of their lives, so that they spawn? You know, a lot of it has been kind of unknown to us as scientists. Over the years, we didn't know where they were going when they left the freshwater ecosystems. And it really wasn't until, you know, like, the last 150 years that we really had a good sense of where do these eels go and where eel babies coming from?

Stuart Carlton 19:43
Was it tagging? Do you know, this is, this might be outside. Were they like tagging yields? Or, you know, did they grab onto one and just go along for the ride? What did, how did they figure out the Sargasso Sea situation, yield, Triple S,

Katie O'Reilly 19:54
you know, that's a really good question. I I am not sure, and that is for. For an eel fanatic, like, like myself, that seems like, you know, I'm having a moment here, but, but what's really, I think, you know, cool thinking about, how do fish navigate back to their natal areas? I think, in the past, on this show, we've talked about salmon using, like, different scents, using the Earth's magnetic field. And it's thought that eels use a similar system to help them get back to that Sargasso Sea.

Titus Seilheimer 20:29
And it's really, you know, when you think about just the, you know, how amazing the biology of these eels is, you know, like they're, they're eggs in the Sargasso Sea, and they just drift. And there's all these weird looking shapes like as they drift and, you know, but essentially like they it's not like they swim out from the Sargasso Sea and then swim back when they're adults. They're basically just kind of drifting and but then they know how to get back there eventually, which is, you know, really cool. It's the amazing ecology of fish. The

Carolyn Foley 20:59
Amazing ecology of fish. That is, you guys are hilarious. I love it. Okay, so we're going to move to another topic. Now. This is something that has sort of been coming up over time. Titus has been talking about it. It's springtime and spring spawning. So Titus, do you want to talk a little bit about the spawning? Is it the spawning of suckers that you wanted to talk about?

Titus Seilheimer 21:26
Yeah, it is. Spring is here, and that means that it's time for the suckers to start moving upstream and spawning for us here in the Great Lakes. And you know it is, and there's a picture there of what a spawning sucker would look like. So they kind of aggregate in these tributaries, and, you know, obviously pretty shallow water, they spawn, and then they they head back out. And so I've been three of

Stuart Carlton 21:54
them there. Hold on, hold on. There are three of them there. We need to discuss this fact for just a moment.

Titus Seilheimer 21:58
Well, we've got a video that demonstrates even better. Okay, let's go to the hot soccer video when, yeah, so here. So, here we go. This is so we've got a sucker there swimming along. And I've got a lot of these videos just, you know, hours of, you know, the the amazing what you can get with a GoPro. Here's a kind of a swim by. There it goes. And of course, oh, okay, here. So here we're going to go. So you know, basically what's going to happen here. The female is kind of the larger of the fish. The males are a little smaller. And when she kind of signals that she's ready to release those eggs, you get a kind of a pile of males that that come in there. And, you know, everybody wants to get their reproductive material in there. The female wants to get all her her eggs fertilized. There goes another one.

Stuart Carlton 22:53
So they just hitting the mic, or is that some sort of copulatory emission sound? I

Titus Seilheimer 23:00
think they're just hitting the camera, although, so Karen Murchie at Shedd Aquarium has been actually using some really high quality sound recording equipment that she's borrowing from the ornithology lab at Cornell to actually measure, you know, record some of these sounds, because they actually do have kind of, you know, there's a sound of the rocks being moved, but there's also kind of these, they may have, they're kind of producing some sounds. So, you know, this is a great, great and kind of interesting, you know, underappreciated fish. And you know, they're, they're right here. And I think one of the greatest things is, you know, you can go down to your your kind of local tributary, and you can check these fish out, you know, just see them from shore. And it's a really great, you know, when they're when they're spawning, they don't really care if you're there or not. So

Unknown Speaker 23:57
obviously, no shame.

Stuart Carlton 23:58
I do feel a little embarrassed, though, I'll be honest. I'm like, Should we be watching? Yeah,

Carolyn Foley 24:03
so, but so are these white suckers?

Titus Seilheimer 24:05
Yes, yes. These are, these are white suckers. We also see, not necessarily in this creek, but long nose suckers are also kind of the other in Lake Michigan, at least, you you know, kind of see long nose and white suckers.

Katie O'Reilly 24:18
And I would say Titus, you know, even if people aren't, aren't into the suckers, which they definitely should be, spring is definitely, you know, they're the love is in the air or water, as you have it. A lot of species around the Great Lakes are spawning in the spring, you know. And a lot of them do these kind of spring runs, where they come into some of the creeks and tributaries around the lake, so things like walleye, you know, sturgeon, you name it. You name it. Love is in the air at this time of year, for sure.

Stuart Carlton 24:50
And for those who this is good, if you want to see a lot of this, as far as I can tell, Titus is only job in the spring is to walk on these rivers or by these rivers. And. Videos of suckers during their most precious and private moments, and take videos and send them out to the whole world to see and so it's really fun to watch them, but as far as I can tell, that's all he does. So just follow Titus on Twitter at Dr fish. SG, for sucker. What's the G for suckers? Getting it on Dr fish.

Carolyn Foley 25:21
So, okay, so you talked a little bit about other species. So what are other big species that spawn in the springtime? Um,

Katie O'Reilly 25:30
maybe Katie go first. Yeah. I mean, with the one that always sticks with me, and this is kind of because of where I grew up, but the walleye, um, particularly in like Western Lake Erie Basin, make some really impressive spawning runs up rivers like the Sandusky River, the Maumee River, that bring a ton of anglers to the region. Because, you know, the river is just chock full of fish. But I know Titus, in addition to having, you know, suckers galore, also has sturgeon. I was trying to think of another G word I was gonna say, sturgeons galore, but

Titus Seilheimer 26:09
it's just everything. Yeah, it's just S, S Fish galore, you

Katie O'Reilly 26:13
know. And these, what's cool about these spawning runs is, you know, it's not necessarily like the salmon in the Pacific Northwest, where a lot of these fish will die, and, you know, provide a lot of nutrients to the system, but they do still provide some nutrients. And like they're gametes, so eggs, you know, providing food for fish. They move around stones and stuff, which kind of gets invertebrates into the water column. So they can provide a lot of productivity to these creeks right at the end of winter when things are pretty like, you know, somewhat dead. So it's kind of like a spark to get things going in the spring, which is really cool.

Stuart Carlton 26:51
No Spark, like a sucker spark. And actually, we had a voicemail question. Oh, they can bring on now. So we do have, do you know, we have a fish hotline, listeners, we have a fish hotline. You can call it 24/7 at 765, 496, iisg, that's for Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant, and ask us your fish questions, your science questions, your life questions. And we had an anonymous listener. If you don't want to be anonymous, you got to leave your name an anonymous listener. Call in and ask a couple of questions. The first one, I think we'll ignore it, but we'll play the whole thing. And the second one we will listen to. Here is the question, one second, Hi,

Speaker 1 27:24
Dr, fish, fishes. That's a great question, is it fishes? When is it fish and when is it fishes? But my question is, what's the difference between an eel and a lamprey? And I have another question, how do fish know where to go to spawn? Thanks.

Stuart Carlton 27:43
So we'll come back to Eel and limp, right? But how do fish know where to go, when to spawn? Do we know? How fish know where to go, when to spawn? Yeah, so

Titus Seilheimer 27:53
and to stay, stick with the sucker example. You know, part of what, what this, what we're doing, is looking at and what we, when I say we, it's really Karen Murchie at Shedd Aquarium. She's the, the force behind this. And it's a whole citizen science from, you know, north to south, lots of people out there looking for suckers. It's not just me. I'm not the only one. There's lots of people out doing this. And so, you know, one of the questions with that is, you know, temperature, is it temperature? Is it flow? Is it a combination of temperature and flow? Because those are a few of the cues that can tell a fish that it's, you know, time to spawn, it's time to migrate. And, yeah, those, you know, two, two of those. Katie also mentioned smell before, referring to salmon. And you know, that is certainly another way that that fish will find their way home, as it is, well, and I

Katie O'Reilly 28:52
was just going to say too, you know, we talk a lot about fish returning to like their birth streams, but there are some fish that don't have that tight connection, like they don't necessarily need to go back to the exact stream they spawned in. And so we kind of call those guys like strayers. So they'll, you know, just go to another stream and spawn. They don't have that, you know, obligation to go, go home and and visit mom, mom sucker or whatever.

Stuart Carlton 29:19
Related our friend Big Dan has a comment related to this. I think suckers are very resilient fish. He had, we had them come two miles upstream in a muck ditch that beavers have dams on. So that's impressive. Big Dan, thank you for that. And then, as a reminder, viewers, you are listening to ask Dr fish. This is a show where our two doctors fishes. Ask answer your fish questions, science questions, life questions, if you have a question, just put in the chat right now, use the Twitter hashtag Ask Doctor fish. You can also email us at Ask Doctor fish@gmail.com and thanks to that anonymous viewer for their hotline call. You know, one other thing that I think is common when talking about fish spawning in different. Areas and where they go is, people always tend to think of salmon right in the migration. And actually, listener or viewer, viewer, viewer, Bob Crum has a question related to that. Bob says, Is there any discussion about lowering the amount of Pacific salmon stocked in the Great Lakes, I presume, and increasing the Atlantic salmon to Lake Ontario that are native to it? It'd be great to bring them back, sort of that native fish, rather than the rather than the non native fish, Titus, do you know anything about if there's a movement to sort of change the way that those species compositions, or, you know, the relative amounts, I suppose I'm

Katie O'Reilly 30:32
really glad you asked Titus this first, because I feel like this, this is a topic that can get very, you know, dicey. So, good work. Titus, taking this, yeah, no,

Stuart Carlton 30:41
we, we like to, I see questions on Ask Dr fish. Want to be very clear, it's not just fish spawning, yeah, Katie,

Titus Seilheimer 30:47
you're, you're the invasive species specialist, so it seems like,

Katie O'Reilly 30:50
and you're the fishery specialist. So this is right up both, yeah, yeah. So

Titus Seilheimer 30:55
I, you know, I think in general, you know, Lake Ontario is not our area that Katie and I work in a lot, but, you know, there is, I think, you know, this is a question about kind of balance between and I would say we have a similar kind of discussion here. It would be in Lake Michigan. It's more Pacific salmon and introduced trout versus lake trout, which are native. You know, I think that, you know the managers are, they are trying to balance a lot of different things with their decisions on what to stock and how many to stock. The the numbers of of Pacific salmon stocking is generally linked to how many prey fish are out there, what the health and the status and the trends are in the forage fish base in Lake Ontario. So a lot of that is driven by alewife numbers. And also it's harder to get a picture on how many round gobies are out there. But, you know, we know they're important, you know. So it's kind of, how are those going? How are you know, ultimately, what is, what is the, the management? Or, you know, what is the, what do we want to get out of the lakes? And I guess we, in a larger sense, is a lot of times it's anglers who kind of drive, you know, what is being managed for? Because fishing licenses tend to fund the natural resource, you know, fisheries program. So, and then there's also, kind of, you know, what can you like, what can you actually support in terms of stocking numbers? So that's like, how much capacity do you have for within the hatchery systems to grow these different species. So in generally, we see a lot of Chinook salmon that get stocked, and they're, you know, they are kind of one of the most desirable sport fish to catch, but they're also, you know, they they spend less time in the hatchery. So you you get the eggs in the fall, you can stock them out in the spring. That's a pretty short time. Some of our other trout and salmon need a lot more time in the hatchery, and that takes up space, and that means you can't grow other things. So, you know, that's, that's just sort of the complexity there of those decisions. And you know, the Atlantic salmon was, you know, widespread historically, but really by the mid 1800s totally gone. So I think we can say there, there has been some success with some of the restoration programs. But you know, also, you'd need to look to the whole Lake Ontario watershed and really restore a lot of, you know, habitat and reducing barriers to really bring them back to what they were historically, if that's even possible.

Katie O'Reilly 33:39
I agree with everything Titus has said. I also, you know, want to acknowledge we're talking about, like salmon and trout and Al brought up a really good comment in the chat about, you know, perch not being as common in particularly Lake Michigan, where I do a lot of my work. So, you know, thinking about the whole ecosystem like, you know, perch also is going to probably require some management of not just, you know, throwing perch in the lake, but, like, what kind of habitat do we have? Do we have food to support them? And so, you know, thinking about managing these fisheries is really thinking about managing the ecosystem more broadly,

Titus Seilheimer 34:19
yeah, and like, you know, from a perch perspective. I mean, they were a huge sport fishery, a huge commercial fishery in Lake Michigan up until the mid 90s. And you know, really declined. The commercial fishery closed in the mid 90s. And you know, we've basically left perch alone in Lake Michigan since then, so 25 years, and you know, their numbers just haven't come back. They, you know, even though we're not really fishing for them that much, there's still some recreational angling, they're just not doing well. And that, you know, really does, does talk about the influence of the food web, because, you know, one of the bottlenecks probably those just little larval fish like you hatch. Where's the. Coming from, because the quagga mussels have changed what the food Web's like. And you know, if those baby perch can't find food, they're not going to make it. So, yeah, so, you know, hatcheries might be one piece of the puzzle, but you know also, what's the health of the food web too. This

Carolyn Foley 35:17
kind of links back to what we were talking about at the beginning of this episode with adapting to changes, and you know, the entire ecosystem is changing and things like that. A couple of other comments or questions for you. First, we'll go to Cold Spring. Are the blue pike found in Canadian lakes, the same as what once was in Erie? If so? Are there any thoughts on restocking? I missed them and have long to see them back for decades. Any thoughts on that Titus or Katie?

Katie O'Reilly 35:44
So the blue Pike is one of those places where common names get a little confusing. So blue pike typically refers to a what was once thought to be a subspecies of walleye that lived like in Lake Erie. More recent research has indicated it might have just been like a special color morph, but in general, that is no longer found in Lake Erie, though it is like cold spring said, still found in isolated places elsewhere. So I don't know if there's been any talk again, because it is kind of this confusing. Is it a subspecies? Is it just a different kind of like color? But that was also something that disappeared in some of the big changes that were happening, like, you know, near the end of the 20th century from Lake Erie, which coincided with a lot of invasive species getting getting a foothold, as well as some of the you know, nutrient issues that Lake Erie has. I don't

Stuart Carlton 36:50
think we we have time to get into it today, but it'd be interesting what time to talk about, sort of the decisions you have to make in stocking versus Hepta restoration and all of that, because I know that gets really complicated as well,

Carolyn Foley 37:01
right? And I was just talking, I'm going to put another invertebrate in there. Just the other day, I was listening to some scientists taught who are monitoring like all five great lakes. But then they were talking about in Lake Michigan. So we talked about how dipri went down. We know zebra and quagga mussels, particularly quagga mussels have expanded across the Great Lakes. They were talking about a new snail that is pretty common around now too. And I was like, oh, goodness gracious, another thing. And apparently it can just pass right through fish guts. So like, and that's actually one way it might be being spread, is like a fish tries to eat it and then swims long and then drops it out. So okay, so we do have, I think, one more question that maybe we'll send to Titus to think about Big Dan is considering perch and sunfish for commercial farm production in ponds. Hopefully can produce enough feed natural do they feed naturally through? Oh, hopefully they can produce enough feed naturally through insect rearing. Do you have any suggestions for perch and sunfish on commercial farm production and feed types?

Titus Seilheimer 38:09
Yeah, and I will, I will do the ultimate Sea Grant answer here, and I will refer you to other Sea Grant folks out there, you know, especially, you know, I think in I would look to Ohio Sea Grant and Illinois Indiana Sea Grant, which are also states where there is a lot more perch and sunfish grown in ponds. It's kind of less common up in Wisconsin. But, yeah, I think those are, you know, good resources to talk to ahead of time. You really, you know, with starting a new farm or a new production, you want to really think it through and make sure that it will work fully before investing a lot of time and money. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 38:49
I don't know what state you're in Big Dan, but we do have the Great Lakes aquaculture collaborative, right, which is where a lot of Sea Grant experts on aquaculture specifically get together and interact about issues or something. So if you Google that you'll be able to find your local Sea Grant contact and reach out to them, and they would be able to provide more specific either advice or resources than we can here

Titus Seilheimer 39:07
and we do, you know, as another plug for some of our products in Great Lakes, Sea Grant or Great Lakes aquaculture collaborative, that's what it is. Yes, we did actually produce a whole series of webinars and farm tours. We had a few, you know, there's lots of great resources on there, so really a good place to start and look through some of those resources, and then reach out to some of the experts who will be happy to help.

Stuart Carlton 39:35
You're a company man, Titus. I like it.

Carolyn Foley 39:37
So we had one more thing that Stuart mentioned in the introduction that it's just kind of a wild story right now related to fish, and it's called Shark gate.

And I asked to introduce this because I wanted to say shark gate that way scientists claim. Rare shark in photo is actually just a plastic toy. So do you guys have any thoughts about this story? Can you summarize it or kind of what's happening?

Katie O'Reilly 40:13
Yeah, I can give a quick intro. Basically what had happened is, last year, a group of scientists published a you know, peer reviewed article that was saying they found this juvenile goblin shark washed up on the beach in Greece. And this was really exciting, because Goblin Sharks had not been known from the Mediterranean Sea. The goblin shark, for those of you who aren't familiar, is this super funky looking deep sea shark that, just, if you can see the image on the screen, just looks very, very

Stuart Carlton 40:50
so that's where you're look at the schnoz. Like, was it Gonzo? Yeah, it

Katie O'Reilly 40:55
is definitely a Gonzo Schnauz. But what was interesting is the scientist who wrote this paper didn't actually see the shark in person. They received an image of it from a citizen scientist, and once so this paper was published, and then other scientists started looking at it, and they're like, something looks off about that goblin shark. And like off more so than the just general offness of Goblin Sharks. And so those researchers wrote a, what we call, like a comment or a rebuttal, saying, We think something up it actually looks like it might be a toy. And so then there was this big discussion in the scientific community of like, okay, is this a juvenile goblin shark, or is this a toy? And someone ended up posting, like a link to an eBay, eBay site that was the same exact model toy, Goblin shark. And so really recently, the original authors of this paper retracted, or took, you know, essentially took back the paper and it was retracted. They did retract it, yes, yeah, only within like, the last couple weeks or so, yeah,

Stuart Carlton 42:07
no, when I looked at this originally, they hadn't. They were doubling down. And I was like, Oh, this is, it's a tough situation to be in, right?

Katie O'Reilly 42:15
I mean, I I can't imagine how, you know, that group of researchers felt, but you know, in doing the ethical thing, you know, they retracted the paper once it once they figured out, yeah, this was definitely a toy. Yeah.

Titus Seilheimer 42:28
I think, you know, kind of a challenge here is, you know, this is, you know, it's like, based on one picture. And I, you know, as a fishery specialist, I get a lot of pictures of fish, and, you know, usually they're real fish, but I have had a, you know, one of those funky looking bat fish from Florida that you see somebody sent, you know, one of those. They're like, my buddy, you said, he caught this in the Fox River. And I was like, I didn't even realize, like, it didn't even look like a real fish. And I told him, it's probably not a real fish. And I, you know, later on, found out it was an actual species, but it's definitely not something that anyone would catch in the Fox River. So yeah, you gotta be kind of on your guard and maybe not get too excited about publishing stuff. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 43:15
it can be exciting, though. When you see something, you think it's cool, but So April is a citizen science month. We often call it community science to avoid sometimes the debates around the word citizen that have cropped up in recently. But so this calls into this brings up that idea of citizen science or community science, right, and how it can be valuable, but also, you know, it's not, it's not free work, right? If there's a little bit of challenge associated with it, are there any cool sort of community science or citizen science efforts that y'all know about going on, maybe our listeners can participate in,

Katie O'Reilly 43:44
yeah, beyond the community science project that Titus is involved in with the sucker monitoring through shed aquarium, there is actually an event called the Great Lakes bio blitz that might currently be going on, or at least it's sometime soon I'm messing up my dates. It starts on

Stuart Carlton 44:03
Earth Day. Look at this. There's still plenty of time.

Katie O'Reilly 44:06
Yeah, and essentially it, it's part of this growing effort using a site called I naturalist, which has folks like, you know, take images of things that they observe, upload them to the site, they can get identifications from people who have a little bit more expertise. And then it provides, like, a really nice record of where we're seeing certain species, you know, finding new populations that we might not have known about. So this is going to be something I think it's really cool happening here, starting on Earth Day, that people could get involved with.

Titus Seilheimer 44:39
Yeah, you know, when you're out there monitoring suckers, it's also a great time to record some bird sounds and take some pictures of trees, and because I like to participate in these bio blitz as well, to try to help Wisconsin beat all the other great lakes, Sea Grant states. You. Everything is a competition. You sure beat us on it's it is fun. You sure beat

Stuart Carlton 45:03
us on sucker videos. That's good. And of course, if you do that, we are working under Foley's assumption. Now we

Carolyn Foley 45:10
also have so something that some of our viewers slash listeners may be a part of, may have been a part of before, is helping look at Fish Diet Analysis at Michigan State University and various other places too. This is one example, but there's I've seen a lot of really cool science talks. So thank you to anybody who, when they've brought their fish back, have said, Yeah, sure, you can have the guts, or you can take a sample, or things like that, because I've seen some really cool results related to that, where people have been really, you know, able to better understand how the whole food web is working, to better try to manage it in the face of all these changes. So So Thanks so much to everybody. So

Stuart Carlton 45:55
now to wrap up, we like to play a game. And this week we are this month, this by month, we are repeating our favorite game today called which fish story is not a fish story. And so in this game, we present two fish lies and a fish truth. And in this time, Titus, who won last month, has to guess which one of these stories is the truth. And so what we did is is Katie Carolyn and I all have fish stories. We are going to present them in a random order. We have these data buoys, and so we are able to ask our data buoys to do little tasks for us. So I asked them to generate a random order, and they did. And so the first story that is going to be read is going to be read by Carolyn. Carolyn, take it away,

Carolyn Foley 46:38
because it's Carolyn's story. It's fish related, all right. Octa wheels aquarium exhibit to open in april 2023 there is an old saying that reads, talent without discipline, is like an octopus on roller skates that may need to be retired now that gloria a two year old Giant Pacific Octopus from the Texas State aquarium in Corpus Christi has mastered the art of walking on wheels. It's absolutely incredible. Gush. Is Matthew reader, an aquarium worker who helped Gloria strap on her first four pairs of skates. It took about a week, but she's just so intelligent, she quickly figured it out and has been obviously excited to try them on every day. Some other aquarium workers express concern at the amount of water that winds up being displaced from the tanks to the floor as Gloria begins her descent each day. But Matthew shrugs. It's really not that much worse than when she sneaks out to steal fish snacks from nearby. And the potential to get people excited about science and exercise is just too great to pass up. The Octa wheels exhibit was made possible through a partnership with skate land, the self proclaimed best skating rink in South Texas. It runs through September 2023

Stuart Carlton 47:49
All right, so skating octopi in South Texas. That is Story number one, Katie, Story number two. University

Katie O'Reilly 47:57
of Washington researchers discover anti cancer compound in hagfish slime in a breakthrough in cancer research, scientists at the University of Washington have discovered a new compound in the slime of hagfish that may have the potential to treat certain types of cancer. The compound dubbed hagfish in was identified in the slime of hagfish, a primitive eel like fish known for its ability to produce copious amounts of slime as a defense mechanism, researchers discovered that this slime has the potent anti cancer properties, which they believe could make it a powerful tool in the fight against cancer. This is a remarkable discovery, said Dr Sarah Johnson, the lead researcher on the project hagfish and has the potential to revolutionize cancer treatment by targeting specific cancer cells and sparing healthy cells. The discovery of hagfish and was the result of a multi year research project that involved screening 1000s of natural compounds in search for new cancer therapies, the researchers found that high fission was highly effective at killing cancer cells and laboratory tests, and their next step is to conduct clinical trials to determine the safety and effective fission in humans. If the trials are successful, high fission could become a valuable addition to the arsenal of available cancer treatments. This is a reminder that the natural world still has much to tell us. Said Dr Johnson, who knows what other treasures are still waiting to be discovered.

Stuart Carlton 49:27
There we go. We have cancer curing hagfish slime. They're really slimy fish, aren't they? Do their does their slime cure cancer? Maybe. And our third story is from me. Now I am older than Carolyn and Katie, so I have to hold mine up and read it one day, you too will. But that's fine. A small Outback community in Australia received some unusual weather recently when residents went outside to find a rainy fish. Locals in La jammanu, a community on the northern edge of the Tanami Desert, said they were stunned to see the fish drop during heavy rainfall. However, this is not the first time. That has happened. The same phenomenon occurred in larger Manu in 2010 and was also reported in 2004 and stretching back as far as 1974 Weather experts believe incidents like these can be caused by strong updrafts like tornadoes, which suck water and fish from rivers and dump them hundreds of kilometers away. We just seen a big storm heading up to my community, and we thought, yeah, it's just rain, said a local city councilor, but when the rain started falling, we saw fish falling down as well at the Museum of Art, the museum and art gallery of the Northern Territory, the curator of fish is there, Michael Hammer said the rates of phenomena like this were just growing across Australia. I think next time it rains, you just need to be out there with a net, catching the fish as they fall and properly documented. He said, let's get some citizen science going and start to build a picture. So there we go, Titus. We have three stories, two of which are fish stories, one of which is not. We have skating octopi. We have cancer curing hagfish slime, and we have fish raining from the skies in Australia. Which fish story? Titus is not the fish story? I

Titus Seilheimer 51:04
don't know. I mean, they could all be true, couldn't they? Hagfish have caused accidents with slime. Could be a cancer causer, too. But I think I'm gonna go with,

Stuart Carlton 51:14
let's hold on. Let's do it right. Oh, you think you're gonna go with, but I think

Titus Seilheimer 51:19
I'm gonna go with fish from the sky.

Stuart Carlton 51:24
You are correct. This story comes to us from whatever website that is, who's in logo I don't recognize, but it comes from ABC in Alice Springs, Australia. Fish raining from the sky. And apparently it happens with increasing frequency. Titus. That means that you are our winter. You are our winner. It's no longer winter, but my brain, apparently, along with my tongue, are is frozen. Take it away for 30 seconds of soapbox time.

Titus Seilheimer 51:49
Alright, get out there. It is spring. We've been talking about spawning fish, and I want you to get out to your local creek, to your local lake, and find some spawning fish this spring and summer. Observe those fish. Watch those fish. Bird watching. It's so it's done. It's tired. Fish watching. That's where it's at now. So get out there. Watch some fish. Have some fun.

Stuart Carlton 52:21
Ask Dr fish is brought to you by the fine people at Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant, Wisconsin Sea Grant and Gopi dog media. This show is produced and hosted by Stuart Carlton. That's me, Carolyn Foley. Dr fish, Katie O'Reilly and Dr fish Titus sealeheimer, our winner, Titus wins every time we got to figure something out the live broadcast Guru is the amazing and professional. Tammy Winslow, Tammy, thank you, my goodness. And it's produced by our pals at Great Lakes. Now news about the lakes you love. Go check out their show. It's really, really good, really, really informative. The podcast version of our show is edited by the awesome Quinn rose. We thank Quinn for everything. Quinn, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The podcast artwork is by Ethan Cossack COVID his portfolio at Ethan cossack.com that's k, O, C, A, k, if you have questions, questions or questions or whatever for our doctors fish, send an email to ask Doctor. Fish@gmail.com use the Twitter hashtag ask Dr fish who gives a call on our hotline. It's 765, 496, I ISG, hey everybody. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you live on YouTube and Facebook at 11 o'clock Eastern on the second Monday of every even month in between. Now and then, if you have fish questions, science questions or life questions, just ask Dr fish you

Unknown Speaker 53:30
doo doo doo.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai