Fishing News- Great Lakes Region



`Week of June16, 1997 --->`

Michigan Department of Natural Resources Director K. L. Cool unveiled major Department personnel and management changes.
Effective June 29, 1997, John Robertson, Fisheries Division Chief, is laterally transferred to the position of Chief of the Forest Management Division.
"I have been tremendously impressed with the management structure John Robertson has put in place in the Fisheries Division," Cool explained. "It should serve as a model throughout the Department. John's superior management and strategic planning skills are transferable anywhere. He is a very quick study, and individuals at his leadership level establish policy and direction -- and manage people, who manage the resources."
Dr. Kelley Smith, Acting Hatcheries Production Manager, is appointed Acting Fisheries Division Chief.

"The early retirement program resulted in the loss of many valued and experienced employees," Cool acknowledged. "In the case of Kelley Smith, it has also afforded us the opportunity for rapid, internal advancement of an extremely talented, energetic and innovative leader. I have been very impressed with the skills and dedication he has demonstrated in our hatcheries program, and more specifically, with regard to the ongoing challenges at the Platte River Hatchery. Kelley will provide a new and welcome field perspective to the DNR Management Team."

Cool said "the management and administrative decisions he detailed are vital to achieving primary objectives and Commission charges."

Cool recalling that he was hired 13 months ago "to bring a new perspective to the DNR, to stabilize leadership, and to contribute to the improved management of this agency." Cool said the management and administrative decisions he detailed are vital to achieving primary objectives and Commission charges.
Cool also stressed the need to strengthen Department administrative capabilities, and announced the following actions:

A Contract Administrator has been hired to ensure that all contracts meet statutory, policy and procedural requirements, that there is a single contact for all contracts, and that all contracts are closely monitored to ensure performance compliance.
Effective July 1, 1997, the Management Information Division (MID) will be replaced by the Office of Information Systems and Technology, and will be headed by a new Chief Information Officer (CIO.) This individual will oversee planned computer upgrades and E-mail conversions, the automated hunting and fishing licensing system, the state parks reservation system, and other technologies employed to enhance existing, and provide new communications, information delivery and customer service initiatives.

Commercial boats had been allowed to take perch that were a minimum of eight inches. Females likely were overharvested in this decade because they grow faster than males and reached the size limit in just three years.
Alarming to Wisconsin fisheries biologist, net studies came up absent of female yellow perch at traditional Lake Michigan spawning grounds this spring .
The first round of a summer-long young of year perch study netted only six females among 8,724 perch captured between May 21 to June 9th.
The fish were captured by the Lake Michigan Work unit on perch spawning grounds two miles off of Bay View, on the south side of Milwaukee.
Out of the seven females captured, three females were sacrificed for further studies, two females were tagged and released ,and two were stripped of their eggs. The eggs will be sent to the Wisconsin Sea Grant lab where they will be fertilized and observed by researchers at the Milwaukee Center for Great Lakes Studies.
Almost all of the perch were old males that had not deposited their sperm. There was little mix of ages, with very few fish born in this decade, Fisheries biologist Jim Thompson said.
Many of the elder male perch had grown to 10 -12 inches or more in length.
To gain an understanding of why so few juvenile perch have been reaching maturity in Lake Michigan, the DNR and Sea Grant researchers want to find the answers to these questions

Are growing population of alewives, an exotic fish and primary prey for the lake's salmon and trout, eating most of the perch larvae soon after they hatch from eggs?
Do eggs from the lake's few female perch contain adequate nutrients?
Are Lake Michigan juvenile perch are born with developmental problems that cause early death?
Are contaminants in the water damaging cells of perch testes and ovaries, reducing reproductive success?

Is the booming population of zebra mussels in the lake is consuming the food - protozoa and other microscopic animals, known as zooplankton - preferred by perch larvae?

In past four consecutive year of finding few mature females, and Illinois researchers report they are netting an equally small number of females this spring, Thompson said. There were less than 5% females in all perch trapped on the Wisconsin shore during the spawning run last year, 10% in 1995 and 11% in 1994.
Commercial boats had been allowed to take perch that were a minimum of eight inches. Females likely were overharvested in this decade because they grow faster than males and reached the size limit in just three years.
Fred Binkowski, a senior scientist with the Center for Great Lakes Studies at UWM is seeking at least 20 egg masses, 10 of which should be naturally fertilized, that he will place in tanks at the research center. To date, he has two, and only one was naturally fertilized.
Regardless, he will watch them through each stage of development, to check whether there is a difference in the fertility rate and also to keep track of any problems along the way.
The hatching success and the growth rate of the Lake Michigan perch larvae will be compared with those of young perch raised from eggs already collected in Lake Ontario, Green Bay and Lake Mendota in Dane County, Binkowski said.
Later this month, alewives will be netted after perch eggs in the lake have hatched and larvae are swimming near the shore, the stomachs will be removed from each alewife to check whether juvenile perch make up a large part of their diet.
"Commercial fishing businesses that have blamed the perch decline on alewives," Thompson said. "The public, too, has come to link loss of perch with the growing number of alewives because more of these fish have been dying and washing up on beaches in the last two years," he said.
"But there were several years in the 1980s when high perch survival coincided with alewife abundance," Thompson said. "It's too convenient to put all the blame on alewives without studying weather, health and all the other factors."

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