Research Resumes on Super-Size Brookies
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Report The
Detroit News As the weather warms and the
rivers start running with a measure of decorum, a consortium of researchers
are resuming their efforts to restore coaster brook trout to the Lake
Superior watershed.
Coasters are big brook trout,
that, unlike their smaller cousins, spend most of their lives in Lake
Superior, returning to the rivers during fall spawning runs. They were
driven to near extinction around the turn of the last century, but an
unusual collaboration of Trout Unlimited, the Michigan Department of Natural
Resources, and researchers in the Department of Biological Sciences is
working to bring them back. The Copper Country Chapter of Trout Unlimited
(TU) contributed $10,000 toward the research last year and another $14,400
in 2001, with field work conducted by volunteers from both TU and Michigan
Tech.
The DNR planted 30,000 fingerling
coasters in the Gratiot River in fall 1999, and studies the following
spring showed that many had survived the winter. Another 29,000 baby coasters
were released in fall 2000, and researchers will be out again this spring
to see how they are faring.
Bill Deephouse, a fisheries
biologist and president of the Copper Country Chapter of Trout Unlimited,
explains. "We'll be looking for cold water upwellings," the
preferred breeding habitat, he said. "Upwellings are like springs,
but they're usually groundwater. Basically, you wear tennis shoes and
walk up the stream. When it suddenly gets cold, that's an indication of
upwelling."
Deephouse thinks some of the
planted coasters might think of making the trek upriver this fall. "We
don't know exactly when they start, but we should see a few wandering
back," he said.
Both the DNR and TU hope that
a viable coaster brook trout population will gain a fin-hold within the
next few years. Huckins expects to learn from the experience, whatever
the result. "The basic ecology isn't known for these fish,"
he said. "I want to evaluate the stocking. What kind of returns are
they getting? Do stocked individuals move or go elsewhere?"
The research also involves
a genetic study to determine if coasters really are a separate genetic
stock, or if they are just jumbo brookies.
"They can get huge, over
twenty inches," Huckins said.
He couldn't comment on their
taste, however. "I've never eaten one of my research subjects,"
he laughed. "The data are too critical."
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Coaster
Brook Trout
Return to U.P.
"We'll
be using netting and electroshock," Assistant Professor Casey Huckins
(Biological Sciences) said. "We'll be surveying the streams for the
whole fish community, and we're also interested in the physical habitat
within the stream."