Fish on the run |
notes from the field
World Fish Migration Day is almost here!
19 May 2016 May 21 is World Fish Migration Day and, from 10am to 4pm, Visitors who come to Chicago’s famed Shedd Aquarium can undertake a scavenger hunt of sorts as they fill in their “Migratory Fish Passport.” See migratory species up close and on display. Talk with fisheries researchers about how they monitor fish populations and what they’re learning. And, of course, get a photo of their heads in our amazing “fish face cut-outs.” JOIN US! |
Fish Fry Day: Mapping the Movements of Migrating Fish
8 April 2016 John Rodstrom, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Limnology, is searching for migratory fishes – species that move inland from Lake Michigan each spring to spawn. Native northern pike migrate each spring, as do the steelhead that the Wisconsin DNR stocks into Wisconsin waterways. But Rodstrom is primarily on the hunt for suckers, a bottom-feeding fish that moves by the millions from the Great Lakes into inland tributaries each year. In terms of sheer biomass, the sucker migration rivals that of the iconic salmon making their way from oceans to fresh, inland waters. (read more) |
Bigger bang for your buck: Restoring fish habitat by removing barriers
28 April 2015 A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describes a powerful new model to help decision makers maximize the cost-effectiveness of barrier removal projects that also restore migratory fish habitat. Recent years have seen growing efforts to chip away at the 7,000 dams and 230,000 road crossings that disrupt the basin's 661 tributaries. |
Going With the Flow: Optimizing Ecology WID Optimization teams with local wildlife agencies to improve Great Lakes basin habitat. 12 March 2015 In the Great Lakes basin, fish are in trouble, and one major cause may not be what you expect. Rather than the habitats themselves, the problem is connectivity between the habitats. Many of the fish native to the Great Lakes basin are migratory fish, meaning that they live out their life cycles in different habitats in different places. Walleye and lake sturgeon, for example, spawn upstream in tributaries while northern pike migrate to wetlands near the coast to spawn. (read more) |
FIELD SAMPLES: STUDYING FISH MIGRATIONS IN GREAT LAKES STREAMS
4 March 2015 Field Samples is a weekly Q&A asking researchers what they’ve been up to and what they’ve learned. Today, Lake Superior State University professor, Ashley Moerke, talks about her time on sabbatical studying Great Lakes fish migrations at the CFL. (read more) |
Fish Fry Day Video: Why Suckers Can’t Go Home Again
19 December 2014 You can’t go home again. While the sentiment means something a bit more figurative to those of us traveling for the Holidays, for Great Lakes fishes the statement is all too literal. In fact, there are more than 275,000 reasons a fish might not make it “home.” (read more) For more information on the study behind the video, click HERE. |
Ancient Fish, Windy City
31 October 2014 Last month, Illinois Department of Natural Resources fisheries biologists on a routine patrol of the North Shore Channel, a straight as an arrow, concrete-lined tributary of the Chicago River, made a surprising find. They gave the water a jolt with their electrofishing equipment and, there, north of downtown Chicago and right downstream from a Red Lobster and Olive Garden, a spotted gar rose to the surface... (read more) |
CFL at the Shedd: 10,000+ “Migrate” to Aquarium on World Fish Migration Day
5 June 2014 When the doors to Chicago’s world-famous Shedd Aquarium opened the Saturday before Memorial Day, Center for Limnology researchers were scrambling to get last-second details in place. (read more) |
CFL at the Shedd Aquarium: World Fish Migration Day, May 24th!
21 May 2014 At the break of dawn this Saturday, May 24th, Center for Limnology researchers and your trusty blogger will hit the road for Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium. Once there, we will help Shedd researchers and volunteers set up a number of activity stations celebrating World Fish Migration Day (WFMD). (read more) |
Road Block: Study Maps Stream Barriers in Great Lakes Basin
14 May 2013 Over the last several years, state agencies and environmental non-profit organizations have targeted dam removal as a way to quickly improve the health of aquatic ecosystems. Dams keep migratory fish from swimming upriver to spawn, block nutrients from flowing downstream, and change the entire hydrology of a watershed. From an ecosystem perspective, taking down a dam and returning a river to a more natural flow seems like a no-brainer. (read more) |
Avoiding Elephants and Studying Fish Refuges in Thailand
20 March 2014 “At the next site we’ll have to be careful to avoid the elephants” warned my field assistant, Witu. His words would have struck me more soundly if I hadn’t come across the two Elaphas along the banks of the Ngao River while conducting snorkel surveys a day earlier. The two captive individuals belong to a village over the mountain, and were currently being rotated through various forest patches to browse their way through the dry season. (read more) |
It’s Lake Sturgeon Season on Lake WInnebago!
7 February 2014 Not only is it today the day restaurants put delectably fried fish on their menus, it’s also the eve of the Lake Winnebago Sturgeon Spearing season! Luckily, we happen to know the woman who wrote the book (literally) on Wisconsin’s lake sturgeon and we asked her for a Q & A. Here’s our conversation with Kathy Schmitt Kline, author of “People of the Sturgeon: Wisconsin’s Love Affair with an Ancient Fish,” and education outreach specialist at the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute. (read more) |
Whitefish Runs Return to Wisconsin Rivers
6 December 2013 Last week, an excellent article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel covered some great news – lake whitefish are migrating inland to spawn and, in many cases, fish were running up into tributaries where they hadn’t been seen for 100 years. (read more) |
Study Wants to Put Freshwater Ecosystems on the Policy Map
16 October 2013 When it comes to economic growth and environmental impacts, it can seem like Newton’s third law of motion is the rule – for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In most cases, the economy prospers and the environment suffers. A team of UW-Madison researchers is hoping to help change that narrative and add a little ecology to economic decision making by forecasting how future policies regarding urban development and agricultural cultivation may impact aquatic ecosystems, which harbor astounding amounts of biodiversity and provide humans with vital goods and services. (read more) |
Jumpin’ Muskies
10 May 2013 Every spring, fish all over the world feel the warming waters and head upstream to spawn. And every spring, millions of fish run into one insurmountable obstacle to their inner drive – dams. (read more) |
Thinking “Big” May Not Be Best Approach to Saving Large-River Fish
8 April 2013 Large-river specialist fishes—from giant species like paddlefish and blue catfish, to tiny crystal darters and silver chub – are in danger. (read more) |
Study Documents Round Goby’s Rapid Invasion of Wisconsin Streams
15 January 2013 In 1990, a small stowaway was dumped from the ballast tank of an ocean-going freighter into the waters of the St. Clair River, joining more than 180 other non-native species in the Great Lakes. Two decades later, the round goby, an aggressive, voracious, bottom-dwelling fish has invaded all five Great Lakes and has had profound impacts on other fish populations. As is the case with most aquatic invasive species, the lakes were only the first stop of the goby invasion. Now new research out of the Center for Limnology (CFL) shows that the fish is rapidly spreading into Wisconsin streams. (read more) |
Mapping Effort Charts Restoration Course for Great Lakes
17 December 2012 MADISON – As the federal government builds on its $1 billion investment to clean up and restore the Great Lakes, an international research consortium has developed innovative new maps of both environmental threats and benefits to help guide cost-effective approaches to environmental remediation of the world’s largest fresh water resource. (read more) |
Fish Ears, “Tree” Rings and a Sectioning Saw
13 November 2012 After the spring and summer field seasons, it’s time to return to the lab to work up all the specimens collected in the field. For many grad students at the Center for Limnology, this means days, if not weeks, hunched over a circular sectioning saw and buffing wheel. (read more) |
Looking to The Skies to Save U.S. Fish
10 October 2012 Brenda Pracheil, a former postdoctoral fellow at the UW-Madison Center for Limnology, thinks it’s time for fish to garner the same protection afforded migratory birds. Migratory birds are protected by the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, and state collaboration and federal oversight span borders and encompass large conservation efforts in migratory flyways, especially for waterfowl. (read more) |
Tracking Northern Pike in Green Bay
7 May 2012 Former CFL grad student, Dan Oele, is trying to see if pike return to their “birthplace” to spawn or if any ol’ tributary will do. Thanks to funding from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, Oele is out in Green Bay working on an answer. (read more) |
.