{"id":40652,"date":"2025-08-02T00:56:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T00:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/40652\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T00:56:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T00:56:08","slug":"crews-deployed-to-battle-invasive-vampire-fish-in-great-lakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/40652\/","title":{"rendered":"Crews deployed to battle invasive ‘vampire fish’ in Great Lakes"},"content":{"rendered":"

They have about 100 teeth, which they use to suction to the side of a fish, and a sharp tongue that drills through its scales.<\/p>\n

They secret an enzyme that prevents blood from clotting. Once attached, the sea lamprey will spend the next several months feeding off the blood and fluids of the host animal.<\/p>\n

\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/4\/41\/Sea_Lamprey_fish.jpg\/1152px-Sea_Lamprey_fish.jpg?20171014131909\"<\/p>\n

Lake trout with lampreys attached. (Great Lakes Fishery Commission\/Wikipedia<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Just in case you’re wondering, sea lampreys can accidentally latch on to humans, usually when people are swimming. A bite won’t be fatal, but it can be painful, and untreated wounds could lead to infection. Sea lampreys don’t pose a threat to people though – they aren’t interested in us and human bites appear to be rare.<\/p>\n

In their native environment, the Atlantic Ocean, sea lampreys don’t often kill their host. In the Great Lakes, where sea lampreys have not co-evolved alongside native species, they are a significant threat.<\/p>\n

Shipping canals transport more than just ships<\/p>\n

Sea lampreys entered the Great Lakes from the Atlantic Ocean through man-made shipping canals, popping up in Lake Ontario in the 1830s. When the Welland Canal deepened in 1919, sea lampreys gained access to all the Great Lakes — and they remain there to this day, although their numbers are falling.<\/p>\n

In the 1950s, the U.S. and Canada teamed up to implement population control measures)<\/a>, and they have worked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They have about 100 teeth, which they use to suction to the side of a fish, and a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[2837,49,48,66,29186,2001,323],"class_list":["post-40652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-animals","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-spring","tag-summer","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}