Hunting incidents decline during Michigan\u2019s 2025 seasons<\/a><\/p>\nWhile recent attention has been given to preventing bighead and silver carp from migrating into Lake Michigan by implementing deterrent measures as they move northward through the Mississippi River basin, grass carp have been detected in the Great Lakes basin since the 1980s.<\/p>\n
Presently, grass carp have been detected in each of the Great Lakes except for Lake Superior, with the greatest number of detections coming from Lake Erie.<\/p>\n
In 2015, urgency to control grass carp increased considerably when natural spawning was documented as occurring in Lake Erie\u2019s watershed.<\/p>\n
According to Michigan State Fisheries and Wildlife assistant professor Scott Colborne, the carp aren\u2019t breeding in the Great Lakes themselves, but rather in nearby tributaries. That\u2019s where he and team members at Michigan State are studying the intricacies of their behavior in these river systems and use what\u2019s learned to better catch and contain them.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur best indicators show that the population of grass carp is still relatively low in and around the Great Lakes, which gives us a chance of maintaining this status and \u2013 if we\u2019re really fortunate \u2013 extirpating and eliminating future reproduction events,\u201d Colborne said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur ultimate goal is that grass carp are no longer established in the Great Lakes, and we still have a chance at making that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
To do this, researchers are using acoustic telemetry, a type of fish-tracking technology that Colborne specializes in.<\/p>\n
Acoustic telemetry incorporates sound to track populations of fish, where underwater acoustic receivers collect data on fish surgically tagged with acoustic transmitters. Using information garnered from the acoustic telemetry research, scientists from the University of Toledo, Michigan and Ohio DNR, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, USGS, and Michigan State have gained insight into ways management strategies could be improved based on time of day, location of carp activity, and gear used for capturing.<\/p>\n
Heightened focus has been given to tributaries of Lake Erie such as the Maumee and Sandusky rivers in Ohio because grass carp need the flow of rivers to keep their eggs afloat when they spawn, Colborne said. Without it, their eggs will sink and never hatch.<\/p>\n
Knowing this, researchers have used acoustic telemetry to target grass carp activity in these locations. It\u2019s knowledge management teams have harnessed to catch grass carp with greater efficiency.<\/p>\n
In addition to leveraging acoustic telemetry to identify the most effective strategies for capturing grass carp and deterring their reproduction, Colborne also said teams are constantly evaluating the data to understand movement patterns so that they can prevent grass carp from spreading.<\/p>\n
What they\u2019ve learned is that grass carp have the potential to disperse considerable distances \u2013 making it that much more critical to get ahead of them.<\/p>\n
Grass carp tagged in the western part of Lake Erie have been detected as far east in Lake Erie as Buffalo and Dunkirk, New York.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"East Lansing, Mich. \u2014 Research from Michigan State University is protecting the Great Lakes from a dangerous threat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[136,138,137,7622,3745,5091],"class_list":{"0":"post-85786","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-erie","8":"tag-erie","9":"tag-erie-headlines","10":"tag-erie-news","11":"tag-invasive-species","12":"tag-michigan","13":"tag-nature"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}