How lamprey control represents a cosier Canada and U.S. relationship
"The worst part of them is they have this rasping mouth that has a series of teeth inside of it," Ellis told CBC News. "They'll cling on to a fish, they'll rasp a hole in it."
"If you've ever seen it, it's an awful thing to see. The fish has a huge hole in it and it's been drained... All the fluids are out of it and it's just literally bone dry."
Lampreys are not part of a science-fiction dystopia, but in fact pose a very real problem. These parasitic fish arrived in the Great Lakes in the early 20th century, after improvements to the Welland Canal in the previous century undermined Niagara Falls' role as a natural barrier to the Atlantic Ocean.
By the middle of the 20th century, according Ellis, lampreys had almost devastated the fishing industry in the Great Lakes.
"Your average lamprey kills 40 pounds of fish, which is why they just about wiped out the Great Lakes. In the '60s and early '70s they just ate them all, killed them all," Ellis says.
This destruction posed a huge problem for not only commercial fishing, but every day anglers.
"I remember as a kid in the '70s that you couldn't catch a lake trout in Lake Superior, there just weren't any," Ellis says.
Maintaining control
Back in 1957, a compound was discovered that is lethal to lamprey. Since then, the deployment of lampricides into the tributaries around the Great Lakes became a regular occurrence, with the goal being to kill larval sea lampreys before they can mature.
A large scale lampricide resumes around Lake Superior tributaries, starting August 5 to 22. Previous work had been completed last month.
The compound used specifically kills lamprey while leaving other animals unharmed due to a quirk in the fish's biology, according to Great Lakes Fishery Commission legislative affairs and policy director Greg McClinchey.
"Lamprey are a 360 million year old species of fish and they have not evolved certain enzymes in their body to process this compound," McClinchey says. "If you introduce this compound to a lake trout, they simply metabolize it and away it goes. If you introduce it to a sea lamprey, they die."
Lampricide is a very complex process — it's not as simple as pouring pesticides into lakes.
"They put only the minimum dose in that they need to to be lethal to lamprey," McClinchey says. "It's a constant process where they monitor downstream, they do water quality samples... [The compound] doesn't just become diluted, it actually degrades in sunlight and only kills sea lamprey."
Historic success
Since 1955, the commission has been a binational body monitoring these bodies of water.
Because the Great Lakes encompass both the Canadian and United States borders, there has been a multi nation effort to control lamprey levels.
If you take your foot off them for a second, they spring back. - Greg McClinchey
As an angling expert in the region, Ellis has noticed the difference in lamprey numbers in his decades of fishing.
"They're incredibly good at keeping track of how many lamprey there are," Ellis says. "If the program wasn't there, it wouldn't take very long for the Great Lakes fishery to collapse."
McClinchey agrees, stating that "if you take your foot off them for a second, they spring back."
Then COVID-19 came, a time that revealed the incredible strength with which lampreys spring back.
"In the year 2020 and 2021 we had to reduce sea lamprey control," McClinchey recalls. "Our data shows us that it will have cost the economy of the Great Lakes about $2 billion just from that reduction in sea lamprey control."
"We can't rest on our laurels in that fight."
Unity
As the relationship between Canada and the U.S. becomes more tumultuous, lamprey control works as a quiet antidote to friction at the border.
"During Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's tenure as Prime Minister and President Richard Nixon's tenure as president, they didn't like each other... They didn't care much for each other and things in the national relationship were pretty rocky," McClinchey says. "During that time period, at the Great Lakes Fishery Commission every single thing we did during that time period was unanimous."
Ellis says that there is still a way to go as far as anglers are concerned.
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