TOPIC:

www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/l...pA2nUYS1ZLfDKlT-hY27

Nice read Ed. Thanks.

Thanks Ed!

I wonder how it would of went if he decided to choose the Atlantic stripers over the salmon.

I don't think it would have been as good. Salmon are perfect for the cold Great Lakes waters. Stripers, not so much. (They do well in TVA lakes in KY and Tennessee, for instance.) I've visited with Dr. Tanner a few times and in one conversation he mentioned stripers were considered, but the main thing he worried about was the chance they'd work "too well." Since salmon die in 3 or 4 years while spawning, and since they didn't think (especially with cohos) natural reproduction was going to be a factor, if somehow the law of unintended consequences made salmon in the lakes an ecological mistake (like Carp in the US), they would naturally die out. Stripers would have had a better chance of establishing a breeding populations.
I've caught pure bred stripers in lakes and in salt water. Neither match up (pound for pound) with salmon, in my opinion.

Tanner was the right man at the right time. (And I should point out, his "man on the lake" biologist Wayne Tody, had a lot to do with the success of salmon, as well.)

If the problems plaguing Lake Michigan were the same today as then, salmon would never happen. No top level bureaucrat would ever give one of their underlings the order, "do something." More like, come up with an idea and we'll have a meeting, then do a pilot study, then run computer models, then do a cost analysis, then have public meetings to see the reaction of the public, then...... yadda, yadda.

Not to mention, anyone with the idea to control an invasive species from the Atlantic with a non-native species from the Pacific would be laughed out of the room (at best). Even if after the laughter died down, the idea approved, it would take decades of environmental reviews to determine if the idea would screw up the already screwed up environment, There would have to be studies to see how the project would affect Native Americans in Michigan, the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere, along with plans to include a fair measure of Hispanics, Muslims, Eskimos, Gays and midgets in on the project.
Michigan had a Republican governor at the time, If the state of Washington had a Democrat, getting salmon eggs from them would have been impossible. If there was a cost involved, the salmon eggs would have to be purchased from an approved vendor with a proven record of holding regular sexual harassment training to all employees with points awarded for being a women or minority owned business.

Just saying the age of the government coming to the rescue is over, done, ain't going to happen.