Did the Sea Lamprey cause a decline in the Trout population?

The trout population declined because of the sea lamprey. According to the article fisherman’s journal, it’s hard to catch big fish and trout because the sea lamprey are eating them. Also According to the trout and sea lamprey graphs from 1945 to 1960 the sea lamprey population increased but from from 1950 to 1970 the trout population declined. According to the reading 6.1 The passages are allowing the sea lamprey to come to the Great Lakes. This is important because the sea lamprey is the top predator of the Great Lake food web which means that the sea lamprey doesn’t have any predators so nothing eats it,  so they keep reproducing and making more sea lamprey. This means that, there are more lamprey to eat the trout which declines there population.

When I was dissecting the sea lamprey and was looking at the mouth I could see why it’s such a threat to the trout. Even though it’s teeth are small they are sharp and that can bite through literally anything.  According to the seagrant.umn.edu, The lamprey’s Way of eating is to attach to fish with their mouth and teeth, and then use its tongue to go through a fish’s scales and skin so the lamprey can suck ups its blood and body fluids like a suction cup.  Also a single sea lamprey will destroy up to 40 lbs of fish during its adult lifetime. This means, that the trout population declines because the sea lamprey eat the trout, because the lamprey lays so many eggs there’s a lot of fish to eat the trout an make the trout population decline.

According to bioweb.uwlax.edu the sea lamprey lays about 30,000 eggs which is a lot. So from how many eggs it lays you can see why it’s such a threat to trout, other fish and fisherman, because they just keep reproducing and at the end there’s hundreds of thousands of sea lamprey.  The life cycle of the sea lamprey is that first the animal gets born with hundreds of thousands other siblings then a few months later has about 60,000 kids ( some don’t make it though so it brings it down to 40,000 or 30,000 eggs the hatch) next dies and this happens with almost all of the lamprey ( some are male and only the female can reproduce baby sea lamprey). This means, that there are more sea lamprey to eat the the trout, other fish and are a threat to the fisherman because they aren’t catching enof trout and other fish for people to eat because the lamprey are sucking on to the fish and eating them.

Sites

http://www.seagrant.umn.edu/ais/sealamprey_battle

sea lamprey graphs

article fisherman’s journal

http://bioweb.uwlax.edu/bio203/f2013/guise_aman/reproduction.htm