Here is My CER(Claim,Evidence,and Reasoning) Writing About How Sea Lamprey Caused a Decline in the Trout Population:

The Sea Lamprey caused a decline in the Trout population. In a Sea Lamprey population graph it showed that the Sea Lamprey’s population increased by 300 in between the years 1920-2000, meanwhile, the Trout Population decreased by 200 in between the years 1920-2000. Since Sea Lamprey can lay up to 60,000-100,000 every other year, there are a ton of them! Some eggs may not get fertilized in the end, but most of them do. Just imagine 100,000 eggs and then think that’s just how many fish just one female Sea Lamprey can have! Trout, on the other hand, lay way fewer eggs than Sea Lamprey do. Since there are so many Sea Lamprey, and less Trout, the Sea lamprey are killing the Trout, which is causing a decline in the Trout population.

According to an article we read in class, Sea Lamprey’s movement is much faster than the Trouts. Trout only use half their body to move, which is also known as a tail swimmer or a half-body swimmer. On the other hand, Sea Lamprey use their whole entire body to move and they wiggle their body in order to do this. These type of swimmers are called S-swimmers. Since they are so much bigger, they can store more energy in them to move, and the more energy stored in you, the faster you are, and ready to attack and in this case, attack the Trout faster. This indicates that Trout are not fast enough to swim away from Sea Lamprey, so they will get attacked and killed by them.

While looking in the Sea Lampreys mouth during dissection, a classmate of mine spotted 60 teeth in their mouth. On average, there are about 60 teeth in a Sea Lamprey’s mouth, but it could vary between each individual fish. The teeth on the fish were very sharp and thick. This makes it easy to kill trout because they can eat them up with all those teeth! They do so by sucking the blood on the Trout with their teeth and other fluids in them, because that’s what they need to survive. So, this means that because they get killed by the teeth of Sea Lamprey, they will die, and soon all trout will die from this as well.

Lastly, according to the Great Lakes ecosystem food chain, Sea Lamprey are at the top of the food web. This shows that they can not be eaten by any other creatures, but they can eat other creatures. So essentially, they are predators, not prey. Since Trout are more towards the bottom of the food web, they are going to get eaten more by Sea Lamprey and Sea Lamprey eat a lot. The reason for that is because the size of one Sea Lamprey is typically between 15-55 centimeters, which means that it needs to eat quite a bit to get around, and one of the foods they eat are Trout, so they become the main target that way as well. Due to this, the Trout population is declining.