Did the sea lamprey cause a decline in the trout population?

Sea Lamprey made (and are making)  the trout population decline.

This is true because it says in the readings; “When the Sea Lamprey feed on fish, they kill them by causing a lot of damage to the fish.” , “Today’s catch was much smaller than usual again.” and lastly, “I remember coming to this spot and catching twice as many trout last year.”. We also looked at a graph for the population of the trout and Sea Lamprey and saw that when the Sea Lamprey increased in 1960 to almost 300,000, the trout declined a lot, to almost 50,000.  I know that the Sea Lampreys are causing the trout population to decline so much because, in all the readings and charts, Sea Lamprey could be the only fish making the trout population decline so much. The Sea Lampreys also are at the top of the food web, meaning they don’t have any predators, and the trout’s other predators are probably dying because they can’t eat as much trout. This proves that the Sea Lampreys are the main animal making the trout population decline so much.

  We dissected a Sea Lamprey and trout and when we were looking at the Sea Lamprey, we saw how sharp their teeth are. Their mouth is not like a fish’s mouth- according to page 68- They are “fish without jaws” which makes sense because their mouth is circular. We realized that they were a BIG threat to the trout. We tried to take out one of its teeth and it was so hard the get out we had to CUT IT and even after that we only got like one-third of the tooth. The teeth were also all over its mouth because it needs to be able to grab onto a fish and suck their blood. The teeth were orange! Their teeth are very sharp and can really hurt a trout. This could make the trout die or just bleed and die. This is making the trout population decline because when the Sea Lampreys do this, they damage the trout and kill them.

  We saw a picture of a Sea Lamprey eggs and there were so many! According to the reading 7.2, they lay about 60,000 to 100,000 eggs! This could be bad because that means that the Sea Lamprey population will only go up because from each female sea lamprey, about 60,000 more come from that ONE Sea Lamprey! Well, not 60,000 because not all the eggs hatch but there is still a lot of Sea Lampreys being born. This is making MORE Sea Lamprey and if there are more Sea Lampreys that means there are less trout because there are more Sea Lamprey to kill the trout.