Submitter Withdrawn International Conference on River Connectivity (Fish Passage 2018)

Selective blockage and removal of invasive sea lamprey in a fishway mesocosm using aversive semiochemicals (52653)

John Hume 1 , Michael Wagner 1 , Martyn Lucas 2 , Peter Hrodey 3 , Theodore Castro-Santos 4 , Ulrich Reinhardt 5
  1. Michigan State University, East Lansing, MICHIGAN, United States
  2. Department of Biosciences, Durham University, Durham, United Kingdom
  3. Marquette Biological Station, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Marquette, Michigan, United States
  4. Conte Anadromous Fish Research Laboratory, Turner Falls, Massachusetts, United States
  5. Biology Department, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan, United States

Dams that prevent the invasive sea lamprey from infesting thousands of river miles in the Laurentian Great Lakes basin also block the migrations of highly valued fishes. Operating fishways to selectively block and remove lampreys before they pass represents an ideal solution to this problem. Because lampreys differ greatly in body form, size, swimming modality, and behavioral tendencies, it is conceivable to create site-specific operational criteria that exploit these traits to ‘filter’ this undesirable species from the assemblage of passing fishes. We report a field experiment conducted in a fishway mesocosm to examine whether the application of a conspecific alarm cue may be used to selectively guide migrating sea lamprey away from the entrance to a fishway and toward a second channel equipped with an eel ladder that would remove only the anguilliform-swimming fish. The data demonstrate: (1) activating a low-flow vertical slot fishway with the sea lamprey alarm cue achieves 100% blockage of sea lamprey; (2) the odor did not prevent passage of white sucker, a co-migrating teleost fish; (3) an eel ladder is effective at selectively removing sea lamprey (98% of those that approached the eel ladder), but did not capture the white sucker. We discuss the implications of these findings for the design and operation of selective fishways, and for use of semiochemical guidance to achieve passage of lampreys in areas of the world where they are targeted for restoration.