October 2008 - Vol. 43

Inside this Issue:

• Great Lakes Basin Fish Habitat Partnership

• Assess Fish Community along Lakeshore Margins of the Apostle Islands

• Coaster Ecology Studied

The Great Lakes Basin Fish Habitat Partnership was recognized as a candidate partnership of the National Fish Habitat Action Plan in late 2007.  To kick-off the formation of a steering committee, Robyn Thorson, Regional Director, sent letters of invitation to eight states, 33 tribes, eight federal agencies and several basin-wide non-profit organizations.  To date, eight states, five federal agencies and four non-profits are on-board to guide the direction of this partnership.  The Service is continuing to work with Tribal Treaty Authorities to encourage participation in this important partnership-building effort.

The Interim Steering Committee of the Great Lakes Basin Fish Habitat Partnership held its first meeting on Sept. 22-23, 2008 in Detroit Michigan.  States from across the basin, federal agencies involved in Great Lakes management, and basin-wide non-profits attended.

Meeting participants agreed to move the partnership forward to gain national recognition as a partnership by the National Fish Habitat Action Plan Board.  The next steps for the Great Lakes Basin Fish Habitat Partnership are to draft an MOU and begin working on a strategic plan that will create the intellectual framework for advancing on-the-ground protection and restoration by complementing existing Great Lakes initiatives.

Frank Stone and Gary Czypinski worked with USGS – Lake Superior Biological Station researchers to collect fish as part of a cooperative project examining the relationship between the inshore and nearshore aquatic communities around a portion of the Apostle Islands.  This portion of the project involved sampling fishery diversity along 8 shoreline areas (~ 16 km) to characterize night habitat use by fish species in the 0-3 m depth interval.

Other aspects of the research effort involve: characterizing aquatic habitat of the inshore waters around the Apostle Islands; characterizing near and offshore habitat, 15 to 100+ m depth; and also sampling lower trophic level elements in near and offshore waters.

Tracking the movement of brook trout in and out of Lake Superior tributaries is one of the keys to understanding the ecology of coaster brook trout and efforts to rehabilitate this depleted form of brook trout.  Important questions abound with respect to coaster rehabilitation.  To gain a better understanding of these and other questions the Ashland FWCO recently embarked on the use of half-duplex passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags and remote tag detection stations to track fish.  The use of remote tag detection stations allows the Service to collect data on the direction of individual fish movement 24 hrs a day without having to be physically present.  Data are collected when a tagged fish passes by the instream antennae and are stored in the data logger for download at a later date.  Biologists periodically return to the site to upload data and return to the office to check on movement of fish at the site.  Thus far, the Service has set up or assisted with the establishment of five PIT tag detection stations.  One of the goals of this effort is to develop regional networks of stations that allow biologists to learn where fish go when they leave a particular stream system.