The Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Michigan Department of Natural Resources invite the public to celebrate the development of new lake trout broodstocks from the Keweenaw Bay Indian Fish Hatchery. This successful broodstock broodstock
The reproductively mature adults in a population that breed (or spawn) and produce more individuals (offspring or progeny).
Learn more about broodstock development partnership is the first for the three agencies together, and the fourth involving the Community and Service.
Broodstock fish are captive fish used in hatcheries to provide eggs and sperm for the rearing process. This particular broodstock was developed from wild Lake Superior lake trout.
The celebration will take place Tuesday, July 15 at 10 a.m. at the tribal fish hatchery, located in Michigans Upper Peninsula on the LAnse Indian Reservation, about 7 miles northeast of LAnse on Pequaming Road.
Agency staff will be available to discuss lake trout rehabilitation efforts in the Great Lakes and load the new lake trout broodstock fish for transfer from the tribal hatchery to Michigan’s Marquette State Fish Hatchery and the Service’s Iron River National Fish Hatchery, located in Wisconsin. Refreshments and facility tours will also be available.
Since 1995, the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community fish hatchery has played a vital role in restoring lake and brook trout to the Great Lakes region by trading services with the Fish and Wildlife Service to provide a “safe house” for rearing trout collected in the wild until a disease history for these fish could be established.
Once the health of the fish is determined—a process that normally takes two years--they are transferred to larger fish culture facilities as new broodstock fish for the lake trout restoration efforts already underway in the Great Lakes. The new lake trout broodstock fish will begin to be used to produce lake trout for rehabilitation efforts in the Great Lakes in between 4 to 6 years when they are sexually mature.
Successful fisheries restoration in the Great Lakes is being achieved through cooperative efforts such as this.
“ Fish hatcheries play an enormous role in achieving mutual benefits for fishery resources and lake trout restoration,” said Gerry Jackson, Assistant Regional Director for Fisheries in the Service’s Great-Lakes Big Rivers Region. “Midwestern tribes such as the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community deserve much credit, as they have responded to the challenges of resource management in their unique role as users and managers of more than 900,000 acres of reservation inland lakes, treaty-ceded territories and the Great Lakes.
“Their contributions are not only vital to restoring these fish species, but they are greatly appreciated,” Jackson said.
In exchange for the fish isolation services offered by the Keweenaw Bay Fish Hatchery, the cooperative agreement between these resource agencies includes the production of 90,000 lake trout yearlings at Iron River NFH and the stocking of 50,000 walleye fingerlings from MDNR in waters of mutual interest.
Both efforts support fish stocking priorities of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community along with those of the Service and MDNR. The lake trout will be fin clipped and have distinctive internal coded wire tags to identify them. The Service also funds training for Keweenaw Bay fish hatchery staff members.
“ This kind of mutual agreement is indeed a ‘win-win’ for the resource and the agencies involved, and we are pleased to be able to further lake trout rehabilitation efforts through joint efforts such as this one,” said Gary Whelan, Fish Production Manager for the Michigan DNR Fisheries Division.
“ Our agreements with the Fish and Wildlife Service have further enabled us to cooperate in native fisheries restoration in the Great Lakes,” said William Emery, Community Tribal Chairman for the Keweenaw Bay tribe. “The community is pleased with the results of these agreements and looks forward to continuing work with the Service on other important natural resource projects.”
Dale Bast, Iron River National Fish Hatchery manager, added, “This partnership fosters the continued integration of fish health and fish genetics into the Fish and Wildlife Service’s captive broodstock program. We need broodstocks that represent the genetics of wild fish”.
The Keweenaw Bay tribal fish hatchery first initiated a two-year cooperative program in September 1995, and that agreement has been renewed to the present, continuing the tribe’s strong contributions toward Great Lakes trout restoration.
Despite the concerted effort by tribal fishery biologists, a disease pathogen for bacterial kidney disease has been detected at low levels in the fish. This pathogen exists in all the Great Lakes and will be actively managed in the hatcheries that receive them. With active disease management and treatment, this disease will not prevent them from being a key part of the broodstock management program for the Great Lakes.
“ The detection of a fish pathogen in these fish is disappointing; however, it’s a true test of the fish isolation system to segregate these fish for disease testing before they are transferred to other facilities where fish pathogens do not exist,” said the Service’s Jackson.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is the principal federal agency responsible for conserving, protecting and enhancing fish, wildlife and plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. The Service manages the 95-million-acre National Wildlife Refuge System, which encompasses 540 national wildlife refuges, thousands of small wetlands and other special management areas. It also operates 69 national fish hatcheries, 64 fishery resource offices and 81 ecological services field stations. The agency enforces federal wildlife laws, administers the Endangered Species Act, manages migratory bird populations, restores nationally significant fisheries, conserves and restores wildlife habitat such as wetlands, and helps foreign governments with their conservation efforts. It also oversees the Federal Aid program that distributes hundreds of millions of dollars in excise taxes on fishing and hunting equipment to state fish and wildlife agencies.
