Seeing Wisconsin’s whitefish thrive in a tributary gave Matt Herbert and his team of researchers an idea.
Michigan's whitefish has been on the decline for a couple years. Whitefish used to spawn in rivers rather than lakes, said Herbert, senior conservation expert at The Nature Conservancy. The logging industry pushed them into lakes where they are currently struggling.
An experiment with the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources is trying to get whitefish to spawn in rivers again, he said.
“We’re happy with where we are right now," Herbert said. "It seems to me, as far as a first year goes, we haven’t had any disasters or anything.”
So far, Herbert said high water levels in the Carp River in Mackinac County are preventing researchers from analyzing if they were successful.
"When you got a net that’s only a meter wide and you’re trying to, trying to subsample the water going downstream to capture these little fish coming out—but you can only sample five minutes at a time—you know, it just creates more of a needle in a haystack," he said.
If researchers find a low egg mortality rate, he said it will be one way to measure success. But since the incubators didn’t wash up downstream, he said he’s hopeful.