Bringing Back The Giants

So does all this vindicate Wisconsin trout manager Dennis Pratt and his colleagues who don't even like to use the word "coaster" and who have been criticized by a host of fisheries professionals (including salmonid guru Dr. Robert Behnke) for arguing that, in their opinion at least, "a brook trout is a brook trout?" In a way it does-if, as I suspect, what they meant to say is "all brook trout with access to Lake Superior are probably potential coasters."

Still, each of the recognized coaster strains has distinctive genetic markers that allow managers to ID them from tissue samples. And there are measurable genetic differences between the coasters of the Salmon Trout River and resident brook trout farther upstream. Whether or not there's a genetic trigger to migratory behavior is not known. And while D'Amelio's research was hugely important in that it showed the link between stream and lake habitat, she has never pretended that it tells us anything about possible genetic triggers or even genetic differences between coasters and resident brookies. After all, if the trout she sampled in the tribs were the progeny of coasters, you'd expect them to share DNA.

Pratt makes an excellent point when he observes that Wisconsin's brook trout habitat has been so grievously damaged by logging, agriculture and development that there may no longer be sufficient competition to force trout out into the lake or sufficient food base for them to grow large enough to want to move out into the lake; and that, in any case, most of the wild trout are far upstream because the low-gradient river mouths are clogged with silt and sand. "We have extremely good groundwater flow," he told me, "with some streams influenced all the way to the lakeshore. But flow and velocity are so great that survival of eggs and fry is poor. Most Minnesota brook trout populations, on the other hand, are in fairly close association with the shoreline because of barrier falls."

To its credit Wisconsin is doing something about its habitat problem. It is controlling beavers, smoothing banks to stop sloughing, engineering logjams, flushing sand and silt off gravel by removing tag alder and woody debris, then letting the systems recover on their own (a process which, once the gravel is re-exposed, includes natural accumulation of woody debris).

Some of the most promising work is occurring on Whittlesey Creek, Graveyard Creek, and the Bark River-all subject to no-kill regs. In cooperation with the Fish and Wildlife Service, Whittlesey is being stocked with both strains of Isle Royale coasters. Seventy-six adults, about a third of them radio-tagged, were released in August 2003. Fertilized eggs and yearlings are scheduled in even-numbered years, fry in odd-numbered years. There will be four more years of stocking, then assessments for about five years. Graveyard Creek and the Bark River aren't being stocked in the hope that their native fish will become coasters.

In Michigan the Upper Peninsula's only viable coaster producer, the Salmon Trout River, is threatened by a massive metallic sulfide mine proposed by Kennecott Minerals Corporation. No mineral extraction is nastier: Target metals are bound in ores along with sulfur, and when the ore is removed and exposed to air and water it produces sulfuric acid and heavy metals, both of which can foul surface and ground water. Partly due to pollution from Kennecott's sulfide mine in Flambeau, Wisconsin, that state has essentially banned sulfide mining. Michigan has done about all it can by enacting a decent law, and at this writing a working group comprised of all interests is hashing out specific regulations. But regulations are only as good as enforcement; and there are few places in the nation where mining companies are much bothered by strict enforcement. Trout Unlimited is particularly worried about the footprint. "For us the biggest concern is the relatively remote location of the mine means that all the ore has to be hauled by truck," says Rich Bowman, director of the Michigan TU Council. "You're talking 40 trucks per day moving 30 miles from the site to the railhead."

In cooperation with the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Michigan DNR had been stocking Tobin Harbor coasters in three streams in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. But the Park Service has wisely nixed the program because researchers using radio tags have found that the streams are producing little coasters of their own. Not messing with native genes is just common sense; and, what's more, the agency is mandated to "let natural processes proceed unimpeded within reason." Although spawning runs have yet to be seen, coaster stocking continues on the Keweenaw Peninsula in the Gratiot and Little Carp rivers.

Minnesota managers, who see silvery brookies in the mouths of essentially fishless tribs at spawning time, have shied away from stocking because they want to preserve the genes of the coasters they obviously have. "Our goal is to see if we can rehabilitate some of our own stocks with the restrictive regulation," comments Don Schreiner, the state DNR's Lake Superior fisheries supervisor. "Grand Portage [Ojibwa tribe] has been stocking for 10 years like there's no tomorrow. So we see no reason to reinvent the wheel. Let's watch them and see how it works. They do get fish to return, but what you want is to get those fish to reproduce, then discontinue stocking. Grand Portage hasn't made that leap yet, hasn't documented reproduction. They do see some young of the year, but that doesn't mean they came from the stocked fish." Schreiner and his colleagues would like to see that tribe and others make better efforts at assessment.

The one major disappointment I had in these most recent conversations with my coaster contacts was learning that the stocking of splake (artificially concocted lake trout-brookie hybrids) is still going hot and heavy in Wisconsin and Michigan. (Minnesota and Ontario mess around with these Frankenstein fish on inland lakes but have never polluted Lake Superior with them.) In 2001, when I suggested to Michigan DNR's Lake Superior Basin coordinator Steve Scott that his agency drop its Lake Superior splake program, he reported that he and his colleagues saw an opportunity to "replace splake with planted coasters." At that time the DNR was stocking about 80,000 splake a year. Now it stocks between 100,000 and 150,000. Wisconsin stocks about 60,000 (down from about 180,000 five years ago, but mostly because there was poor survival in Chequamegon Bay).

Splake were supposed to have been sterile; but, like the monsters of "Jurassic Park," they've found a way to reproduce. And in some parts of Lake Superior they're apparently mixing their warped genes with those of lake trout and brook trout. Not only do they compete with brook trout, they eat them-so voraciously, in fact, that managers actually use splake to control stunting when brookies become superabundant in Western lakes. Finally, the average angler can't tell the difference between a splake and a coaster. A confirmed Minnesota state record brook trout turned out to be a splake after someone decided to thaw it out and perform an autopsy. And in a recent court case a Michigan angler contested a citation he'd received for illegal possession of a coaster, contending that any reasonable person would have thought it was a splake. The judge agreed.