Erin Emington, a biological science aide for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, works on spreading the lampricide Bayluscide at the Dead River in Marquette Wednesday. A USFWS crew was on the river for an evaluation survey of the invasive sea lamprey. (Journal photo by Christie Bleck)

MARQUETTE — A little chemistry mixed with Dead River habitat could go a long way into the never-ending battle against the invasive sea lamprey.

A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service assessment crew has been surveying streams to find lampreys, with those streams to include the Dead River as well as the Carp River, Harlow Creek, and Garlic and Little Garlic rivers in Marquette County.

On Wednesday, a crew put boats in the water to focus on the Dead River, moving upstream from where it flows into Lake Superior by Lakeshore Boulevard.

USFWS biologist Becca Philipps, who was part of the Dead River crew, said its work involved evaluation surveys.

“What’s the population of larval sea lamprey in the Dead River at this time?” Philipps said.

That’s what the staff wanted to find out.

The crew was to use canoes and boats, with the larger craft used to get into narrower sections of the river, she said.

“Lake Superior has a fairly large population of sea lamprey,” Philipps said. “It’s over the targets that we want. We have a target set for each Great Lake, and all of them are down except for Lake Superior.”

Why that trend?

“We’re working on it,” Philipps said.

According to the USFWS, the information gathered from the surveys will be used to determine the need for lamprey control, and a first step in the control of sea lampreys is to survey Great Lakes tributary streams to determine the presence of lamprey larvae.

Sea lampreys invaded the Great Lakes during the 1920s and have been a permanent — and unfortunately, destructive — element of the fishery ever since.

The species’ parasitic nature is problematic to other fish, with lampreys attaching to them with their suction cup mouths, rasping a hole through the fishes’ scales and skin, and then feeding on blood and body fluids. The average sea lamprey will destroy up to 40 pounds of fish during the parasitic phase.

Lamprey larvae hatch from eggs laid by adults in gravel nests and drift into silty bottom areas. Here they burrow and live for several years. Also, larvae sometimes drift out of streams and settle in the immediate offshore areas near stream mouths.

Surveys can be useful in lamprey control, since failing to detect and subsequently eliminate larvae allows the lampreys to transform into parasitic adults and kill Great Lakes fish.

Fish biologists and technicians conduct surveys for sea lamprey larvae in hundreds of Great Lakes streams each year. Most surveys are conducted by electrofishing, but in deep water, crews use Bayluscide 3.2 percent granular sea lamprey larvicide, a lampricide approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Health Canada Pest Management Regulatory Agency. This lampricide is specially formulated onto sand granules and covered with a time-release coating.

The formulation is sprayed over a measured surface area of water where it sinks to the bottom, rapidly dissolves and causes the larval lampreys to leave their burrows and swim to the surface where they are collected.

That was the case during Wednesday’s Dead River activity, with Philipps noting the crew was using the Bayluscide in small amounts for the survey.

“Typically, we do surveys with backpack shockers,” Philipps said. “We run electricity in the sediment. Basically, it annoys them enough to come out of the sediment.”

During the usual process, crew members scoop out the lampreys with paddles, put them in a bucket and then determine whether the lampreys are native or non-native.

“That’s how we get our population estimates,” Philipps said. “But in this case, it’s a big, deep system.”

That makes it difficult to get the electricity in the sediment, unless they want to use scuba gear. Philipps even acknowledged they can’t wade if the water’s deeper than 3 feet.

So, Bayluscide, which she said “agitates” the lampreys, was used Wednesday.

“It affects their ability to get oxygen, so then they start coming up to the surface,” Philipps said.

The USFWS said the EPA and the Health Canada Pest Management Regulatory Agency have reviewed human health and environmental safety data for the lampricides, and in 2003 concluded that Bayluscide poses no unreasonable risk to the general population and the environment when applied at concentrations necessary to detect larval sea lampreys. Applications are conducted in accordance with state of Michigan permits.

With the waiting time depending on water’s depth and temperature, the crew then can check out the lampreys, Philipps said.

The non-native lampreys are killed afterward.

“If they’re native, we put them back,” Philipps said. “They don’t necessarily all survive. They kind of become good bait at that point.”

The crew, of course, has to be careful when applying the Bayluscide.

One of the members getting up close and personal with the lampricide Wednesday was Erin Emington, a biological science aide working for the USFWS for the summer.

She had to be pretty much covered from head to toe with personal protection equipment when working with the substance.

“This is a respirator,” Emington said of her head gear. “It’s part of the PPE required to spread the chemical.”

Robert Frank, supervising fish biologist and Larval Assessment Team leader, said crews monitor the plots for an hour after the Bayluscide is applied.

The crew had planned Wednesday surveys of four different plots on a quarter-mile stretch of the Dead River, he said.

He said the USFWS ranks Great Lakes streams for a year based on the surveys.

“The ones that come out the lowest cost to treat come to the top of the list, so some of the Lake Superior ones are more costly to treat,” Frank said.

Treatment is necessary.

“If we would stop our efforts, the population would rebound and we’d be stuck just like the ’50s when the fishery was decimated by sea lampreys,” Frank said.

The sea lamprey control program is formulated and implemented by the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, in partnership with the USFWS, Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Geological Survey.

The commission initiated chemical control of sea lampreys in 1958, according to the USFWS. Since that time the program has contributed to the maintenance of the $7 billion Great Lakes sport and commercial fisheries.

To support the continued safe use of lampricides, the commission recently conducted a series of studies at a total cost of $6 million to assess the effects of the lampricides on human health and the environment.

The commission also has implemented a research program to develop alternative control techniques and is developing a strategy to increase the number of barriers on sea lamprey-producing streams, and is conducting research into barrier design, traps, attractants and biological control.

Christie Bleck can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250. Her email address is cbleck@miningjournal.net.