EPISODE 298 THE OLD ICE HOUSE…PORT CREDIT FISHERY….AND A QUOTE BY ALVERT EINSEIN

EPISODE 299    THE GREAT LAKES FISHERY…and a  quote by ALBERT EINSTEIN

alan skeoch
March 2021


Where did tis fish come from?  


Andrew, Jackson and Olivia are holding large Coho salmon caught in the spring
of 2021 or the fall of 2020 about two kilometres from Port Credit.

Look at the mouth of this salmon.  Mean mouth.  This  is a top predator
feeding on something in Lake Ontario waters.  


Change is the  only sure  thing in life. Everything else cannot be  depended upon.
While these comments seem overblown when applied to the Great Lakes Fishery
just a casual  look seems to confirm that these huge bodies  of water…the largest
containers of fresh  water in the world…have undergone radical change in the short
time we human beings have had a chance to tinker with the water.  We, you and I, have tinkered
too much  with
the fish populations.  Early settlers believed Great Lakes  fish were inexhaustible.

I am not a fisherman.  One of our two sons, however, is an avid 
fisherman.  He even bought a large power  launch to get him out
to the prime fishing ground just a  mile or so off the Port Credit coast of Lake
Ontario.   He drops his spinners down a hundred feet or so and often hauls in
huge 30 pound Coho salmon.   Fish  so big even Andrew has trouble holding
some of them up for photographic  proof that these creatures who race up
the rest coast rivers  of  North America have become established in the Great Lakes.

Snaps  a picture then carefully slide the ugly monster back into the lake.
“Catch  snd  Release “ fishermen.  Sport fishermen like  Andrew motor their way out
of Port credit harbour in great numbers.  A Trawler fleet is neatly tied up along
the west bank of the Credit River renting space on board for those who will never
have money to buy a boat themselves.  Some tiny outboard motor fishermen 
work their way to the rising grounds as well. 

 “Some of these small boats
break down or run out of gas and have to towed back  to the harbour.  I’ve done
that too many times.  Lose patience especially if a fishing boat has run out of gas.
Takes ages to town a boat back to safety.  Means  I cannot fish as much I\as  I would
like.”
“Andrew, are there any commercial fishermen around?”
“Never met one.”
“Port Credit once  harboured a whole fleet of fish boats.  Are
you sure you have never seen one?”
“What do  their boats look like?
“Like a huge jelly bean with a flap like gate on the side.”
“Jelly bean?”
“Yes…the commercial fishing fleet looked like a bag of white jelly beans
as they motored out to the fishing grounds in Lake Ontario.  It was a
good business that supported many of the people living in Port Credit
through the 10th and 20th centuries.  But it is gone today.”
“What happened>”
“Answering that question is very difficult…super complicated.  Yet simple
to understand.  Too many people in the 19th and early 20th century were commercial
fishermen and there were precious few regulations.”
“Can you tell me why in short form.  I do not have time to listen to a long
lecture.”



LAKE STURGEON…A SAD STORY

“One illustration.  A fish that nobody seemed to want.  The lake sturgeon.  An ancient fish that lived
a long life under normal  circumstances.  The most ancient of the fish in the Great lakes, And also one
of the largest. Some sturgeon were ten feet long and weighed up to 190 kilograms.  And there were lots
of them.   Five million pounds of sturgeon were caught in Lake Erie in a single ear.   That is one great 
load of fish.   The sturgeon was considered a pest fish and there was no market for their meat.  But they
were caught in large numbers just to try and clear them out of Lake  Erie.  What happened to them once caught?\
GOOd question with a terrible answer.  Some were dried and  stacked  as firewood for the steamships.
Others were fed to pigs….and  others were simply used as fertilizer.  Millions of Sturgeon
were taken in the 19th century.  By 1900 they were extinct except for tiny populations in the Upper Great Lakes.
Killing big Lake Sturgeon for no good reason endangered the survival the species.   It took 14 to 33 years
for a female Lake Sturgeon to reach sexual maturity,  Males took from 12 to 17 years.  They were not 
wildly sexual.  Females only spawn once  every three to seven years.  Males are only interested in sex every
from one to four years.   Once fertilized   a female Lake Sturgeon can lay from 4,000 to 7,000 eggs for every
point of the weight  of females.  These old ladies of the lakes made up for lost time big time.  But not after
we humans got here.

Giant sturgeon caught in Fraser River, B.C.  Caught and released by Michael Snell.

Once  the biggest and oldest Lake Sturgeon were stacked as cordwood
or ground  up as fertilizer the survival of Lake Sturgeon was doomed.

NOTE:  THERE ARE 27 SPECIES OF STURGEON (ACIPENSERIDAE) which  can be traced back in fossils to the Late Cretaceous – and even more ancient in the Triassic period  some
245 million years ago.  Found in Eurasia and North  America.  The largest ever found was in the Volga estuary in 1827 which was 24 feet long, and wished 2,571 kilograms (3,463 pounds).
Overharvestng  for caviar today has put sturgeon on the edge of extinction.

Sturgeon

Temporal range: Upper CretaceousHolocene[1] 70.6–Present Ma 

Sturgeon.jpg
Scientific classificatione
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Acipenseriformes
Family: Acipenseridae
Bonaparte, 1831
Subfamilies
See text for genera and species.

So most Canadians  will never see a Lake Sturgeon.  

The sad tale of the Lake Sturgeon is only one of the tragic events in the aquatic history of the Great Lakes.  More are coming.


A PUZZLE THAT YOU CAN SOLVE…OR WAIT FOR ME TO SOLVE FOR YOU

Here is  a puzzle.   Perhaps you can answer.  Take a look at those salmon that Andrew and Jackson
are holding.  They were caught tis year…1021.   And they were not far off the coast of Port Credit.
But they are Coho salmon…a Pacific Ocean  fish that breeds in the rivers  of  the North American west
coast.   What are they doing in the Great Lakes?  They should not be here?   How did they get here?
In the next few Episodes I can answer that question and in the process raise a lot of other questions
whose answers  may startle you.

But first let me take you back to an historic event on Feb. 29, 2020 at the Stonehooker Brewery
in Port Credit.  The day before Covid 19 changed our world.

HOW  DID SKEOCH GET INTERESTED IN THE WATERS OF THE GREAT LAKES?



On February 29, 2020, I was asked to give a lecture on the Great Lakes Water to 100 dinner guests
at the Stonehooker Brewery in Port Credit.   I prepared the lecture for two months and figured the audience
would only be able to listen to 45 minutes  at the most.  Part of  our time at the Stonehooker Brewery
would be spent tasting beer and socializing.  Given a choice which would you prefer listening or drinking?

Marjorie Skeoch approached the lectern.  She was nervous but well prepared to introduce the speaker (her
husband).  She opened her speech with a quotation from Albert Einstein.   The quotation was found
on a wine bottle table from the Niagara district.

“Good evening, before I introduce Alan let me give you something to think about…

“THE MIND THAT OPENS TO A NEW IDEA NEVER RETURNS TO ITS  ORIGINAL  SIZE”
   (ALBERT EINSTEIN, as quoted  on the wine called OPEN, a Niagara Merlot)


When  MARJORIE gave her 20.5 minute introduction to her husband as speaker…she closed her eyes  and pushed
that wine bottle off the lectern to smash on the cement floor below.  She knew how to get attention.


Unfortunately or fortunately I never gave the lecture I had planned.  Marjorie, my wife, stole the
show because she was charged with the job of introducing the guest speaker…i.e. her husband.
Normal introductions might take 3 to 4 minutes  at the outset.  Marjorie took 20.5 minutes, “And  even then
I only got as far as 1995”.   She was great.  Made us laugh and cry. She had practiced her speech  for
two months as well.   She  got some information from the label on a wine bottle.  She took the bottle
to the lecture…read the label not attributed to Albert Einstein…and then dropped the bottle to the
cement floor of the brewery.   Shattered.   One member, Shaymus Stokes, jumped up to gather
the glass shards at Marjorie’s feet.  Was she upset?  Not in the least.  She continued to speak
about her husband in spite of the fact that her son Andrew kept tapping his watch along with other
gestures.  

So by the time I got to the lectern, I was an anticlimax.   So the speech wa never given.

Then one day later, March 1, 2020, we all became aware that millions of creatures so small
that they were invisible were sickening and killing people around the world.  Covid 19 took
centre stage.   My lecture that was never given was the last lecture in Port Credit.
We have been in lockdown  ever since.

alan skeoch
April 1, 2021


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