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 Cretaceous–Holocene[1] 70.6–Present Ma  PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Actinopterygii
Order:	Acipenseriformes
Family:	Acipenseridae Bonaparte, 1831
Subfamilies
Acipenserinae Scaphirhynchinae 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