{"id":8380,"date":"2021-04-01T09:36:11","date_gmt":"2021-04-01T13:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=8380"},"modified":"2021-04-15T06:43:39","modified_gmt":"2021-04-15T10:43:39","slug":"episode-298-the-old-ice-house-port-credit-fishery-and-a-quote-by-alvert-einsein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=8380","title":{"rendered":"EPISODE 298 THE OLD ICE HOUSE…PORT CREDIT FISHERY….AND A QUOTE BY ALVERT EINSEIN"},"content":{"rendered":"
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EPISODE 299    THE GREAT LAKES FISHERY\u2026and a  quote by ALBERT EINSTEIN<\/div>\n

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alan skeoch<\/div>\n
March 2021<\/div>\n

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Where did tis fish come from?  <\/div>\n

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

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Look at the mouth of this salmon.  Mean mouth.  This  is a top predator<\/div>\n
feeding on something in Lake Ontario waters.  <\/div>\n

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Change is the  only sure  thing in life. Everything else cannot be  depended upon.<\/div>\n
While these comments seem overblown when applied to the Great Lakes Fishery<\/div>\n
just a casual  look seems to confirm that these huge bodies  of water\u2026the largest<\/div>\n
containers of fresh  water in the world\u2026have undergone radical change in the short<\/div>\n
time we human beings have had a chance to tinker with the water.  We, you and I, have tinkered<\/div>\n
too much  with<\/div>\n
the fish populations.  Early settlers believed Great Lakes  fish were inexhaustible.<\/div>\n

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

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Snaps  a picture then carefully slide the ugly monster back into the lake.<\/div>\n
\u201cCatch  snd  Release \u201c fishermen.  Sport fishermen like  Andrew motor their way out<\/div>\n
of Port credit harbour in great numbers.  A Trawler fleet is neatly tied up along<\/div>\n
the west bank of the Credit River renting space on board for those who will never<\/div>\n
have money to buy a boat themselves.  Some tiny outboard motor fishermen <\/div>\n
work their way to the rising grounds as well. <\/div>\n

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 \u201cSome of these small boats<\/div>\n
break down or run out of gas and have to towed back  to the harbour.  I\u2019ve done<\/div>\n
that too many times.  Lose patience especially if a fishing boat has run out of gas.<\/div>\n
Takes ages to town a boat back to safety.  Means  I cannot fish as much I\\as  I would<\/div>\n
like.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cAndrew, are there any commercial fishermen around?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cNever met one.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cPort Credit once  harboured a whole fleet of fish boats.  Are<\/div>\n
you sure you have never seen one?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cWhat do  their boats look like?<\/div>\n
\u201cLike a huge jelly bean with a flap like gate on the side.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cJelly bean?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cYes\u2026the commercial fishing fleet looked like a bag of white jelly beans<\/div>\n
as they motored out to the fishing grounds in Lake Ontario.  It was a<\/div>\n
good business that supported many of the people living in Port Credit<\/div>\n
through the 10th and 20th centuries.  But it is gone today.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cWhat happened>\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cAnswering that question is very difficult\u2026super complicated.  Yet simple<\/div>\n
to understand.  Too many people in the 19th and early 20th century were commercial<\/div>\n
fishermen and there were precious few regulations.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cCan you tell me why in short form.  I do not have time to listen to a long<\/div>\n
lecture.\u201d<\/div>\n

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LAKE STURGEON\u2026A SAD STORY<\/div>\n

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\u201cOne illustration.  A fish that nobody seemed to want.  The lake sturgeon.  An ancient fish that lived<\/div>\n
a long life under normal  circumstances.  The most ancient of the fish in the Great lakes, And also one<\/div>\n
of the largest. Some sturgeon were ten feet long and weighed up to 190 kilograms.  And there were lots<\/div>\n
of them.   Five million pounds of sturgeon were caught in Lake Erie in a single ear.   That is one great <\/div>\n
load of fish.   The sturgeon was considered a pest fish and there was no market for their meat.  But they<\/div>\n
were caught in large numbers just to try and clear them out of Lake  Erie.  What happened to them once caught?\\<\/div>\n
GOOd question with a terrible answer.  Some were dried and  stacked  as firewood for the steamships.<\/div>\n
Others were fed to pigs\u2026.and  others were simply used as fertilizer.  Millions of Sturgeon<\/div>\n
were taken in the 19th century.  By 1900 they were extinct except for tiny populations in the Upper Great Lakes.<\/div>\n
Killing big Lake Sturgeon for no good reason endangered the survival the species.   It took 14 to 33 years<\/div>\n
for a female Lake Sturgeon to reach sexual maturity,  Males took from 12 to 17 years.  They were not <\/div>\n
wildly sexual.  Females only spawn once  every three to seven years.  Males are only interested in sex every<\/div>\n
from one to four years.   Once fertilized   a female Lake Sturgeon can lay from 4,000 to 7,000 eggs for every<\/div>\n
point of the weight  of females.  These old ladies of the lakes made up for lost time big time.  But not after<\/div>\n
we humans got here.<\/div>\n

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Giant sturgeon caught in Fraser River, B.C.  Caught and released by Michael Snell.<\/div>\n

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Once  the biggest and oldest Lake Sturgeon were stacked as cordwood<\/div>\n
or ground  up as fertilizer the survival of Lake Sturgeon was doomed.<\/div>\n

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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<\/div>\n
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).<\/div>\n
Overharvestng  for caviar today has put sturgeon on the edge of extinction.<\/div>\n

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Sturgeon
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Temporal range: Upper Cretaceous<\/a>–Holocene<\/a>[1]<\/a><\/sup> <\/span>70.6\u2013Present Ma<\/a><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n
\"Sturgeon.jpg\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Scientific classification<\/a>\"e\"<\/a><\/span><\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
Kingdom:<\/td>\nAnimalia<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Phylum:<\/td>\nChordata<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Class:<\/td>\nActinopterygii<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Order:<\/td>\nAcipenseriformes<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Family:<\/td>\nAcipenseridae<\/a>
Bonaparte<\/a>, 1831<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Subfamilies<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
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