March 2024

Great Lakes Food Webs Science: GLFC Lake Committees

Great Lakes Science Blog / /

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.” – Henry David Thoreau
At the end of every March, the binational Great Lakes Fisheries Commission (GLFC) holds their public Lake Committee meetings for agencies to report out on the status of each lake. The GLFC was formed by a treaty signed in 1954 to regulate fishing and to fight the binational problem of Sea Lamprey. The location of the meetings move around between the US and Canada, and this past week, the meetings were held in Bay City, Michigan.

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Male Mysis shrimp

Great Lakes Food Webs Science: Mysid Shrimp

1 Comment / Great Lakes Science Blog / /

“Night, when words fade and things come alive” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

One of the species the Lower Trophic Food Webs lab is responsible for monitoring in the Great Lakes is Mysis diluviana (previously called M. relicta which is native to Northern Europe), the Opossum Shrimp (order Peracarida, family Mysidae). For a member of the zooplankton, this species is quite large (up to 25 mm in length), and their common name comes from the females having a prominent brood pouch (a marsupium) between their thoracic legs. The body is very shrimp-like, with long antennae, stalked compound eyes, a large thoracic carapace in front of a long abdomen and a clefted telson tail.

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Two scientists deploy a water quality instrument on a warm winter day. Water is ice free.

Great Lakes Food Webs Science: WinterGrab II 2024

Great Lakes Science Blog / /

Great Lakes Food Webs Science: WinterGrab II 2024
“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.” – John Steinbeck
This past week our lab once again sampled sites around Burlington Ontario in February for the WinterGrab II. In the Fall of 2021, a grass-roots group of US and Canadian Great Lakes scientists met to plan a set of standardized sampling for mid-winter across all of the Great Lakes.

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