Scientists seek true-blue blue pike

 

Blue Pike
Buffalo News

Scientists
seek true-blue blue pike
By
Mike Vogel
Buffalo News Environmental Reporter

The Buffalo News
October 28, 1996
Copies of this article can be purchased from the Buffalo News Library
Go Here; http://www.buffalonews.com/newslibrary/searchfeepopup.htm

 

Maybe
extinction isn’t forever. Maybe something can be brought back from the dead.
Lake Erie biologists may on the verge of doing just that, as an effort — part
science and part detective story — unfolds in Amherst. And Western New Yorkers
could get a real bonus in the potential return of a vanished species that once
was everyone’s Friday night fish fry, a lip-smacking staple just a generation
ago. The blue pike, U.S. Fish and Wildlife experts are beginning to believe,
might not have gone the way of the dodo after all.

Officially declared extinct in 1975, the fish that once accounted for the lion’s
share of commercial catches in Lake Erie has become the focus of intense
analysis and increased speculation that some stocks of the species may survive
in northern Canadian lakes. “That is not farfetched,” insisted
Dieter Busch
, head of the service’s Amherst-based Lower Great lakes Fishery
Resources Office. “I would say it’s a much better chance than buying a
lottery ticket,” he added. “Overall, given the behavior of society in
the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, when they moved fish around a lot, it’s quite
probable.” If blue pike can be identified positively, cultivated and
restocked in Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, it could provide a huge boon for both
sport and commercial fishing. No fish has yet moved into the ecological niche
once occupied by the blues, which are smaller — and old-timers say tastier —
than the popular yellow pike, or walleye. “The blue pike is a cousin to the
walleye, as is the sauger,” Busch said. “They’re all part of the perch
family.”

Walleye have become one of the most popular sport fish in this end of the lake,
but only by default. The species prefer the warmer, shallower waters of the
western end of the lake and not the deep cold waters of the eastern basin. The
smaller blues used to fill the nets of fishermen before a marked decline blamed
on overfishing, habitat destruction and pollution.

Busch was among the fisheries biologists working on “dead” Lake Erie
in the 1960s, when the Endangered Species Act was passed. The focus then was on
walleye stocks, he recalls. Although scientists prepared a “blue pike
recovery plan,” they couldn’t find any fish to apply it to. A few grayish
walleye went into a holding tank in Dunkirk and then on to university analysis
in Ohio. but they weren’t positively identified as blue pike. “The best we
could do was declare them ‘blue pike suspects,” Busch said.

Blues were declared dead, disappearing from Lake Erie, Lake Ontario and the
Niagara River as major biological changes swept the polluted Great Lakes. A ban
on phosphorus-based detergents helped revive the lakes, and ocean salmon were
stocked to replace depleted native species. Local anglers have been hoping to
develop a walleye fishery here that rivals the abundance of the western basin.
That’s not likely, Busch and other biologists believe. While the lake now has
some walleye that “don’t act like walleye” and dive deep like the
blues once did in pursuit of smelt, the population now seems stable — a hint
that it has reached the carrying capacity of this basin. For that reason, many
biologists have opposed pleas for a walleye hatchery at Dunkirk, and Busch
thinks a blue pike hatchery there might make much more sense.

First, though, they have to find some verified, true-blue blue pike. That’s
where the detective work comes in. In the I960s biologist had assumed blues and
yellows were pretty much alike, and that maybe the blue was only a different
color phase of the yellow. But Busch found a 1940s report from the University of
Rochester – still the best study of blues – that indicted the smaller pike was a
cold-water species like the lake trout, not a lover of the shallows like the
walleyes.

Then there were the tales told by fishermen, and even the Canadian fishing camp
brochures that promised “both yellows and blues!” Busch began to
wonder whether more than color variations were at work. Possibly, he concluded,
blue pike fans trucked fish to some northern Canadian lakes for their own sport
in the ’30s and 40s. and some may survive. “A lot of rumors have existed,
for a long period of time,” Busch said. “We got maybe 6 to 10 calls a
year, from people who have been to Canada, asking us if these are blue pike or
blue walleye.” Then a videotape surfaced, showing anglers with both blue
and yellow-tinged pike from the same lake — a clue that local conditions
weren’t merely producing blue walleyes, but that both species might still
co-exist.

Busch put out the word that the wildlife service was interested, and soon
“we were actually being inundated with samples, from skin and scales to
even whole fish,” he. said. Unfortunately, most still are classed as
probable blue-colored walleyes – “blue pike suspects,” in biologists’
terms.

Sophisticated DNA testing might hold the answers, by providing genetic
“fingerprints” for the species. But while getting DNA samples from
modern fish is easy, few historical examples are available for comparison.
“We have pickled fish at various locations, but the formaldehyde destroys
structure, so they can’t be used,” Busch said. “Fortunately, though,
agencies. have samples from the past of scales taken to determine aging — and
there would have been DNA in the mucous on the scales.” At some university
labs, he added, “they’re looking at dried mucous on the scales and the
envelopes” to see if thy can find the blue pike genetic code.

Analysis of old mounted trophy fish and of scrap book photographs also has
revealed another difference between the fish, and one that might prove useful on
the scene. The deeper-diving blue have eyes that are even larger than those of
the walleyes, and the service has developed drawings that can serve as a field
guide. “What would be really helpful is if the fishing public took copies
of these drawings with them on their field trips to Canada;” he said.

Busch isn’t sure whether the strategy might produce, some day, a captured Adam
and Eve blue pike couple that could be used to restore a vanished fishery.
“If there are none left, OK,” he said. “If the answer is no, then
at least we’ve laid it to rest. “If it’s yes, there will be major
excitement.”

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