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Round goby were known to be very aggressive and had successfully expanded their range when accidentally introduced into river systems in Europe. “The round goby was a different story,” Jude said. (Photo Credit: Greg Lashbrook/PolkaDot Perch) Smith identified this one as a round goby.Ī round goby eats a zebra mussel. And I thought well, that’s not a tubenose goby.” Jude brought the fish back and once again took it to Smith. “I went into his house and down in the basement, and here’s this giant fish. Still, just to be thorough, Jude took the ferry to Canada. Jude had already received numerous calls reporting additional sightings, but so far they had all turned out to be mottled sculpin, a native species. They were keeping it alive in a goldfish bowl. The man said that his daughter had caught a fish that looked a little bit like the fish in the newspaper.
#UNDER OBSERVATION MY FIRST LOVE FREE#
“Not long after the Free Press article I got a call from a Canadian,” Jude recalled. But the tubenose find still made the local newspaper. “We figured it probably wasn’t going to have much of an impact on the Great Lakes fish populations,” Jude said. Although it was an invasive, an intensive literature review satisfied the researchers that the tubenose did not pose a serious threat. Smith quickly identified it as a tubenose goby.
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Jude took the fish to his colleague Jerry Smith at the University of Michigan Fish Museum. His initial thought was that it was “a darter of some kind.” Except darters don’t have fused pelvic fins and this fish did. “I picked this one up and I thought, ‘I haven’t seen anything like this before,’” Jude said, while reminiscing about the discovery. For days, the researchers laboriously sorted through hundreds of dead fish carcasses to identify all the impacted species. His research team was monitoring impingement, which is a fancy way of referring to all the fish caught and killed by the power plant’s water-intake filtering system. Just a few weeks later, David Jude, a research scientist at the University of Michigan School of Environment and Sustainability, was doing a study at the Belle River Power Plant. Where exactly had we seen it? Our answer, on the river bottom in 10 feet of water, a mile upstream of the plant, was not what he wanted to hear.īut without the actual fish, a photo or even some shaky video, it was impossible to know for sure what we saw. We noted the concern in his voice as he pressed us for details. We called and asked Gary which fish was about 6 inches long with a round head, a light grey body and a big black dot on its dorsal fin. We met and become friends with Gary Longton, a research biologist working at the Detroit Edison Belle River power generating station, when we were working there as commercial divers. Curiosity had us calling one of our favorite fish experts. He had never seen one before.īack home, we looked through all our Great Lakes’ fish identification books but didn’t find anything that matched what we saw. I remember asking him what fish had the big black dot on its dorsal fin and was shocked when he said he didn’t know. I was still a newbie at the time, so after each dive Greg would tell me the names of all the fish we saw. Greg and I were diving behind my parent’s house just as we had dozens of times before. And I’ll never forget the night dive where I had my first and, so far, only American eel sighting.Īnd then there was the dive when the Great Lakes changed forever. I can clearly recall the moment and know the exact spot on my right calf where a male sturgeon struck me during a spawning run. Clair County Sherriff Department Dive Rescue and Recovery team. Clair River under my family’s dock, or the first time I looked for a drowning victim as a member of the St. I’ll never forget my first open water dive in the St. Some dives are so pivotal that they permanently fuse themselves into my memory bank. Publishing the author’s views and assertions does not represent endorsement by Great Lakes Now or Detroit Public Television. I Speak for the Fish is a new monthly column written by Great Lakes Now Contributor Kathy Johnson, coming out the third Monday of each month.