Photo source
Waterlife ~ A documentary film
This film concentrates on The Great Lakes of the USA and Canada. At the documentary website
Waterlife (see the very bottom for links to click), read the Director's Statement, About the Film, Resources/Community Action, dates and locations of screenings of the film and more.
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From the Waterlife website:
There are supposed to be 51 % boy babies to 49% girl babies...two girls to one boy are now being born....
Male frogs are losing their penis size and have been having ovaries.
There used to be fish, big fish, nice lake trout. Now, there is no fish.
When I was a kid, there was a lot of fisherman. It was right toward the middle of the 60's...that the lampreys wiped things out.
The following Lamprey information is from dnr.wi.gov/org
Evidence: Lampreys attach themselves to other fish and suck on their blood and body fluids. They leave rounded scars on the fish. When they first arrived on the Great Lakes scene, they killed large numbers of predatory sport fish. People began to notice the lack of large fish and the scars on others. Lampreys preyed on whitefish, lake trout and chub populations in lakes Superior and Michigan. The lamprey invasion made it hard on the people who fished the Great Lakes to make a living.
One sea lamprey can upset an ecosystem and food chain by eating an estimated 40 pounds of fish or more in its lifetime. Multiply that times 22,000 lamprey found in just one river and you have a lot of dead fish. Because of lower large fish populations, small fish, like the alewife, were able to increase in numbers. Alewives are also invader species which compete with native fish for food and habitat.
Invaded Territory: the Great Lakes and clear, cold streams throughout the Great Lakes region. Construction and improvements on the Erie and Welland Canal (between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie) around 1921 allowed sea lampreys to get through the canal to the next lake. Here's a list of their arrival dates in each lake:
- Lake Erie, 1921
- Lake Huron, 1932
- Lake Ontario, 1835
- Lake Michigan, 1936
- Lake Superior, 1938
Sea lampreys will lay over 100,000 eggs when spawning, much more than the native lamprey species.
Only when the last tree has died
and the last river been poisoned
and the last fish been caught
will we ever realize we cannot eat money.
Cree Native American Proverb