Walleye Spawn in the Detroit River

Ann Arbor, MI — Walleye, a popular food fish, are reproducing in the Detroit River between Michigan and Ontario. Fertilized eggs of walleye were found there for the first time in 2004.

For years, people have wondered why millions of adult walleye migrate every spring from Lake Erie into the Detroit River. No one knew why the fish gathered there. Scientists guessed that walleye gathered in the river to spawn. To find out, they set egg mats on the river bottom near Belle Isle on April 1, 2004. Over the next six weeks, 136 fish eggs were collected on the mats and cultured in Ann Arbor. In May 2004, walleye fish larvae hatched from the eggs.

"This finding is good news," says Bruce Manny, a Fishery Biologist at the USGS Great Lakes Science Center. "Walleye larvae produced in the river are carried by water currents to western Lake Erie where they could bolster the walleye population produced on spawning reefs offshore. Should walleye fail to reproduce on those offshore reefs some year, the supply of larvae from the river that year could sustain fishing for walleye in the Detroit River and Lake Erie."

Original Publication Information

Results of this study, "First Evidence of Egg Deposition by Walleye (Sander vitreus) in the Detroit River," are reported by Bruce A. Manny, Gregory W. Kennedy, Jeffrey D. Allen and John R. P. French, III in the latest issue (Volume 33, No. 2, pp. 512-516) of the Journal of Great Lakes Research, published by the International Association for Great Lakes Research, 2007.

Contacts

For more information about the study, contact Bruce Manny, USGS Great Lakes Science Center, 1451 Green Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48105; bmanny@usgs.gov, (734) 214-7255.

For information about the Journal of Great Lakes Research, contact Marlene Evans, Editor, National Water Research Institute, 11 Innovation Boulevard, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 3H5, Canada; editor@iaglr.org; (608) 692-1076.

Links

Since 1967, IAGLR has served as the focal point for compiling and disseminating multidisciplinary knowledge on North America's Laurentian Great Lakes and other large lakes of the world and their watersheds. In part, IAGLR communicates this knowledge through publication of the Journal of Great Lakes Research, available to members in print and electronic form. A searchable archive of the journal is available online and includes the abstracts of articles from the journal's inception in 1975 through the most recent issue. In addition, complete articles are available to members who have signed up for an electronic subscription.