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Dead Fish Good Sign For Anglers, Not Swimmers

It's not uncommon. This 2011 photo shows alewives washed ashore in Wisconsin. Photo: Chris Bentley/Flickr
It's not uncommon. This 2011 photo shows alewives washed ashore in Wisconsin. Photo: Chris Bentley/Flickr

Just in time for peak travel season dead fish have been washing ashore on parts of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

Kevin Skerl, the chief of natural resources at the lakeshore, says it’s not a big concern.

“This is something that happens every year. It’s just a question of if the conditions are such that the dead fish are showing up on beaches where people are,” says Skerl

Not From Here
These little, silver fish are called alewives. They are an invasive species, meaning they weren’t originally designed for the Great Lakes’ fresh water and cold temperatures.

Salmon Food
Alewife numbers exploded back in the 1960s.

“Beach owners would actually have to bring in bulldozers and front-end loaders to deal with it,” says Jay Wesley, who manages the southern Lake Michigan fishery for the state of Michigan. “Then salmon were introduced in the late 60s as an experiment to see if salmon would forage on alewives, and they did. And the salmon also created a world-class sport fishery in the Great Lakes.”

No one likes to see die-offs, but when big numbers of alewives wash into shore it’s a good sign salmon have food options. Alewife die-offs are somewhat inevitable, so they can be a visible sign that fish remain in the lake as food for salmon.

Why Die Offs?
Wesley says there are a number of factors that contribute to the occurrence. The fish can be stressed by a Great Lakes winter. There’s also the stress of spawning season.

“And then, we’ve had unusually cold water temperatures. Water temperatures are a good ten degrees below what they would normally be this time of year,” says Wesley.