THESSALON RIVER AND BRIDGELAND CREEK SEA LAMPREY TRAPPING CONTRACT

BACKGROUND: DFO has played a vital role in the sea lamprey control program since 1955. It is a binational program that is coordinated by the Great Lakes Fishery Commission (GLFC) and serves to protect the fisheries of the Great Lakes, which have an estimated economic benefit of $7 billion annually. Control is achieved primarily by extensive treatment of streams to eliminate larval sea lampreys. To measure how effective the control program is each year, DFO estimates the populations of adult sea lamprey in each lake on an annual basis. This is done by using traps to estimate populations in streams and then extrapolating to the entire lake. The results help to direct sea lamprey management.

DFO has been collecting adult sea lamprey from the Thessalon River and its major tributary Bridgeland Creek since the 1950s, as part of a Lake Huron network of traps intended to monitor sea lamprey populations. Initially carried out with mechanical and electrical weirs, collecting at the main Thessalon River in Rydal Bank is now done with portable traps. A flow-through barrier and permanent trap was constructed on Bridgeland Creek, below the Little Rapids falls, for the 1999 trapping season.

OBJECTIVE: Operate two portable sea lamprey traps at Thessalon River in Rydal Bank, ON and one permanent trap incorporated into the flow through sea lamprey barrier, and one portable trap installed 50 metres downstream of the flow through barrier as part of a research project on Bridgeland Creek in Little Rapids, ON for the duration of the 2014 sea lamprey spawning migration. Conduct mark and release studies with the sea lamprey captured, and collect and supply raw data to be used to generate a population estimate in this stream. This population estimate will be used along with that of other streams to estimate the population in all of Lake Huron.