The Great Lake Sturgeon

The Lake Sturgeon as Survivor and Integrative Indicator of Changes in Stressed Aquatic Systems in the Laurentian Basin

n 27 HENRY A. REGIER, ROBERT M. HUGHES, AND JOHN E. GANNON The Lake Sturgeon as Survivor and Integrative Indicator of Changes in Stressed Aquatic Systems in the Laurentian Basin Our Laurentian Basin is ancient geologically, and the lake sturgeon lineage in our basin is ancient biologically. During the last five centuries, much of the southerly half of this basin’s waters has been transformed—mostly by humans of European origin—from a vast, clean, cascading “riverine system” to clotted strings of confined and dirty reservoirs and lakes with deformed tributaries and “connecting channels,” that is, into what we may term a “reservoirine system” (see box 1). The living part of the ecosystem in most of the southerly waters has changed from intricately organized and elaborately choreographed systems of native, freshwater , mostly riverine taxa to a highly altered and relatively disordered state with unwanted alien taxa from shallow seas and brackish bays far away. But that longlasting trend may not be our destiny. As complex self-organizing systems, these waters and their sturgeon populations retain resilient propensities in spite of their old age and man-caused disabilities. There have been three kinds of early waves of entry of unwelcome alien creatures into our basin: 28 n Regier, Hughes, and Gannon Box 1. Reservoirine Alterations In 1971 some of us of an older generation convened a Symposium on Salmonid Communities in Oligotrophic Lakes (Loftus and Regier 1972). We compared and contrasted the case histories of numerous lakes that were once dominated by salmonine associations to see whether we could infer some major effects of three cultural stresses: poor fishing practices, environmental pollution, and introduction of undesirable alien species. The lakes that we selected fell into three sets; lakes at the margin of the Laurentian Shield in North America including the Great Lakes; deep Fennoscandian lakes; and lakes of the European Alps. During our comparative consideration within and between these three sets of lakes we noted that researchers on the Alpine lakes added an additional important stress related to hydrographic and hydrological modifications that they called Verbauung in German. We found that this term, which often had a pejorative connotation, meant something like “human alterations that obstructed or debased natural physical processes purportedly for the immediate benefit of the human obstructors/debasers.” What we refer to here as “reservoirine alterations” as a set has features like those that follow such Verbauung. A key feature of “reservoirine alterations” is our culture’s primary focus on the physical mass of water in aquatic ecosystems. (The aquatic ecosystem reaches into soils and aquifers and perhaps into local weather patterns, etc.) Nested within this primary focus on the mass of water are secondary physical foci: water level and its fluctuations; water flow and its fluctuations; copious fluid in a depression in a landscape for dumping wastes some of which were carried downstream and out of sight by currents; concentration of pollutants such as acids that corrode engineering works; temperature of the water; and so on. In recent decades Sproule-Jones (e.g., 2002) has described the role of historic preemption by use and by law of features of our natural ecosystems. Such preemptive practices that permeate current realities in our Laurentian Basin can be traced back to ancient history in Europe and Asia. With each major • The Europeans themselves with their effective invasion strategy that included explorers, soldiers, missionaries complemented by traders, and settlers strongly influenced by an exploitative-consumptive culture • The human diseases that Europeans unintentionally brought with them • The alien terrestrial and aquatic species, including domesticated livestock and Lake Sturgeon in the Laurentian Basin n 29 technological initiative like this, prior residents of the affected lands, including Aboriginal peoples, likely were harmed deeply in ways for which they received poor compensation at best. Preemption of water as physical mass relates to old-fashioned “progressive” industrial interests with respect to our aquatic ecosystem. Here “industrial” includes water for agriculture, including irrigation and drainage; cleansing and cooling things; electrical services including potential energy and cooling liquid; and floating and passing commercial vessels. At a macro level, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and Public Works Canada serve such interests and the preoccupations of these federal institutions dominate and suppress the interests that are not primarily and secondarily as sketched above. The “obstructive” practical engineering methods that follow from such a set of primary...