The rasping mouth of the sea lamprey.
A vampiric, ray-finned fish is reportedly frightening fisherman and tourists in the Great Lakes after the pandemic disrupted population control of the species.
According to Fox News, during the COVID-19 pandemic time, the population of sea lampreys, an eel-like parasitic fish that is endemic to the Northern Hemisphere but is deemed invasive in the Great Lakes, briefly increased. Since then, officials have been working to eradicate the lamprey surplus.
In order to safeguard Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Erie, and Lake Ontario, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, a binational organisation made up of wildlife experts from the United States and Canada, has been taking action.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, unlike "bony" fishes like trout, cod, and herring, lampreys lack scales, fins, and gill covers. Like sharks, their skeletons are made of cartilage. They breathe through a distinctive row of seven pairs of tiny gill openings located behind their mouths and eyes.
But the anatomical trait that makes the sea lamprey an efficient killer of lake trout and other bony fish is its disc-shaped, suction-cup mouth, ringed with sharp, horny teeth, with which it latches on to an unfortunate fish. The lamprey then uses its rough tongue to rasp away the fish's flesh so it can feed on its host's blood and body fluids. One lamprey kills about 40 pounds of fish every year.
Sea lampreys invaded the Great Lakes in the 1830s via the Welland Canal, which connects Lakes Ontario and Erie and forms a key section of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Within a decade, they had gained access to all five Great Lakes, where they quickly set to work preying on the lakes' commercially important fish, including trout, whitefish, perch, and sturgeon. Within a century, the trout fishery had collapsed, largely due to the lamprey's unchecked proliferation.
Today, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission coordinates the control of sea lampreys in the lakes, which is conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Field biologists set up barriers and traps in the streams that feed the lakes to prevent the lamprey's upstream movements and apply special chemicals, called lampricides, that target lamprey larvae but are harmless to other aquatic creatures.