Sea+Lamprey


 * General Information **

Sea Lamprey(Petromyzon marinus) ** The Sea Lamprey is an eel-like shaped fish with a skeleton made of cartilage. The sea lamprey has smooth, scale less skin with two dorsal fins. They belong to a remnant group of jawless fishes called Agatha’s. The sea Lamprey is a parasitic creature; it feeds on other fish, by using its small sucker like mouth filled with small razor-sharp rasping teeth and a file like tongue. These are used by the sea lamprey to attach to a fish, perforate its skin, and deplete its body fluid.Sea Lampreys can be grey or white on its underside and brown or grey on its back (4)
 * [[image:sea_lamprey_head.jpg]]

Larvae grow to 6 inches and adults would grow to an average of 18 to 24 inches. (2) For a female the weight can be up to 2.2kg (5lb) and 2.1kg in males. Males are usually a kilogram lighter than the females and can reach a foot or two in height. (6) **Detailed Description** ==== ** Lifecycle/Reproduction information  ** For the first four years of a sea lampreys life they are spent as a blind worm like larval stage for an extensive stage that goes up to 20 years. (5) They spend early stages of their life in rivers and streams and during the middle stage of their life they spent it in a large freshwater lake or in the ocean. They return to streams or rivers as breeding adults to spawn, they locate their spawning streams by following pheromones which are naturally produced chemical attractants that are released by the ammocoetes that are living in and die shortly after spawning. Sea Lamprey Feed mostly on salmon, and lake trout because of their thin skin and small scales but they also feed upon Lake Whitefish, walleye northern pike, lake sturgeon and burbot.(1) The victims eventually die of blood loss or infection.(3) ====
 * Size, ** ** Weight,Height **

**Habitat/Distribution/Impacts**
====Sea Lamprey are native to the Atlantic Ocean but have spread throughout the Great Lakes.They live mostly in coastal and fresh waters and are found in the North Atlantic and meditteranean.(5)Sea Lamprey have a negative ecological impact because one sea lamprey can upset a food chain and ecosystem by eating 40 pounds of fish of morein its lifetime.Imagine having that time 22,000 sea lampreys in just one river. That will equal to alot of dead fish. Because of lower large fish populations, small fish are able to increase in numbers. Following the losses of human activities who were affected through the loss of sport and commercial fisheries across the Great Lakes the important ecomonic effects were caused by the loss of fishing tourism and by the dissapearance of fishery-related jobs. There were also, losses of tourism associated with beach use due to the beaches fouled by dead Alewives( a fish closely related to the herrings and native to some inland lakes and North American Atlantic waters).(3)====

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The sea Lamprey is native to Lake Champlain and to the inland Finger Lakes in Vermont and New York. By the research made it is not clear whether they were introduced through in 1825, which was when the Erie Canal opened or whether it is native to Lake Ontario in the 1830's where it was first noticed.But======

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It is thought that in 1919 the betterments to the Welland Canal allowed Sea Lamprey to stretch from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, and even as they were never abundant in either lake, it soon broaden to Lake Superior, Lake Huron and Lake Michigan where it wiped out the native fish population in the 1940’s and 1930’s.(5)======

Control Measures
The sea Lamprey has been controlled in most of its spawning streams by traps, barriers and chemicals.Currently the primary control method to control sea lamprey involves a lampricise called TFM. It kills sea lamprey larvase in streams with little or no impact on other fish.(3)Barriers have been constructed to block the upstream migration of spawning sea lampreys. Most barriers allow other fish to pass without a disruption.Another method would be the Sterile-Male-release Technique. It reduces the success of sea lamprey spawning because the male sea lampreys are being sterilized.Traps are also used to catch sea lamprey when they travel upstream to spawn. Most females that are caught are mainly used for research and the males are used for the sterile-male-release-technique.(2)

5. Cunningham, Aimee. "Whiff weapon: pheromone might control invasive sea lampreys." //Science News.// 168. 20 (Nov 12, 2005): 308(2). //Student// //Resource Center// //- Gold//. Gale. Stroudsburg High School. 20 Nov. 2008 . 1. http://pond.dnr.cornell.edu/nyfish/Petromyzontidae/sealamprey.html 2. http://www.umesc.usgs.gov/invasive_species/sea_lamprey.html 3. http://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/6998.html most of info 4. http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/wrcf/images/nblamp.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/wrcf/nblamp.aspx&usg=__f5I3BXxkrcPs9WKFoNiyDbF-byo=&h=156&w=391&sz=32&hl=en&start=236&tbnid=TfB_7Zo5Xsv37M:&tbnh=49&tbnw=123&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dammocoetes%26start%3D220%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Dactive%26sa%3DN habitat etc 6. http://www.glaucus.org.uk/lamprey2.htm Habitats too..primary source,etc height.