A coastal resources manager with the Lake Huron Centre for Coastal Conservation says the loss of Chinook Salmon in Lake Huron may just be nature's way of making a point.
Geoff Peach says the Chinook Salmon is not a native species to the lake but was introduced in the 1960s and thrives on another non-native species called alewives, that were introduced into the lake in the 1940s.
The alewives feed on plankton and nutrients flowing into the lake provided a constant supply of plankton.
But recent efforts to clean up the Great Lakes have reduced the flow of nutrients into the lake which has reduced the amount of plankton and that has dramatically reduced the alewives population and the result is a reduction of about 90% in the Chinook Salmon population over the last 30 years.
Peach says over the same period there has been an increase in the population of native species like whitefish and lake trout.
Peach suggests there may be a message in the fact that the introduced species and the species that were here in the first place are rebounding.
