Sea lampreys have remained largely unchanged for more than 340 million years. They are not eels and they are not native to NY. They are a parasitic fish coming from the Atlantic Ocean and are often referred to as the “vampire fish’. Sea lampreys are considered a pest, predators, each capable of killing up to 40 pounds of fish over their 12-18 month feeding period. They feed by attaching themselves to other fish, and then living off of them by sucking the hosts blood and other body fluids. In this way, Sea lampreys are unique from many other fish in that they do not have jaws or other bony structures. They possess a skeleton made of cartilage are have a unique large oral sucking disk like mouth: filled with sharp, horn-shaped teeth surrounding a razor sharp rasping tongue.
The first recorded observation of a sea lamprey in NY was around 1835. According to the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, “Niagara Falls served as a natural barrier, confining sea lampreys to Lake Ontario and preventing them from entering the remaining four Great Lakes. However, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, improvements to the Welland Canal, which bypasses Niagara Falls and provides a shipping connection between Lakes Ontario and Erie, allowed sea lampreys access to the rest of the Great Lakes”. Sea lampreys were able to thrive once they invaded the Great Lakes because of the availability of excellent spawning and larval habitat, an abundance of host fish, a lack of predators, and their high reproductive potential—a single female can produce as many as 100,000 eggs!
In NY, Sea lampreys prey on most all species of large fish such as lake trout, brown trout, lake sturgeon, lake whitefish, ciscoes, burbot, walleye, catfish, and Pacific salmonids including Chinook and coho salmon and rainbow trout/steelhead.
WEBSITES
- Sea lamprey – Wikipedia
- Sea Lamprey – Great Lakes Fishery Commission
- All about invasive sea lamprey
- What is a sea lamprey?