Fish Habitat: Essential Fish Habitat and Rehabilitation

Part Five: Fish Habitat Rehabilitation and Socioeconomic Issues— Focus on the Great Lakes

Carlos Fetterolf

doi: https://doi.org/10.47886/9781888569124.ch23

The concept of essential fish habitat (EFH) introduced through the 1996 reauthorization of the Magnuson- Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (also called the Sustainable Fisheries Act) has the potential to energize the sleeping giant within fishery management programs. The Sustainable Fisheries Act unfortunately applies only to the National Marine Fisheries Service and regional fishery management councils and not to the Great Lakes. However, the overwhelming recognition by Congress that habitat management is essential if we are to have healthy fish stocks will infuse the thinking of fishery and water managers in the eight Great Lakes states, the Province of Ontario, the six Great Lakes Sea Grant College Programs, and several federal agencies. The EFH policy focuses thinking on habitat and is destined to be the fisheries buzz phrase of the decade in marine systems as we work to define, refine, and fully understand EFH. Essential fish habitat is not glamorous (yet), but the excitement will begin when research dollars start to flow and some court cases make the headlines.

The effects of the EFH policy will carry over into freshwater systems and will put new life into the evolving thrusts of Great Lakes resource management agencies. This carryover will facilitate the Canada– U.S. Great Lakes Fishery Commission’s movement toward integrated lamprey and fisheries management on a fish community basis supported by habitat rehabilitation, as well as the International Joint Commission’s movement toward development and implementation of comprehensive management plans to restore beneficial uses, including fish and wildlife habitat.

The chapter by John Hartig and John Kelso traces the increase in importance of habitat considerations in Great Lakes management, identifies key factors necessary for scientifically defensible, ecosystem-based management, and provides examples of successful efforts to rehabilitate and conserve habitats using an ecosystem approach.

Contrary to the ecosystem approach and highlighting the theme of opportunism found in the chapter by Hartig and Kelso, the next chapter by David Kelch et al. describes the immediate reaction of fish and fishermen to an artificial reef construction project. Working with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the project successfully used donated materials to improve nearshore sportfishing opportunity and to increase on-site fishing pressure and catch. Whether this project was beneficial to the fish community of Lake Erie remains unknown, but construction of fish-concentrating devices remains popular.

Leroy Hushak et al. examine the immediate socioeconomic impact of one of the reefs described in Kelch et al. Using questionnaires, Hushak et al. discovered that the total value of the reef to Lorain County, Ohio anglers using the reef in 1992 was US$276,000 compared with total construction costs of less than $100,000. It is easy to see why taking advantage of opportunities offered by the availability of donated materials for reef construction is popular with agencies and citizen groups.

Finally, returning to the concept that habitat quality, quantity, and suitability determine production from a given aquatic area, Charles Minns et al. go through a detailed procedure to determine how much of what habitat is essential. The procedure includes performing habitat assessment through remote sensing, integrating thermal regimes with habitat elements, estimating suitability of habitat for life stages and species of fish, and creating population, biomass, and production models for comparison with available records.

In summary, this section of the book contains four chapters dealing with habitat modifications and suitability: two chapters describing long-term ecosystem approaches to management, and two chapters describing successes with short-term habitat “tweaking.” Who is to say that there is anything wrong with being opportunistic and achieving rapid success? And who is to say that long-term ecosystem approaches to management are not worthy of enthusiasm and admiration?