Partnerships for a Common Purpose: Cooperative Fisheries Research and Management

Cooperative Research in the Great Lakes: Exploring Characteristics of Success

Roy A. Stein and Charles C. Krueger

doi: https://doi.org/10.47886/9781888569858.ch29

Our paper describes the unique nature of cooperative fishery research and management in the Great Lakes and formulates operational procedures based on our experiences that may be useful elsewhere.

Cooperative fishery research in the Great Lakes basin occurs at various physiogeographical, organizational, and political scales. For example, at one end of the spectrum, cooperative research programs occur, as described below, between a state fishery management agency and a university on a single lake, Lake Erie. Basin-wide, international coordination, focused on a specific research theme and coordinated by the binational Great Lakes Fishery Commission, represents the other end of the spectrum. Below, we discuss these two examples. Our first example focuses on a long-term relationship between the Ohio Division of Wildlife (ODOW) and the Ohio State University on Lake Erie. A second example describes how resources and projects are coordinated across the Great Lakes basin to understand the role of exotic invertebrates in disrupting Great Lakes food webs.