This was an article that was in the Chronicle Journal on Saturday December 19, 2009. This article was released by the co-chairs of the Fisheries Management Zone 9 Public Advisory Council; Steve Bobrowicz and Dave Nuttall. Please take the time to read. As stated below, there will be options put forth by the council for public review in early 2010.

Dam good and bad for fish

Bringing a healthy walleye population back to Black Bay is on the radar of an advisory committee looking at fisheries of Lake Superior.

In 2008, as part of its new ecological framework for recreational fisheries management in Ontario, the Ministry of Natural Resources reorganized the province into 20 Fisheries Management Zones. One of their goals is to eventually establish public advisory councils in each zone. These councils are to be phased in over a period of several years. The role of each zone council is to provide advice and expertise to the MNR on the variety of fisheries issues in their zone. In Northwestern Ontario we were fortunate to have the Zone 6 council start up as a pilot project in 2006.

 A second council has now been formed in this region, dealing with fisheries issues in Zone 9 - the Canadian waters of Lake Superior. Their mandate is broad, dealing with a large geographic area (Pigeon River to Sault Ste. Marie), many species of fish, and different groups of users (recreational, commercial .and aboriginal). Due to the size of Zone 9, the advisory council is comprised of two sub-committees, one including members from Pigeon River to Marathon, the other from Marathon east to Sault Ste. Marie. The appropriate sub-committee deals with issues of a regional nature, while the full advisory council meets to discuss lake-wide issues.

The western sub-committee of the Zone 9 advisory council was organized in April and has already met several times at six week intervals. This is a diverse group of mostly non-government volunteers, with representatives from angler organizations, commercial fisheries, outfitters, independent fisheries biologists, First Nations and Metis communities, and the general public. Staff of the Upper Great Lakes Management Unit also attend meetings as advisors. While the mandate of the Zone 9 advisory council covers all fisheries issues on Lake Superior, to date the western sub-committee has been focused on a single topic: restoration of native fisheries in Black Bay.

Historically, Black Bay was home to an excellent walleye fishery - the best on Lake Superior. In 1959, a control dam was built on the Black Sturgeon River to help facilitate log drives. Within a few years of the dam construction, the walleye population in Black Bay collapsed. For decades it was believed that commercial over fishing was responsible, but recent studies have suggested that the collapse was due in part to the dam blocking the upstream passage of walleye to their spawning grounds in the Black Sturgeon River.

 Log drives on the Black Sturgeon River ended in 1965, and the dam is now owned by the Province of Ontario. Currently, the dam serves a sole purpose as barrier to sea lamprey, non-native parasitic fish which nearly caused the extinction of lake trout Lake Superior in the 1940s and 1950s.The dam is an effective barrier to the upstream migration of sea lamprey, cutting off hundreds of kilometres of spawning habitat and greatly reducing the cost and effort required to control sea lamprey populations.

Maintaining the dam "as is" means that lamprey numbers wouldn't benefit from an expanded habitat. It also prevents increased costs associated with treatment of many more kilometers of lamprey spawning waters most of which is inaccessible to the lamprey control vehicles and staff. But retaining the dam also means that the walleye numbers in Black Bay will never come close to their pre-collapse population size.

While removal of the dam could result in the rehabilitation of Black Bay walleye, it would also result in an increase in lamprey numbers, which would then have negative effects on other fish populations around the lake, notably lake trout, rainbow trout and whitefish, in both Canadian and American waters.

The Zone 9 advisory council will soon been examining an options document for the dam on the Black Sturgeon River. This document will present five options for the future of the Black Sturgeon dam; these include retention "as is" at one extreme, full removal at the other. In between are three options that provide a compromise between sea lamprey and native species concerns.

Stay tuned; we hope to be able to make a recommendation to the MNR early in 2010.