Syracuse.com - Tunison Lab in Cortland touts new ultra-violet water treatment building

[HuntingNY-News]

The new $800,000 facility, paid for with a Great Lakes Restoration Initiative grant, was the center of attention during Wednesday's open house at the lab. The facility is dedicated providing scientific research for the restoration, enhanced management and protection of fish species and their habitats in the Great Lakes and its tributaries.

Jim Johnson is excited about the recent addition of the new ultra-violet water treatment building at the USGS Tunison Laboratory of Aquatic Science in Cortland.

The new $800,000 facility, paid for with a Great Lakes Restoration Initiative grant, was the center of attention during Wednesday’s open house at the lab.

“This basically allows us to bring in wild fish and eggs so we can work on them, and start artificial propagation on these fish,” said Johnson, the lab’s director. He explained the ultra-violet light process essentially kills all pathogens in the water that flows through the building, eliminating the presence of fish killing diseases such as VHS in the eggs, fish fry or adult fish being studied.

Visitors were told Wednesday about how Tunison is raising and stocking Atlantic salmon in the Salmon River, in addition to plans involving bolstering Lake Ontario’s waning lake herring population and a bold initiative to reintroduce the deepwater cisco (also called a bloater) into the lake. The latter two are native bait fish, which have been deemed as important for the lake’s salmon and trout populations.

The bigger picture, though, is that the U-V building and the lab’s recent work with the three fish species are just part of its efforts dedicated to providing scientific research for the restoration, enhanced management and protection of fish species and their habitats in the Great Lakes and its tributaries.

Tunison is one of a number of biological field stations and research vessels located throughout the Great Lakes Basin, under the auspices of the USGS Great Lakes Science Center, which is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Mich.

The Cortland lab was set up in 1930 as a fish hatchery. Eventually, it became a world leader in the development of food for hatchery fish. Johnson said he was hired in 1994 to change the research direction of the lab and to make it more pro-active in terms of fish restoration. It has 12 employees and an annual budget of about $750,000, Johnson said.

“Today we are doing research associated with the restoring and preserving of native fish within the Great Lakes, including the American eel, lake sturgeon, Atlantic salmon, deepwater cisco, lake herring,” he said. “We’re also involved with brook trout, doing some work with walleye and on threatened and endangered species in the St. Lawrence River, in cooperation with the Mohawk tribe. We’re also going to be starting a project up there that involves muskellunge.”

Johnson stresses Tunison’s value is the research it supplies its partners, most notably the state Department of Environmental Conservation. A current success story in the making is a joint project between Tunison and the DEC concerning the stocking of Atlantic salmon on the Salmon River. During the past three years, the fish have been spawning naturally in the river — the first time that’s happened with any consistency in more than a century.

“It’s not a full-blown restoration program, we’ve just been trying to find out what works — to put Atlantic salmon back in the mix,” Johnson said.

But Tunison’s emphasis is on more than what anglers catch at the top of the fish food chain, he said.

A big issue on Lake Ontario is the great numbers of alewive, the most plentiful bait fish in the lake. The fish contains an enzyme that breaks down the thiamine protein, resulting in a high mortality among the fry of trout and salmon that dine on it.

Currently, the middle of Lake Ontario is like a vast wasteland, with little, if any forage for the bigger fish. Most of the bait fish, including the alewives, round gobies and the scarce lake herring, are found in shallow water along the lake’s edges.

“We’re trying to go into the low end of the food chain, to build it up from the bottom,” he said, talking about the lab’s current emphasis on raising lake herring and their cousins, the deepwater cisco. Both fish are also called “chubs” by local anglers.

Tunison currently has about two dozen lake herring at the campus, which were netted by the DEC in Chaumont Bay. Their eggs are in the U-V building, with hopes of raising fry and releasing them into the lake this fall. Johnson said the lab is doing that to build up their population in Lake Ontario, and to apply what they learn to also raise deepwater ciscoes.

This winter a commercial fisherman is being paid to net deepwater cisco in Lake Michigan, which will be forwarded to the Cortland lab. The fish spawns during the months of January and February, Johnson said, and the fish sent will hopefully include eggs and sperm that the lab can use to raise more at the Cortland facility.

The idea is that a healthy, diverse population of bait fish in Lake Ontario will make the lake’s salmon and trout population healthier and bigger for anglers to enjoy, he said.

“We’re hoping to not get into the Lake Huron conundrum, where a trophy Chinook is 7 to 10 pounds,” he said. “You can’t find an alewive there to save yourself.”

View the full article on The Syracuse Outdoors Blog