Michigan will begin collecting spawning Great Lakes whitefish this fall as part of a hatchery-based rescue program targeting stocks that have collapsed under pressure from invasive mussels. State officials have committed $350,000 in one-time funding for the effort, alongside nearly $900,000 provided by the Great Lakes Fishery Trust to expand hatchery capacity for early rearing.
The scope of the decline explains the urgency. Commercial whitefish harvests fell from 6.9 million pounds in 2009 to less than 2 million pounds last year in the Great Lakes region, and in some areas of Lakes Michigan and Huron almost no wild whitefish hatchlings have survived to adulthood for two decades. Fisheries managers count 18 unique whitefish populations across the two lakes, and the current funding will cover only a couple of years of hatchery space, food and other rearing costs for a subset of those populations.
State fisheries staff will collect spawning fish along a stretch that extends from Naubinway to Saugatuck. The whitefish rescue line item is the first time state budget language has funded the effort specifically, and it is written as one-time funding rather than an ongoing appropriation. Great Lakes-wide, at least a dozen vulnerable whitefish stocks have been identified.
Federal legislation moving in parallel would provide $500 million over the next decade for invasive-mussel control research. Program updates and hatchery timelines are posted on the state fisheries and Great Lakes Fishery Trust pages tracking the project.
