Cooperative Agreement for affiliated Partner with the Great Lakes-Northern Forest Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Units (CESU)

The USGS is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU partner for research to study survival, movements, and habitat use of Grass Carp in the Great Lakes with emphasis on Lake Erie. Grass Carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella) have been identified by a binational Ecological Risk Assessment as a threat to Lake Erie fisheries and the Great Lakes ecosystem in general. Invasion of the species has been confirmed via capture of reproductively capable fish and the presence of eggs and larvae in tributaries of Lake Erie. An assessment of the potential socio-economic impacts of Grass Carp becoming established in the Great Lakes estimated that losses could exceed $2 billion over the next decade. Thus, fishery management authorities, working through A Joint Strategic Plan for Management of Great Lakes Fisheries (Joint Strategic Plan or JSP), have utilized a structured decision-making (SDM) process to establish objectives for research needed to support eradication and control actions. The need for these actions was used to create an adaptive response strategy for the management and control of Grass Carp in Lake Erie and connecting tributaries which is coordinated through the Grass Carp Advisory Committee (GCAC) within the Lake Erie Committee. Through US Congressional action funding has been supplied to USGS for Grass Carp research in support of JSP objectives. As part of the adaptive response strategy GCAC partners have identified acoustic telemetry to understand movements and habitat use as priority information to inform management actions. Specifically, managers wish to leverage the existing Great Lakes Acoustic Telemetry Observation System (GLATOS) and specifically the expanded coverage into nearshore and tributary environments which appear as important Grass Carp habitats. Information from this research will help better understand survival of tagged fish, migration corridors, and habitats of Grass Carp. The USGS research program seeks to address these critical objectives and provide scientific information needed by state and federal natural resource managers to develop tools for reducing or eliminating Grass Carp. This project will support a tiered telemetry receiver array which includes 1- a basin-wide array within nearshore and tributary habitats, 2-dense arrays for two-dimensional positioning within spawning tributaries, and 3- an alert array that provides real-time notifications of Grass Carp detections. By providing fieldwork support as well as timely quantitative analysis telemetry data this project will provide decision support for managers.