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Restaurants Seek Chubs; Scientists Seek Answers

A sign at the Port City Smokehouse in Frankfort when they have chubs for sale.
A sign at the Port City Smokehouse in Frankfort when they have chubs for sale.

http://ipraudio.interlochen.org/Chubs_WEB.mp3

Recently we reported how native fish are doing really well in one of the Great Lakes. The fish involved are not exactly well known species. But there is one that’s a household name in lakeshore communities and its success is sparking some scientific debate.

A fish with a cult following
Food and travel writers who visit The Cove seldom forget to mention the Chubby Mary. It’s a Bloody Mary with smoked chub in it. Mario Batali even put a photo of the cocktail on Bon Appetit’s website along with his endorsement.

The problem is there are almost no chubs for sale anymore because they are really hard to find in the Great Lakes. The owner of The Cove, Rick Wanroy, says fishermen have stopped looking for them.

“You’d be better off having them fish for octopus out there, I think sometimes. Maybe the catch would be greater.”

Wanroy says the Chubby Mary has a cult following. He even trademarked the drink and he expects to be explaining to lots of people this summer why they don’t have them. It’s not for a lack of effort. Last year when a few were available from Lake Superior he sent a private plane to pick them up.

He sometimes charges less for the drink then he paid for a chub.

“It’s a loss,” says Wanroy. “But it’s one of things you have to do.”

Fish population approaching 30-year cycle
Something curious is happening with chubs right now in Lake Huron. Young ones are showing up there in record numbers. They’re too small yet for the smoker. But a decade a go there were almost no chubs in the lake.

To be fair, a number of native fish are doing well in Lake Huron.  

But the dramatic surge of chubs fits a pattern the fish has exhibited in the past: the population has come in waves. Big ones. Then it drops off.

Chuck Madenjian, a researcher for the U.S. Geological Survey, says he has calculated that the population of chubs, when they are numerous, is 60 or 70 times the population at the low points.

“So we’re talking about a 70-fold increase from the bottom to the top and that is rather dramatic.”

Madenjian has theorized that chub’s cycle, meaning there is something about the fish that causes its population to swell and shrink.

In all three of the upper Great Lakes there were lots of chubs around 1990. And there is some evidence of a peak in Lake Michigan around 1960. So we’re talking about cycles that are three decades long.

And that makes his theory a little hard to study, let a lone prove.

“Somebody doing a masters thesis isn’t going to be able to make a lot of headway. Not if the period is about 30 years.”

That fact alone makes other researchers skeptical. Stephen Riley works down the hall from Madenjian at the USGS. He works on Lake Huron and is catching all those little chubs out there. But Riley can’t imagine what would cause cycles that far apart.

“The conditions now are so different than they were when we last saw high numbers that I can’t imagine a cycle would be driving it.”

The other problem Madenjian’s theory has is that chubs are still missing in Lake Michigan.A few years ago it was starting to look like they might make a comeback but then it fizzled.

He thinks it is likely they are recovering in Lake Michigan too, it’s just that they may be inhabiting another part of the lake, possibly in deeper water beyond where researchers trawl.

But with the number of chubs rising in Lake Huron, Madenjian wonders what you’d call it, other than a cycle.

Peter Payette is the Executive Director of Interlochen Public Radio.