Tracking longnose suckers to add knowledge and answer some questions

Evangelistic devotees raised attention on redhorse suckers in recent years, otherwise suckers are mostly out of sight and out of mind. Well, other than being used as live bait to catch muskie.

Reality is that no suckers receive much love and even less scholarly attention.

Dr. Karen Murchie aims to change that. The director of freshwater research at Shedd Aquarium has been working on white suckers (Catostomus commersonii) since 1917 and now expanded into the rarer longnose suckers (Catostomus catostomus).

Her latest project kick-started with the surgical insertion of acoustic tags into 30 longnose suckers in April during the spawning run in Heins Creek in Wisconsin's Door County. It's the first longnose sucker study examining spatial ecology.

"This is the first opportunity to get to know how much they move off shore, connecting habitats in their movements," Murchie said. "The big question, is does the same fish come back to same spot to spawn."

Heins Creek is on the Lake Michigan side of Door County and longnose suckers migrate in during the spring. On the Green Bay side of Door County, only white suckers move in. Murchie said there are a lot of steelhead anglers on Heins, but they don't seem to go after the suckers much.

Door County Land Trust, which funds more work on land-based topics, had a chance to fund work with fish.

"Our knowledge about them is pretty scant," Murchie said.

Frankly, suckers don't receive the same attention from state or fisheries agencies as so-called gamefish or sportfish such as bass, walleye, trout, salmon or muskies.

Murchie is trying to fill in some of the information gap on suckers, here specifically longnose suckers, on their home ranges, their habitats, how often they move offshore and near shore.

"Some are more homebodies, some more cosmopolitan," Murchie said.

That's one of the fascinating finds in tracking studies, in essence fish seem to have personalities or preferences.

Suckers are an important prey species for many species, especially when they are young. Their eggs provide good nutrition early in the year when not much is available in streams. The spawning movement of suckers provides a transfer of energy (nutrients) in the ecosystem. That transfer of energy extends to land, too.

"Eagles, ospreys and wolves will take suckers during the spawning run," Murchie said.

The spawning runs of suckers are something to behold as they move en masse upstream. I wish more would witness those runs. The cold-blooded truth is, as Murchie put it, "Ultimately, we don't protect what we don't understand."

Too many still cling to the archaic notion that suckers are a trash fish. But she also understands a fundamental truth of modern biology.

"People really relate to tracking studies," she said.

That's because tracking studies are just cool and fascinating, even if you're just an ordinary goof.

The tags, less in diameter and shorter than AA battery, are set in after a belly incision above the pelvic fin. The fish are also tagged with a loop tag near the dorsal fin in case the fish are detected in other studies or surveys. The batteries will last for three years.

Murchie doesn't have any Shedd-owned receivers on Lake Michigan, but the interest in acoustic studies in recent years has led to a multitude of receivers in the Great Lakes Acoustic Telemetry Observation System. GLATOS should have an initial data base on the longnose suckers by the end of the year.

Tracking studies raise and answer some interesting questions. Why do some fish hang out while others roam? Why do they return to certain spots? In this study, one big question will be whether they return to the same place to spawn.

Murchie had another question, "Why don't we see them in Lake and Cook counties?"

She wonders why they don't have similar spawning migrations into our streams and what have we lost to cause that? Is it habitat offshore?

White suckers are the most common sucker in Illinois. Longnose suckers are state threatened in Illinois. The few Illinois has are in the northeast.

"Colleagues working with other fish are jealous of my returns [pings on the tags]," she said. "There's no reason to think longnose suckers won't do the same. I expect to get good returns. And we know they live for a long time."

She received about 50 percent return from her studies on white suckers. Hopes are high for the longnose sucker study.

"I am really hoping we get some cool data and inspire some more awe around these animals," Murchie said.