Weighing the Value of the EUP Commercial Fishery
Numbers of Commercial Fishermen Ebb and Flow with Profitability of Harvest

The commercial fishery harvest in the Straits area peaked in the early 1990s and is currently operating at a sustainable level, said Mark Ebener of the Intertribal Fisheries and Assessment Program. Local fish harvests are tracked in three management units.

In the area near St. Ignace, west of the Mackinac Bridge and stretching east to Marquette Island in the Les Cheneaux Islands and south to Cheboygan, 400,000 pounds of fish were harvested in 2005, "as high as it's been since 2000," Mr. Ebener said, but half of its peak harvest in 1994.

In the Les Cheneaux Islands, from Marquette Island east to DeTour, 200,000 pounds of fish were harvested in 2005.

"This is down quite a bit, and as low as it's been in a long time," Mr. Ebener said. That area's harvest peaked in 1998 with 890,000 pounds of fish.

On the Lake Michigan side of the Mackinac Bridge, west to Seul Choix Point near Manistique, and north of Beaver Island, 400,000 pounds of fish were harvested in 2005.

"That area usually has a much higher harvest, peaking at 1.9 million pounds in 1992," Mr. Ebener said. The area west of the bridge has been hit particularly hard by blankets of slime in fishing nets this year.

When fish populations were at their peak, the numbers of commercial fishermen in the area were much higher, Mr. Ebener noted. This year, six operations harvest fish in the DeTour area, with at least 15 operations in the St. Ignace area, and seven in the Naubinway area. Each fishing operation may employ several people.

"Numbers of fishermen are about half of what they were in the '90s," Mr. Ebener said. "In the St. Ignace area, in the good years, you'll have at least 20 or 25 fishing operations."

Poor body condition of the whitefish has lead to a declining market, driving the price of whitefish down to about 75-cents a pound. Low market prices coupled with vast blankets of chlorphora algae clogging fishing nets have pushed fishermen away from the business in recent years, Mr. Ebener said.

Buyers in Chicago, New York, Detroit Markets

Reject Lake Huron Whitefish

The Straits area harvest is sold by individual fishermen to three local markets, Mackinac Fish Market in St. Ignace, Kings Fishery in Naubinway, and Big Stone Bay Fishery in Mackinaw City, before being shipped to major markets, primarily in Chicago, New York, and Detroit.

"Buyers in those markets have been rejecting Lake Huron whitefish, because they just don't have enough body fat to make a good smoked fish," Mr. Ebener explained. This drives market prices down on the local level.

Mr. Ebener, an assessment biologist, said that the current decline in whitefish quality is owing to a shrinking food supply that came at a time when the population was teeming. Whitefish populations were burgeoning in the early 1990s, just as zebra mussels were beginning to get established in the lakes, he said. The fish population was probably due for a natural decline at the same time that its food source virtually disappeared. He likened the situation to that of a deer habitat being overpopulated, causing each animal to find less food.

He is optimistic that the fishery is sustainable, and noted that the recent improvement in conditions in northern Lake Michigan will probably carry through to Lake Huron. This trend is often seen because Lake Michigan is a much more productive lake.

"When good or bad things happen to whitefish, they tend to happen first in Lake Michigan, then in Lake Huron," Mr. Ebener said.