Sport fishing industry faces loss of anglers and ecosystem collapse

Fishing boat captains are losing customers as more people lose their jobs and cut out non-essential spending, AP reports.

And the $4 billion dollar a year Great Lakes sport and commercial fishing industry faces challenges beyond a decline in anglers.

University of Michigan fishery biologist David Jude says that a massive decline in diporeia — the tiny shrimp-like creatures at the bottom of the food chain in the lakes — threatens to collapse parts of the Great Lakes ecosystem because almost every fish relies on diporeia at some point in its life cycle.

“Fundamental, amazing change is happening in the Great Lakes right now, and it’s being propagated throughout the food web, from the bottom up,” Jude told the U of M publication Michigan Today, “We’re going to lose a big chunk of that sport fishery. That will have a tremendous economic impact and will result in dramatic changes to the fisheries people have relied on in the past.”

Jude is exploring the connections between invasive species and diporeia die-off.