Fisheries committee  Yes.

Fisheries committee  I presume you're talking about the St. Marys River.

Fisheries committee  We do know what the difference is. The habitat conditions have improved substantially, allowing the animals to successfully reproduce in that area. We are less efficient in controlling sea lamprey there because the chemical we normally release is very efficient in small streams, but we're dealing with a body of water that's 300 metres wide, several metres deep, and moving very fast in some locations.

Fisheries committee  That's another issue.

Fisheries committee  Thank you very much. I apologize to the gentleman who was translating for me. Sometimes I tend to talk very fast. I've been told to slow down, but when I get turned on I just shift gears. I very much appreciate your time and the honour of being able to talk to you. I apologize if I've been a bit too passionate about things.

Fisheries committee  Thank you. If you need any information about sea lamprey or anything at all, please do not hesitate to contact me. I'd be more than happy to help.

Fisheries committee  The fisheries did rebound. In the late 1950s and 1960s, we saw a collapse of several fish species. Well, I wasn't completely clear, in the sense that sea lamprey contributed to it, but they weren't the sole factor. Overfishing was also part of it. We managed to bring sea lamprey densities in the 1960s under control, but that was done at the same time as a lot of lake trout and other species were being raised in hatchery operations and released into the Great Lakes to help those species rebound.

Fisheries committee  Actually, remember that I said that they live as a parasitic adult for 12 to 20 months. That's when they actually kill fish by parasitism. Then they go into tributaries of the Great Lakes to spawn. Once they have spawned, they die. Any given female can deposit anywhere from 25,000 to 100,000 eggs.

Fisheries committee  Thank you for the question. In the paper I mentioned, from 2010, I speculated that they have to have some kind of chemical within their tissues, because we know of a broad variety of other fish species, including some salmonids, that have a so-called alarm cue that is typically released from their skin when a pike, for example, comes and bites them.

Fisheries committee  Yes, that's what I'm getting at. Assuming uniform distribution of animals moving up, if I were to release the repellent on the other side of the stream it would scare them over to this side and they would become more available for trapping. In the optimal scenario, if we were to put a pipe across that released that chemical into the water we could potentially set up a chemical barrier.

Fisheries committee  It basically got into Lake Ontario through the St. Lawrence River. There were absolutely no dams or anything, so it must have made its way up through the St. Lawrence River into Lake Ontario. The first mention made of it, that I found, was in 1835. Now, of course it destroyed the fisheries in Lake Ontario in the short term.

Fisheries committee  Did you say handle?

Fisheries committee  Yes, I completely agree. Obviously I wasn't implying that someone would do it with the evil intent of destroying anything. That was not my meaning. Yes, I would completely agree about educating the public. That's part of what we do, of course, at any given university or other educational institution.

Fisheries committee  I'm just kidding, but you know what I mean.

Fisheries committee  The sea lamprey is native to the Atlantic Ocean, which means it would be spawning on both the American side and the European side. Actually, I think Mr. Allen brought up the issue that two lampreys were sent to the Queen. I guess China goes with pandas and we go with sea lamprey, no pun intended.