Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
Eurasian Ruffe
1
Eurasian Ruffe Fish
A small fresh water fish that is causing severe
effects on lake superior, by consuming food needed for native fish.
How they survive and how to identify
These fish survive because of their aggressive nature and how distasteful they are to predators. They scare away predators by flashing their sharp painful spines on their back. If the predators decide to eat the ruffe with it's spines up the predator may die. The ruffe looks like a perch with larger, sharper fins. It also lacks the perch's stripes, it sometimes also lack's the orange that a perch has. It typically has green, spotty skin and a small mouth.
Eurasian ruffe
Perch
Why they are so harmful
These fish have basic but effective ways of eliminating competition. They
take up a lot of space in the lake and quickly consume food around them.
Despite their small size (10-15cm) they are able to accomplish this by reproducing very quickly and having a long life span for their size. (7-11 years) With a life span this long they are able to reproduce many times.
The female eurasian ruffe lay's between 130,000 to 200,000 eggs every season. This is why they can dominate the lake despite their small size.
These fish will also consume a whole aquatic habitat if they get the chance. These fish have an serious advantage over other fish because of yet another ability. They can sense vibrations of their food better as they get older, while for most that have this ability their sense weakens, which means every generation these fish become more dominate.
But thats only
the tip of the iceberg
Government involvement
Of course a decent amount of resources have been put into controlling and preventing the spread of this fish, but where? Scientist have been studying and testing different methods of controlling this fish and here are some of the most effective, and popular ways of doing so.
Using a pheromone that the ruffe produces to attract mates, to lure these fish into traps. Scientist are working on a poison that is only effective on the ruffe to try and eradicate large schools of these pest. But using this poison method could be very dangerous in the long run. Another more natural method is to increase the walleye and pike population. Though this method would be very lengthy and would be relatively ineffective. A method to keep the fish apart would be to use another pheromone that the ruffe release when they are injured to warn other fish to stay away. Last a chemical could be used to disrupt the reproductive process of the ruffe. All have their pros and cons, but more studying will definitely lead us to knowing the best way to eradicate these fish.