The Early History of Fisheries Management in Michigan

Abstract

The culture and stocking of fish in North America began in the last half of the nineteenth century. Fish culture was seen as a way to bolster the realized decline of fish populations, but also as a way to introduce new species thought to be desirable to all waters. A private brook trout hatchery was started in Clarkston, Michigan in 1867, and the state of Michigan built their first hatchery in Pokagon in 1873. The enthusiasm for stocking was eventually tempered with the realization that more knowledge was needed about the life history requirements of the fishes and the waters where they lived. Regulation of the fisheries had also begun. In 1920, Carl L. Hubbs, who became a noted ichthyologist, was hired at the University of Michigan. In 1930, he founded the Institute for Fisheries Research. The founding of the institute was a pivotal point in the development of fisheries management. In the next 15 years in Michigan, essentially all of the concepts of fisheries management were put into practice and evaluation was done. In 1935, Hubbs hired Albert S. Hazzard to be a full-time director of the institute. Hazzard had a Ph.D. in zoology from Cornell University and had worked as an aquatic biologist for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries in the western United States. The third key person responsible for the advances in fisheries in Michigan was Fred A. Westerman, chief of the Michigan Department of Conservation, Fisheries Division, from 1925–1959. Westerman, who had little education beyond high school and grew up in the Michigan hatchery system, provided agency support. Hubbs assembled a group of bright graduate students, and this trio of leaders in 1930–45 utilized the students to do pioneering work in the field of fisheries management. They used an inventory of streams and lakes to determine suitable management methods, developed and evaluated lake and stream improvement methods, used the creel census to measure game fish yield, analyzed stream and lake fish populations, determined the success of different methods of planting, and initiated studies of fish migration, growth rates, food habits, fish predators, use of the piscicide rotenone, spawning habits of the common fishes, and relationships of principal game and forage fishes.