Ellen Marsden, professor in the Wildlife and Fisheries Biology Program at the UVM Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, has received a 2019 Great Lakes Fishery Commission (GLFC) award honoring her substantial scientific impacts on the ecology and management of lake fisheries in the Great Lakes basin.
Through her longtime collaboration with the Great Lakes fisheries community, Marsden has helped to put Lake Champlain research on the map and make it relevant nationally. Her research has made it possible for Great Lakes scientists and managers to better study and restore lake trout populations and manage invasive sea lamprey, a parasite of lake trout and other fish.
The Jack Christie/Ken Loftus Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions Toward Understanding Healthy Great Lakes Ecosystems is named for two former staff members of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry who promoted a science-based, ecosystem approach to management of the Great Lakes.
“The Christie/Loftus Award is a prestigious award, recognizing individuals who make substantial scientific contributions to the health and sustainability of Great Lakes ecosystems,” said Andrew Muir, GLFC Science Director. “Ellen Marsden exemplifies the characteristics of the scientists for whom the award was named. She is also a tremendous teacher and mentor and has helped guide future generations of Great Lakes biologists.”
The binational, federally-funded GLFC, established in 1955, ensures successful cross-border collaboration between the United States and Canada to maintain and improve Great Lakes fisheries. The Commission coordinates fisheries research among academic institutions and agencies, implements the sea lamprey control program, and facilitates multi-jurisdictional fishery management among state, provincial, tribal, and federal agencies.
“I am honored to be nominated for this award by my longtime peers and mentors in fisheries,” said Marsden who had previously nominated her graduate mentor, Chuck Krueger, fisheries scientist and past GLFC commissioner and science director, for the award. “It is a nice feeling to know that the work I love has had an impact in the fisheries science community and will have long-lasting effects on the ecology of Lake Champlain and the Great Lakes. It’s humbling to be bracketed with the ‘big names’ in fisheries, many of whom I have looked up to and worked with for years.”
Marsden received her first grant from the GLFC in 1987 for lake trout research on Lake Ontario while she was a PhD student at Cornell University where she studied with Krueger. Since then, she has been awarded thirteen multi-year grants, totaling more than $3 million from the Commission for her research related to lake trout restoration and sea lamprey ecology and control.
Through Marsden and her Lake Champlain colleagues’ efforts and the support of U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, over $3 million has been authorized annually since 2014 for work on Vermont’s largest lake. Of these funds, administered through the GLFC, more than $200,000 is allocated each year to Marsden’s work in collaboration with Jason Stockwell — amounting to $1.25 million so far to study the lake’s fish ecology using a mesocosm approach to the Great Lakes. Stockwell is professor and director of the Rubenstein Ecosystem Science Laboratory on the Lake Champlain waterfront.
“Whole-lake mesocosm studies are unusual in the field of fisheries,” said Marsden who began her studies on Lake Champlain as a new UVM faculty member in 1996. “Lake Champlain is small enough that we can conduct ‘whole lake’ fish and ecosystem studies, which cannot be done as easily on lakes as large as the Great Lakes. But the research we do here on fish ecology, on sea lamprey, and on spawning habitat easily translates to what’s happening in the Great Lakes.”
In the last century, wild populations of lake trout disappeared from Lake Champlain and most of the Great Lakes. Stocking restored adult lake trout populations, but reproduction and recruitment of wild fish into the adult population was limited. In 2015, Marsden worked with Captain Steve Cluett, of the UVM research vessel Melosira, to begin focused sampling for juvenile lake trout on Lake Champlain. Unexpectedly, they began hauling in young wild lake trout. A 2017 Boston Globe article describes Marsden’s role in documenting the return of wild lake trout to Lake Champlain.
The success of this sampling effort made it possible for Marsden and her graduate students, for the first time ever, to study the growth of young wild lake trout. She and her students have identified obstacles to recruitment, including spawning substrate limitations, predation of young trout, and nutritional complications for newly hatched fry.
Marsden’s early research mapped lake trout spawning habitat in the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain. She used a small, custom-built remotely-operated-vehicle to get never-before-seen video footage of spawning behavior. The footage highlighted both the tremendous impacts of sea lamprey parasitism on lake trout in Lake Champlain and the importance of sea lamprey management. Marsden led a team of Great Lakes colleagues on a five-year project studying remediation of lake trout spawning habitat using artificially constructed reefs in Lake Huron. Her doctoral research identified a prolific-spawning strain of lake trout and resulted in a management switch to stocking mostly the Seneca Lake strain to build populations in the Great Lakes.
Marsden has published over 110 peer-reviewed journal articles, many in collaboration with Great Lakes fishery scientists, and mentored numerous undergraduates, nineteen graduate students, and five postdoctoral associates. She has served as editor for scientific fishery journals including the North American Journal of Fisheries Management and the Journal of Great Lakes Research, for which she guest edited special issues related to Lake Champlain, lake trout restoration, and sea lamprey research. She has served on and chaired the GLFC Fisheries Research and Sea Lamprey Research boards and worked on various task forces, workgroups, and technical committees of the Commission.
"Ellen Marsden has been, for more than three decades, one of the premier scientists of the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain regions," said Robert Lambe, Executive Secretary of the GLFC. "The Great Lakes Fishery Commission will honor her this May for her considerable, noteworthy contributions to fishery science, particularly in improving our understanding of native species restoration and invasive species control. Dr. Marsden is particularly skillful at conducting research to inform and advance fisheries management, and her lifetime of work has greatly enhanced the health of Great Lakes and Lake Champlain ecosystems."
Marsden and recipients of other GLFC awards will be honored at the Commission's annual meeting held May 29-30, 2019 in Detroit, Michigan.