| President's Message | Recent Events | Atlantic Salmon | | New Board Members | Sea Lamprey | Upcoming Events |
	Board Welcomes New Members Tom Condon (Russell), Norm Brown (Westfield), and Eileen Rannenberg (Agawam) were elected to serve on WRWA's Board of Directors at the Annual Meeting in May. The Wild & Scenic Committee may also be designating one of their members to serve on our Board. We welcome these new board members and look forward to working with them. We also want to thank "retiring" board members Mark LaVoie and C. Mason Maronn for their service on our Board. Watershed Flora and Fauna: Sea Lamprey If you spent even a brief moment viewing the table of fish counts on page 3 of the text version of this newsletter, you may have noticed a very large number of sea lamprey. So what exactly are sea lamprey? Sea Lampreys (Petromyzon marinus) are grey to black, parasitic eel-like fish native to Massachusetts, the North Atlantic Ocean, and many of its tributaries. These fish are jawless and can grow to be 3 feet long. Sea lampreys are also predaceous and, unlike eels, feed on large fish. There are two types of sea lamprey: anadromous, and those restricted to fresh water river systems. Prior to the construction of dams in the mid-1800s, these fish were common to virtually every river and stream in the Commonwealth. Dams blocked the migration routes of the lamprey and the industrial pollution often destroyed or altered their habitat. The recent construction of fishways for anadromous fish has allowed these eel-like fish to return to the Westfield and Connecticut River basins. Sea lampreys are parasitic and live by sucking the body fluids out of a host species. This is done using a disk-like suction mechanism that houses teeth and a grasping tongue. The host fish will often struggle to survive, but is often left dead or dying. Experts estimate that a landlocked sea lamprey can kill as mush as 18 pounds of fish in the course of its life. In many parts of the country, especially the Great Lakes region, the sea lamprey is an exotic species and is considered a major cause of loss of biodiversity. Source: An Annotated Working List of the Inland Fishes of Massachusetts. By K.E. Hartel, D.B. Halliwell, and A.E. Launer