Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center
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Jude, D. J. and G. Crawford (1995). Impact and expansion of the latest exotic fish invaders, the tubenose and round gobies. Page 61 in 38th Conference of the International Association for Great Lakes Research, Ann Arbor, Michigan (USA), International Association for Great Lakes Research.
The round goby, first noted in 1990 in the St. Clair River, is now found in high abundances in Lake St. Clair, near the Grand River in Lake Erie, and near the Grand Calumet River in southern Lake Michigan. The round goby now has access to the Mississippi River system via the Grand Calumet River. Tubenose gobies (a small fish <120 mm) have only been found in the St. Clair River and Lake St. Clair, and maintain small to rare populations there. The round goby is much larger (up to 300 mm), is a multiple spawner, feeds almost exclusively on a relatively unutilized resource, zebra mussels, when it is >60 mm, and occupies depths to 10 m, but prefers nearshore areas. It has decimated populations of mottled sculpin and apparently depressed those of logperch in the St. Clair River, probably by driving competing species from prime feeding, security, and spawning sites. Many piscine predators eat gobies. Gobies are ideally suited for freighter transport because: (1) they can feed in the dark, (2) prefer holes or crevices, and (3) can tolerate degraded water quality conditions. We expect them to continue to spread and severely disrupt benthic fish communities in rocky, cobble, and vegetated areas, with the potential to also affect deepwater sculpin.