Yellow perch recovered from overfishing in Lake Michigan much more rapidly – by hundreds of years – than scientists thought possible, says Purdue U. Under pressure of heavy commercial fishing, the yellow perch had evolved to mature at an earlier age and smaller size. After a fishing ban in southern Lake Michigan, the fish began to reach reproductive maturity at a later age and grow larger in size.
“Every expectation was that recovery would take a long time,” said associate professor Thomas Hook in a Purdue release. “But we saw that maturation traits of perch in Lake Michigan recovered very rapidly – in a couple of decades.” Hook said the rapid recovery was a special case partly because, compared with many other harvested species, yellow perch reproduce at a relatively young age and have a relatively short life span, which means generations can evolve faster than longer-living fish.