Control of invasive sea lamprey in the Great Lakes with a selective pesticide (lampricide) that targeted larval sea lamprey began in the late 1950's and continues to be one of the main methods for control. Although the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, which was formed with the mandate of controlling sea lamprey, often expresses the success of the sea lamprey control program in terms of percent reduction from lake-wide pre-lampricide control adult sea lamprey abundances, there remains a large amount of uncertainty surrounding these estimates. In this study, we gathered historical data on adult sea lamprey captures from trapping efforts from the mid-1950's through the late 1970's to better understand pre-control abundance. We used this information to estimate lake-wide population abundances of adult sea lamprey using a weighted linear regression that includes environmental and lampricide treatment predictor variables. We varied trapping efficiency for early trapping data to evaluate the uncertainty in abundance estimates. Pre-control adult sea lamprey abundances in all lakes were much greater than current population sizes, but estimates were quite sensitive to trapping efficiency. In Lake Superior, declines in abundance aligned with increases in control efforts, but in other lakes, declines were occurring prior to the onset of lampricide application, perhaps because of a loss of prey. We suggest that previous estimates of pre-control adult sea lamprey abundance may have been underestimated unless trapping efficiency was greater than what is currently achieved in the basin.

在1950年代末开始，以选择性杀虫剂（杀螨剂）为目标的大湖区侵入性海鳗的控制始于1950年代后期，并且仍然是主要的控制方法之一。尽管以控制海鳗为目标而成立的大湖区渔业委员会通常以减少全湖性前杀螨剂控制成年海鳗的丰度的百分比来表示海鳗的控制计划的成功，但仍然存在很大的问题。这些估计的不确定性。在这项研究中，我们收集了从1950年代中期到1970年代后期诱捕工作的成年海七lamp鳗捕获的历史数据，以更好地了解控制前的丰度。我们使用此信息通过加权线性回归（包括环境和杀灯具治疗的预测变量）来估计成年海鳗的全湖种群数量。我们更改了早期捕获数据的捕获效率，以评估丰度估计中的不确定性。在所有湖泊中，控制前的成年海鳗的丰度远大于目前的种群数量，但估计值对诱捕效率相当敏感。在苏必利尔湖，丰度的下降与防治工作的增加相吻合，但在其他湖泊中，则可能是由于猎物的流失，因此在开始使用杀灭性杀虫剂之前就出现了下降。