Sea Lamprey (Petromyzon marinus)

Key Identification Features

Round, suction cup mouth with concentric rows of teeth
Eel-like, but lacks scales, fins, and operculum
- seven pairs of tiny gill openings
Cartilaginous skeletons

Description

The sea lamprey is an unusual fish as it lacks jaws, or bony structures. It has a disc shaped mouth, lined with rings of sharp teeth and a toothed tongue in the middle. The sea lamprey adults parasitically feed on other fish using this latching mechanism. The sea lamprey body is slender like an eel and can be between 5 and 47 inches long. The adults are brown with darker blotches along the body.

Native Range

The sea lamprey is native to the Atlantic Ocean and along the Atlantic coasts of the US and Europe. They invaded Lake Champlain and the Great Lakes through man-made canals.

Habitat and Dispersion

Sea lampreys go through life stages that require varying types of habitat. From their larval stage through juvenile, they remain in freshwater, where they are burrowed under soft substrate and consume algae. Prime habitat includes silt substrate with sand and detritus as secondary components. When the juveniles are ready, they travel back into marine habitat, the Atlantic Ocean, where they fulfil their adult life stage habit of parasitism. The adults eventually travel back into the original freshwater environment to spawn. Female sea lampreys can produce up to 100,000 eggs.

Best Management Practices

Managing this non-native species is important because this species causes economic and ecological problems.

Physical barriers have been effective in halting the movement of the fish species between life stages. Lampricide is another strategy that has been used and has had a high success rate, without harming non-target species.