Talk:Sea lamprey

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[edit] Question about the victims

Victims typically die from blood loss or infection.

The article would benefit from answering the question: Out of fish that are attacked by a lamprey, what percentage of them die because of the lamprey? How many of them live a normal-length fish life, just with a lamprey sucking blood out of their side? Tempshill 19:23, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sea lamprey control in the Great Lakes

Ok, it seems that not many people know that sea lampreys are food and are actually quite a delicacy in Portugal and Spain. Instead of investing hundreds of thousand of dollars in ways to destroy them, thus wasting money, why not invest this money to find ways of making it a viable export? I mean, we are currently dumping a specially engineered poison in selected areas to cull their numbers. Not only is it not very effective, it is also harming some indigeneous species. As bad as sea lamprey are for other species, adding selective poison to the mix is a rather reckless solution. And the other solutions aren't much use either.

Can someone tell me if something is currently done to transform this problem into an actual business opportunity? Are there so little people who see the sense in this?

Lordfancypants 15:50, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that lamprey meat does not stay like fish does. You're pretty much limited to serving it fresh locally: Express shipments to Europe would probably not be profitable; And people in Canada and the US just don't find the idea of eating lamprey appetising. You might be able to change that over time, like with the taste tests mentioned in the article and stuff, but it's not exactly a science, changing people's palates that is. --216.26.202.245 (talk) 05:01, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] mercury cite?

THis article, http://pubs.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/cgi-bin/rp/rp2_abst_e?cjfas_f06-012_63_ns_nf_cjfas, mentions that Hg levels in lamprey range from ~80ng/g to ~900ng/g. Based on this page, http://www.nrdc.org/health/effects/mercury/guide.asp, US food staples are typically less than 500 ppb. If we can equate ng/g to ppb, it's clear that some lamprey exceed typical standards. But the abstract says nothing on the distribution, and I can't find another cite online. I'm removing the mercury bit until there's a cite to support it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.124.136.131 (talk) 06:49, 16 October 2007 (UTC)