Great Lakes Mass Marking Program Act of 2025

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues for considering my important legislation, the Great Lakes Mass Marking Program Act, today.

I thank my friends, Representatives Huizenga and Walberg, for their bipartisan support and partnership on this bill. I also thank Chairman Westerman and Ranking Member Huffman for their support.

Mr. Speaker, the Great Lakes States and Tribes, along with the Fish and Wildlife Service, annually stock millions of salmon and trout to restore native fish populations, diversify sport fisheries, and control invasive forage fishes within the Great Lakes. However, little is known about how well these fish survive, contribute to the fisheries, and reproduce in the wild. This is where mass marking comes into play.

Mass marking is the practice of tagging large numbers of hatchery- raised fish so we can easily distinguish them from the wild fish population.

The planned method within the Great Lakes is to clip the adipose fin, the small fin on the dorsal side near the tail, combined with a coded wire tag, or CWT. A CWT is a 1.1 millimeter-long, tiny stainless steel wire marked with serial numbers denoting a specific group of fish.

This tag can be extracted after recapture, which will provide biologists with key population characteristics, such as survival, movement, contribution to fisheries, growth, and their levels of natural reproduction.

This legislation would enable the Fish and Wildlife Service to mark all hatchery-produced fish within the Great Lakes. Currently, we tag only around 9 to 11 million of the 21 million fish stocked in the Great Lakes each year.

Marking all hatchery fish will drastically improve data collection, enabling better analysis of the health of wild fish stocks. This information will provide valuable insights to help develop a science- based, collaborative fishery management program. This legislation also ensures that the collected data will be shared with all relevant fishery management agencies.

We have seen the effectiveness of these types of programs in the Pacific Northwest for salmon and steelhead management. With the Great Lakes fishing economy, which is valued at about $5.5 billion, it is time we invest in this proven data-driven approach that would significantly enhance the sustainability and effectiveness of hatchery operations and fisheries management.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues again for considering this important legislation today, and I encourage my colleagues to support its final passage.

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Mrs. DINGELL. Mr. Speaker, I will note that I have no further requests for time. I thank my colleague from Michigan (Mr. Tiffany) for supporting this bill.

I invite all of my colleagues to join me fishing on the Great Lakes. It might be good therapy for this institution.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support the legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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