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Animal profile

Sea Lamprey

Petromyzon marinus

PetromyzontiCoastal Atlantic waters and the rivers that drain into them; invasive populations occupy the Laurentian Great LakesLeast Concern

Field profile

The sea lamprey is a jawless vertebrate with a toothed sucking disc rather than jaws. Larvae spend years buried in river sediment as filter feeders before transforming into parasitic adults that attach to fish. It is native to the Atlantic and destructively invasive in the Great Lakes.

Scope note

This is an editorial profile, not a diagnostic field-identification guide or a substitute for current conservation assessments. Follow the cited sources on each fact for the evidence trail.

Published field notes

2023-08-13

Sea Lamprey

One chemical holds the Great Lakes lamprey back

Invasive sea lamprey devastated Great Lakes fisheries in the mid-twentieth century. Control now rests largely on TFM, a lampricide screened out of thousands of candidate compounds because larval lamprey cannot detoxify it as well as most fish can.

Read with evidence →

Sea Lamprey | Daily Animal Facts