Stephen T. Schram James H. Selgeby Bruce L. Swanson Charles R. Bronte 1995 <p><span>The lake trout (</span><i>Salvelinus namaycush</i><span>) stock at Gull Island Shoal in western Lake Superior was one of only a few stocks of lean lake trout in the Great Lakes that survived overfishing and predation by the sea lamprey (</span><i>Petromyzon marinus</i><span>). Since the mid 1960s, the abundance of wild recruits measured at age 0 and the number of age-7 to -11 wild fish recruited to the fishable stock have increased. We used the Varley-Gradwell method to test for density-dependent survival between these life stages. Survival from age-0 to ages 7&ndash;11 was not affected by increasing density, which suggests that further increases in recruitment and stock size are still possible. We suggest that testing for the existence of density-dependent survival can be used to indicate when lake trout populations are rehabilitated.</span></p> application/pdf 10.1016/S0380-1330(95)71097-8 en Elsevier Density-independent survival of wild lake trout in the Apostle Islands area of Lake Superior article