‘Lucky Stones’ That Are Found Inside Heads of a Lake Erie Fish

Back in the early-to-mid 1900s, there was something that kids found highly collectible. Not comic books, Captain Midnight Decoder Rings, or shell fragments of a war. The strange things that kids - who lived near Lake Erie – sought to possess were Otoliths.

Huh?

Otoliths were also called “lucky stones”, small white fragments that could be found washed up on the Lake Erie shores. These ‘stones’ were actually bits of calcium carbonate that kids feverishly searched for. The sizes were from an eighth of an inch to a half inch and they came from the ears of a fish.

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For one thing, fish don’t have ears, do they? Not like the ears we know. They are actually balancing organs which, according to the National Museum of the Great Lakes, are forerunners of the inner ear mechanism. Each ”ear” can be found in little cavities in the fish skull.

These little pellets are mainly from the sheepshead – a/k/a fresh-water drum - fish. They form from salts found in the water and remain there until the fish dies. If the fish’s body is not eaten by scavengers like other fish, birds, or shoreline animals, the fish eventually rots, and the stones fall out of its ‘ears’ onto the shore. Kids would search among the small pebbles that get washed up on the shores in hopes of finding these rare stones.

Any kid who had these back in the early 20th Century were considered extremely lucky by the other kids.

Even luckier – and rarer – are the stones with the letter "L" or "J" on them. The "L" means the stone came from the right side of the fish head and the "J" comes from the left. How did the letters get there?  According to historians, these particular ones were considered valuable and used for trading. Sailors and fishermen on the Great Lakes figured they were good luck and would protect them from strong storms.

These days, when a fisherman catches a sheepshead, they can get the pebbles out of the fish skull – that is, if they are even aware they exist. Below are some images of the stones, followed by a video showing how a fisherman can extract the stones from the fish.