Lake Huron’s Invasive Species

  • Filmmaker John Schmit says he wanted to make this film to show how even the smallest invader could mess up the delicate balance of life in the lake. (Photo courtesy of the NOAA GLERL)

You might call Lake Huron the forgotten Great Lake. There are no major cities on its shores. It doesn’t get the media attention the other four Great Lakes do. But its problems are just as bad or worse. Rebecca Williams reports a new documentary tells the story of Lake Huron’s struggle with dozens of alien invaders… and the biologists and fishermen who are trying to reclaim their lake:

Transcript

You might call Lake Huron the forgotten Great Lake. There are no major cities on its shores. It doesn’t get the media attention the other four Great Lakes do. But its problems are just as bad or worse. Rebecca Williams reports a new documentary tells the story of Lake Huron’s struggle with dozens of alien invaders… and the biologists and fishermen who are trying to reclaim their lake:

The documentary Lake Invaders is a cautionary tale about opening the door to strangers. It tells how Lake Huron was opened up to alien invasive species. The film paints fish biologists as the heroes rushing in.

“Seems like it always has to wait until it’s at a disaster level before you know, we can start fixing it… we’re constantly putting out these biological fires, running from fire to fire, to try to keep them under control. We have to find another way to approach this.”

More than 180 non-native species have gotten into the Lakes… and some of them have turned everything upside down. Long, slithering, blood-sucking parasites called sea lamprey were the first to get in. They slipped through a canal that connects the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes. Lamprey killed off most of the big predator fish in the Lakes.

Then… came the alewife. Since the lamprey had taken out the top predators… there was nothing to eat the invading alewives. In the film… biologist Jeff Schaeffer explains how the small fish took over the lakes.

“At that time over 90% of the fish biomass of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron was probably dominated by the exotic alewife. One of my colleagues refers to the Great Lakes at that time as alewife soup.”

Suddenly… there was a major stinking mess. Each spring, hundreds of millions of dead alewives washed up on shore and rotted. Not the best thing for tourism.

Filmmaker John Schmit says he was surprised to learn what happened to the lakes next.

“The funny thing about the Great Lakes is there’s Pacific salmon in them.”

Schmit says biologists brought in millions of salmon from the Northwest to control the alewives. The crazy thing is… it worked. In the film we see how a 4 billion dollar sport fishing industry was born. And the native fish of Lake Huron were pretty much forgotten about.

The salmon fishery boomed for decades. Until the alewives crashed in 2003.

Fisher Doug Niergarth says then… the salmon started starving.

“Two years ago we saw some monster salmon heads that were sitting on little dwarfed bodies. And it was the ugliest thing and rather nasty. Just skinny and withered away. It was the nastiest thing you ever done seen.”

The fishing industry started slipping away. Marinas just scraped by. Tackle shops and motels closed. People finally realized there was something wrong with the lakes.

John Schmit says he wanted to make this film to show how even the smallest invader could mess up everything… both the delicate balance of life in the lake and the people who fish it and depend on money from tourism.

“Lake Huron has been the most impacted by the newest invaders. My personal concern, my investment in the Great Lakes and making this documentary is for people to be aware of the kind of damage invasive species can do to these huge lake systems.”

He says his film Lake Invaders is an example of what invasive creatures can do… not just to Lake Huron… but any ecosystem.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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