Keeping the Great Lakes Great

[jimh]

I have often written about my boating in the Great Lakes using the description "the clean, clear, cold waters of the Great Lakes." Keeping the Great Lakes in that condition includes preventing introduction of invasive fish and plant species. I can tell you from my own experience that the recent past has not been kind to the Great Lakes in those regards. My shoreline properly used to be littered with the shells of dead Zebra Mussels, an invasive species that exploded to an enormous population about 20-years ago, then collapsed. And large growths of the invasive plant Phragmites used to dominate the shallow water and shoreline.

The Zebra Mussel population has now stabilized at a much lower level because they filtered so much food out of the water that the giant colonies all died. I have spent the past five years raking up their shells into huge piles and bagging them for disposal.

The Phragmites at my shoreline has been mostly eradicated, thanks to two applications of a herbicide by an agency of the State of Michigan at my request, and to my own work pulling out the plants that survived. It is now mostly gone at my place, but it continues in the region in other clusters.

The invasive fish species the Round Goby now dominates in the shallow waters of my shore, but other, larger, native fish are learning to eat them as prey, so there is a better balance than there was ten years ago.

But a new threat to the Great Lakes is the Asian Carp, which has been gradually working its way up the Mississippi River toward Chicago's Sanitary Canal that connects to Lake Michigan. This threat has been well-known for years, but finally there is some federal money coming to implement better deterrents. See this article from the excellent website BRIDGEMI.COM:

https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-envir ... -invasions

[Jefecinco]

It's excellent news that the Corps of Engineers received federal funding of almost a billion dollars to help in the fight against further invasion of the Asian Carp. It's a shame the planned work will take eight years to complete. Regardless, it's progress.