- [Rob] Coming up on "Great Lakes Now," is time running out for Great Lakes whitefish?

- They're burning more energy looking for food than they are getting energy out of the food that they're eating.

- [Rob] A unique restaurant with truly local flavors.

- Foraging and these time-tested traditions, those things are very important to me.

- [Rob] And the history and legacy of the Erie Canal.

- Really quite a remarkable thing, really is the beginning of the American Industrial Revolution.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] This program was brought to you by The Fred and Barbara Erb Family Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Richard C. Devereux Foundation for Energy and Environmental Programs at Detroit PBS, Polk Family Fund, DTE Foundation, and contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

(upbeat music) - Hi, welcome to "Great Lakes Now."

I'm Rob Green.

One of the most valued fish in the Great Lakes is in serious trouble, and the race is on to find a way to save them.

Kelly House, Senior Environment Reporter with "Bridge Michigan," brings us the story.

(gentle music) - My name's Bill Fowler.

A lot of people call me Bear.

I've been fishing for 30 seasons now, started in 1996.

- [Kelly] Bill Fowler and his crew are prepping their boat Stormin' Norman for a day of fishing on Lake Michigan.

Fowler is a member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians and operates out of a tribal commercial fishing harbor north of Traverse City near Peshawbestown, Michigan.

And for Native American fishermen like him, whitefish are both culturally significant and financially crucial.

Fowler says fishing is not just a job, it's an escape.

- I love to go on the water because it's going out there and leaving all the chaos behind, it's all onshore.

(gentle music) - [Kelly] Whitefish have been an important food source going back centuries, and for decades, Fowler's catch has been served in Northern Michigan restaurants.

But in recent years, he's seen a dramatic drop in the number of whitefish he catches.

- [Bill] Years ago, the catch would be two thirds or more.

We still had good whitefish in 2010, 2012.

- [Kelly] Sure enough, today, Fowler and his crew haul in mostly lake trout.

They get maybe a dozen whitefish.

- [Bill] There's a whitefish.

- [Kelly] Years ago, whitefish paid the bills, but not anymore.

And Fowler's experience isn't unique.

- Yeah, that's a good size one, medium.

(somber music) - [Kelly] Over the past 20 years or so, Michigan's whitefish harvest have fallen dramatically in Lakes Michigan and Huron, going from almost 7 million pounds in 2009 to less than 2 million pounds in 2024.

What's causing the decline?

Well it isn't a mystery.

And to get a little closer to the problem, I'm getting on another boat.

This time, I'm on the research vessel Nama with a team of divers and researchers led by Harvey Bootsma, a freshwater scientist at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.

We are in Good Harbor Bay in Lake Michigan, not far from where Bill Fowler fishes, and the culprit behind the decline of whitefish is right below us.

It's these guys, invasive quagga mussels.

- The quagga mussels came from Eastern Europe, in the ballast water of large ships coming from Europe to the Great Lakes.

A couple interesting things to know about them is one is they're the great filter feeders.

So one tiny mussel, you know, half an inch long can filter a liter or a quart of water.

They have found more.

(gentle music) - Since arriving in the lakes in the 1980s, the quaggas have multiplied.

There are now quadrillions of them living on the bottom of the Great Lakes.

That's thousands of trillions.

And together, they can filter the volume of the lakes they're in in a matter of days.

So the water here is incredibly clear, and while it's beautiful, it's actually not a good thing for species like whitefish.

The mussels have removed all the plankton and nutrients from the water, which gives it that clarity, but also means that baby whitefish are hatching into an environment where there is basically no food.

The baby whitefish want to eat tiny organisms called zooplankton, but because of the mussels, there's just not much zooplankton left for them.

- So they're swimming around like crazy, look for zooplankton to feed on, and they're burning more energy looking for food than they are getting energy out of the food that they're eating.

- [Kelly] The result is that for years now, practically all the baby whitefish seem to be dying before they can grow up.

So when the adult whitefish in the lake get caught or die of old age, there'll be no new generation of whitefish to take their place.

That's a big problem if you catch whitefish for a living.

And according to the Michigan Sea Grant, in 2020, whitefish made up 89% of the state's commercial catch, and 95% of the sales.

And that's why Harvey Bootsma and his team are here, monitoring and experimenting on the lake bottom.

They're focused on two small plots that have been cleared of mussels, each about the size of a small house.

The goal, to find techniques for controlling the mussel population.

Step one, learn about the quagga mussels.

There's some pretty basic stuff that we still don't know.

You have any idea what the lifespan of a mussel is?

- You know, we don't, not very well.

I mean they could live as long as 10, 15, maybe even longer years.

So that's one thing Rachel is doing.

She's tagging mussels to see how fast are they growing.

- In my opinion, most accurate way to measure their growth rate is by tagging them.

But not a lot of people do it because you have to keep pulling up the same set of mussels every time.

(bright music) - [Kelly] Step two, use what you've learned to bring down the mussel population.

That part is easier said than done.

The lakes are really big and the infestation is serious, but we've dealt with invasive species before.

- [Announcer] Where did this invader, the sea lamprey, come from?

- [Kelly] Back in the 1940s and '50s, the invasive sea lamprey nearly wiped out the lake trout in the Great Lakes, but we've knocked down the lamprey population with poison, which we can do because they spend a lot of their lives in rivers.

And we can treat rivers with a chemical called TFM, which kills larval sea lamprey while pretty much sparing other fish.

But rivers are way smaller than Lake Michigan or Lake Huron.

Could we use poison on mussels in the Great Lakes themselves?

- Not that I know of.

Some folks are are looking at, for example, seeing if they can find a parasite that would be specific for quagga mussels that you could then perhaps propagate when introduced to, you know, reproducing the lake and impact mussels at a really large scale.

There also is some exploration of possibility of genetic modification of mussels so that they're not effective at reproducing.

I think the both of those technologies are fairly long way off from having any active field application.

(bright music) - [Kelly] A mussel-specific plague would be really convenient, but the whitefish are running out of time.

So these scientists are experimenting with some simpler technology too.

This is the mussel masher, an 1,100 pound hunk of steel that, well, that mashes mussels.

It's an effective way to kill quaggas in its narrow path.

Trouble is Lake Michigan is over 22,000 square miles.

That much mashing just isn't practical.

Plus, there's no clear data on whether mussels return to the area once the mashing is over.

Also effective, smothering the mussels under dark heavy tarps called benthic mats.

They work by restricting the flow of water, which deprives the mussels of food and oxygen.

They can also keep larva mussels from spreading, but once again, 22,000 square miles.

(gentle music) Another idea is to buy time by moving whitefish to mussel-free inland lakes and ponds, where they would live for as long as it takes to ride out the mussel crisis.

Then in theory, when the mussels are in check and conditions have improved, we'd bring the whitefish back to the Great Lakes.

There's no telling if it will work, but the Sioux Saint Marie tribe of Chippewa Indians has reported success raising small numbers of whitefish in ponds and then releasing them into lakes when they're a few months old.

The idea is that by that time, they can eat bigger things.

So the zooplankton shortage caused by the mussels is less of a problem for them.

The big refuge for whitefish right now is Lake Superior, where invasive mussels are still sparse.

Scientists think that's because the lake's water is low in calcium, which the mussels need to build their shells.

The cold water might also hinder mussel reproduction, but even Lake Superior isn't completely mussel-free.

Lauren Isbell is a biologist and diver with the National Park Service, and she's found outbreaks of quagga mussels around Isle Royal.

- From what we're gathering, we're suspecting that they're just falling off of boats, like infested boats at this time.

We do have one location on the island where we are finding smaller mussels.

So that is indicating maybe a bigger problem, and we're not exactly sure if they're truly reproducing there or if larvae are being pushed in from another location and they're able to settle there in greater mass.

We don't really know.

- [Kelly] There is some hopeful news.

First, while the mussels are still colonizing the deeper waters of Lakes Michigan, Huron, and Ontario, in shallower waters, their numbers seem to have stabilized or even decreased.

It's way too little, way too late to mean the problem will solve itself, but it does hint at the possibility of a future with fewer mussels.

Also, there's still plenty for baby whitefish to eat in rivers and whitefish used to spawn there.

If today's whitefish can be coaxed into spawning there too, instead of in the lakes, then their offspring might have an easier time surviving into adulthood.

Finally, there's the round goby, an invasive fish that's made its way into all five of the Great Lakes.

That's not great, but round gobies can eat small quagga mussels.

When Harvey Bootsma's research team manually removed mussels from a section of lake bottom in 2016, the mussels didn't recolonize the site, presumably because the gobies ate them before they could.

Of course, gobies also eat the eggs of native fish, including whitefish.

So they're a mixed blessing at best.

Still, a fish that eats quagga mussels seems like a promising ally.

So the researchers on the Nama are trying to take a rough goby census.

- So we lay the line out, it's a 20 meter long line, lay the line on the bottom 20 meters and then a diver does a flyover over it.

So your wingspan is two meters.

So you fly over the 20 meter line and you count all the gobies within a two meter by 20 meter transcell to give us an estimate of the round goby densities on the bottom.

- [Kelly] Obviously, more research is needed.

And if the research uncovers a solution, it'll need to be implemented.

All of that costs money, and money for science projects is far from certain right now.

- We don't have our funding yet for this year, and we're not sure if we're gonna get the funding for this year.

So we're still running on kind of the fumes from last year's funding, trying to stretch that out so that we can try to keep this thing going as long as possible.

- [Kelly] The Trump administration has downsized federal science agencies that conduct and support mussel research, and there could be further cuts in the future.

Meanwhile, the business of catching whitefish continues, at least for now.

Livelihoods depend on it.

(dramatic music) Despite a dwindling supply of whitefish, Caleb Barrientos, one of the crew members working in Bill Fowler's boat, is optimistic about the future of fishing in the Great Lakes.

He has a dream of his own, to open a brick and mortar shop to sell the fishy catches directly to consumers.

- What I'm working for right now is not for me, it's for my kids.

We can just be straight from the lake to the business that we'll own as well.

So that's my end goal.

(lively music) - In a a small Michigan town, a historic property has been transformed into a unique dining experience.

From Colon, Michigan, "Great Lakes Now" News Editor Lisa John Rogers has the story.

(bright music) - I'm just pulling in to the village of Colon in Southwest Michigan where James Gray and Jacob Hagen have turned their vacation home into a farm to table style restaurant called Farrand Hall.

Let's check it out.

James and Jacob bought Farrand Hall in 2017 as a weekend getaway from their home in Chicago.

They moved in full-time in 2021, and since then, they've added two barns that serve as dining spaces for guests.

- It was a beautiful house, but it looked like it needed quite a bit of work so- - Well, because it did.

- It did, yeah.

- [Lisa] Right from the start, James and Jacob saw the potential of Farrand Hall to be more than just a weekend getaway.

- We started hosting our dinners in 2019, and the first year, we only had five dinners.

We always started with communal dining, course communal dining, and a lot of the chefs come out of the network that James has.

- It was us inviting some chef friends of ours out and saying, "Hey, come out for the weekend," and you know, do you need a weekend away from the city and we'll come out and we'll throw a bunch of tables and cook some food and we'll meet new people and create this experience out here.

- [Lisa] Dinner guests are encouraged to explore the property before they eat.

- [Jacob] When guests come to dinner, we typically allow them to come up to an hour ahead of the start time, and we do encourage people to walk around the gardens and enjoy just the sights and what's happening.

- [Lisa] But the scenery is more than just for show.

The chefs often take advantage of the small gardens and even forage for ingredients to provide local flavors for the meals.

- Foraging and these like, you know, time-tested like traditions, like those things are very important to me, and they have been for several years.

So having the 12 acres at Farrand Hall at my disposal or at our disposal as a team is kind of indispensable.

- [Lisa] This approach is shaped by Ken Miller, Farrand Hall's Executive Chef.

He leads the team in building each menu around what the landscape and the season has to offer.

- We try to be as inspired by nature and, you know, the ebbs and flows of the different seasons as much as possible.

If something's only around for a week or two, well, if you're lucky enough to come and eat it during that time, then that's the only time that it shows up.

- [Lisa] In fact, while taking me on a tour of the grounds, it was hard not to find ingredients right at our feet.

- We get wild garlic, sweet sicily, wood sorrels, trout lilies.

- [Lisa] What's the wood sicily?

What's that?

- Wood sorrel?

Right here.

It tastes a little, like it has that same kind of tartness that rhubarb does, but it tastes a little bit like green apple.

- And I could just eat it?

It's like green apple candy.

- Yeah.

- Wow.

- Yeah, I make these little seed pods, which are also kind of fun to crunch on.

So, you can see like these little spots of leaves and whatnot, this is the wild ginger, and once you recognize like what that leaf looks like, you see that it's like everywhere out here.

If you can smell past the dirt right now, you get like a very.

- Wow.

- Yeah, it's like ginger and like black pepper.

- [Lisa] Yeah, exactly.

- So part of our prep list will include coming out here and like collecting some of this and then we dehydrate it and then we grind it and then like, rather than using conventional ginger, this helps us to create that like, you know, sense of being in this area.

So like a lot of our spices come straight from this property too.

(bright music) - [Lisa] By evening, the focus shifts from the fields to the dining room.

Guests are seated at a single long table, and it was pretty easy making new friends.

- [Server] For the table of six to share.

- We often say that, you know, the food is really kind of just sort of the catalyst for bringing people together.

I think that what we have found over the years is that even though guests might question the idea of sitting at a table with a bunch of strangers, that when the experience is over and they're leaving, that it is clear that for two and a half or three hours, they talked nonstop to strangers and they're taking that experience away.

- [Lisa] And on the table, dishes that showcase the creativity of the kitchen.

Tonight, the tasting menu included smoked lamb, tomatoes and marigolds from the garden, and a unique dish called watermelon tataki.

- So we're taking watermelon and putting it through a couple different stages so that the final outcome is very much like tuna in the sense that we slice it just like you would sashimi.

It's flexible, it's very concentrated.

Even the fiber itself sort of resembles like the muscle fibers that you would see like in a piece of fish.

- Tastes like candy.

Dessert even included paw paw, a North American fruit that's pretty hard to find.

So trying it was a real treat.

- I really want people to walk away from dinner having this sense of like deep appreciation for localized food.

- It's just that kind of very simple, very casual, you know, kind of easiness of friendship and connection that just comes about when you sit and eat and enjoy a drink with people out in nature, especially in nature, that's a big part of it.

(lively music) - 2025 marks the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Erie Canal, which created a navigable connection between the Great Lakes and New York City.

Dr.

Matthew Smith, Professor of History at Miami University of Ohio, wrote about the canal for the conversation and "Great Lakes Now" News Editor Lisa John Rogers spoke with him about the origin and impact of this crucial waterway.

- So just to start us off, can you tell us why the canal was built in the first place?

- So the construction of the canal was really quite a remarkable thing in the context, or really is the beginning of the American Industrial Revolution.

And it was really, I think, the identification of a logistical challenge that faced the state of New York.

So for example, it would've taken something like five to six weeks traveling over land to have traveled from New York City in year 1800 and to have gone to Southwest Ohio where I'm right now.

So you have this governor of New York State Dewitt Clinton in the early 1800s who has the vision to build something which was not a new technology, but was new on that scale in the United States, that's to say an artificial waterway that would've connected New York City via the Hudson River to Albany and then by canal to Buffalo and Lake Erie.

And it's that connection of the waterways.

The Great Lakes, of course, as your viewers know, are, you know, central to the economy today of the United States.

But connecting that to the Atlantic in the early 1800s, that was the challenge.

- The Erie Canal didn't just move products, it moved people and ideas.

And I'm wondering how it helped shape the American identity.

- I think, you know, times of industrial and especially technological upheaval are also times of great cultural anxiety.

And that's something that we see very much in our own time.

You know, just talking to my students, I always try and make these connections between the past and the present.

In the early 19th century as these canal towns were filling up as the region was being populated by immigrants.

Also I should say, as the land was being dispossessed from its native peoples.

And you see this kind of cultural upheaval and it's like the ground is being plowed up, or the analogy that was given was like a burnt over district because you have all these people who are kind of rootless and like where you have a lot of development, you often get, you know, sort of wildfire.

And this is kind of a cultural wildfire.

So you have the anxiety of the technology, the wealth that's created by the technology, but also the dispossession and the mobility of populations.

And then people are looking for some kind of message or some kind of anchor in their lives and turning to religion in many cases.

So you have some of the biggest, most prominent religious figures of the 19th century that actually emerged from that very sort of concentrated region of upstate New York in the 19th century.

So obviously the significance of the canal system, the Erie Canal in particular was more than just religion, but I think it's a kind of interesting counterpoint to the economic history that the religion was defining the culture.

- So how would you describe the legacy of the Erie Canal?

- In terms of the immediate economic impact of the canal, you know, the travel times were slashed radically from, you know, five or six weeks to a couple of weeks to, you know, cross the length of New York.

The cost of freight went down overnight by 90%.

So it creates really the economic foundations of the American Industrial Revolution.

And so if you think we're now in, you know, a new industrial revolution, which I'm sure viewers will have their own views of, you know, in terms of the legacy of technology in America, but we wouldn't be here where we are today if it wasn't for, you know, these kind of bold, big level infrastructure measures that were taking place in the early 19th century.

So as I like to say, now the foundations of American democracy have concrete foundations.

So you know, that's really the country we're in today is a direct result of people like Dewitt Clinton having the vision to build on the scale that they built and, you know, everything that followed, good and bad that came from that.

(lively music) - Thanks for watching.

You can find more about the stories in this show at greatlakesnow.org and much more about the Erie canal at greatlakesnow.org/eriecanal.

While you're on our site, please follow us on social media and subscribe to our newsletter for more of our stories.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] This program was brought to you by The Fred and Barbara Erb Family Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Richard C. Devereux Foundation for Energy and Environmental Programs at Detroit PBS, Polk Family Fund, DTE Foundation, and contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

(upbeat music) (bright music)