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Chicago sits on
the shore of Lake Michigan,

one of the five Great Lakes.

A restaurant a short walk
from the lakefront

began serving signature seafood
dishes in the 1940s.

Shaw's gets a lot of
tourist business from around
the country.

We've always served lake fish,
both whitefish and perch.

There you go.

We have
two whitefish here.

These come from Lake Superior.

And then over here

are perch fillets, yellow lake
perch out of Lake Erie.

I'd love someday to see lake
trout back on our menu,

I don't know if that'll
ever happen.

The Great Lakes have a natural
organizing force for the people
of the region.

They touch on eight states
and two Canadian provinces.

The vastness of them is
really hard to convey.

When you stand on the shore
of one, it certainly doesn't
feel like a lake.

They're very, very important
to our economy.

The fact that we've got
the world's largest source of
clean fresh water.

That's why you can have tens of
millions of people living around
the Great Lakes.

The Great Lakes are really
in our DNA.

One out of five jobs is
related to water.

Kids grow up and they
have that memory.

They associate it with their
time and their summers

with their family on
the shores of

Lake Michigan or Lake Huron,
whatever is their lake.

And fishing is an integral
part of that.

The fish that swim in the water

are part of the lifeblood of
the Great Lakes region.

The fishery in the Great Lakes
is unique.

This is a way of connecting
son and daughter to dad, mom.

Great Lakes fishing
is first described in documents
dating to the 17th century,

when European explorers first
saw Indigenous people

catch tremendous quantities
of fish.

We have a relationship
with fish.

We survive because of these
relationships.

And these relationships
we can think of them with fish,

but also with the water,
with the air,
with the medicine plants.

All of creation.

So to us,
the importance of fishing

is part of that full
relationship with
the natural world.

For most of history,
people simply assumed that
the Great Lakes

were so vast and packed
with fish

that there would always
be plenty to catch.

But by the 1950s,
everything had changed.

The fish most important to
people were nearly gone.

The fish disappeared.

No one could explain it,
let alone fix it.

Whether you were in
Lake Ontario, or Lake Superior,

or everywhere in between,
it was dire.

From small towns up
to major cities,

it was people's livelihoods.

Short on hope,
some remarkable people
tackled the mystery.

Their odd discovery still
menaces the Great Lakes today.

Their battle against it
dramatically changed

how people from all walks
of life connect with these
freshwater seas.

People fish the Great
Lakes for different reasons.

Recreational fishing,
commercial fishing,
and subsistence fishing

are three very different types
of fishing, and all of them are
incredibly important

to both the history
and current realities

of the Great Lakes.

People began fishing
to survive long before the
first Europeans arrived.

The Anishinaabe people,
or the Chippewa,

bands that are in the area,

were a nomadic people.

For subsistence, they would
go out from shore and fish.

Along the shores of
Lake Superior,

they would harvest
primarily in the fall

when the whitefish or the lake
trout would come in to spawn.

The subsistence fishery provides
food to the family.

It's very important.

Subsistence fishing is
fishing for survival.

Sport fishing is more
for personal enjoyment.

From the 16th century on,

European immigrants poured into
the Great Lakes region,

and many brought
a passion for fishing.

Freshwater fishing had been
a recreational pastime

in Europe for centuries,

and a status symbol
among elites

who fished for salmon, trout,

whitefish, and other
freshwater varieties.

Long before Columbus stumbled
upon the New World,

overfishing threatened lakes
and rivers across Europe,

and nobles blocked access
to prime fishing spots.

Things only worsened.

When the first European
military officers

and entrepreneurs arrived in
the Great Lakes region,

they found its tremendous
abundance

of freshwater brimming with
fish species

they favored back home.

One type of fish proved
especially enticing.

Each fall, Atlantic salmon
leave the open sea

to spawn in rivers from
Scandinavia to Spain,

and anglers have stocked
them for centuries.

They also move up
the St. Lawrence River
into Lake Ontario,

crowding into tributary
rivers to spawn.

As the European immigrant
population on its shores grew,

more and more people
targeted them.

By one account, the haul
on the North Shore in 1820

was so plentiful that,

The impressive hauls
drew other immigrants

to Lake Ontario,
who launched a boom in
another type of fishing.

Great Lakes
commercial fishing, I would
say it's always been here.

We'd always been getting fish
that we traded with each other,

that we traded with
other people.

Fishing was part of
our economy.

Not a cash economy,
necessarily,

but certainly an economy
of barter and trade.

Non-native people came
into the area.

They decided to figure out how
they could capitalize on it.

From the time of European
settlement in the region,

the commercial fishery
was also a major component
of the economy.

It's one reason why people
came to the region.

Salmon was fished heavily
in Lake Ontario.

They would use seine nets
along the shoreline,

across shore and bay areas
of the lakes.

As cities expanded,

spawning streams were dammed to
power gristmills and sawmills.

And commercial fishing boomed
with the swelling population.

So people used bigger
and bigger nets,

capable of snaring scores
of fish at a time.

So these were fishing operations
that reached back deeply,

deeply into the colonial period.

And the colonial period is ripe
with stories of dam building

and water diversions
and innumerable
environmental changes

that absolutely devastated
fish populations.

By 1860, Lake Ontario's
Atlantic salmon were gone.

Commercial fishermen at
the time,

simply looked at the lake
as a bounty.

They had never seen
freshwater resources

of the size and breadth
of the Great Lakes,

and they were viewed as
an inexhaustible resource.

By the time
Lake Ontario's Atlantic salmon
fishery collapsed,

European immigrants
fished every Great Lake.

The commercial fishing industry,
during the 19th
and 20th century,

was significant and embedded
throughout the Great Lakes.

Commercial fishing was
intricately tied

to the development of
the entire Great Lakes region
as we know it today.

Nowhere compared
to Lake Erie.

It sat at the heart of
America's industrial boom.

Smelters, refineries,
and factories packed
the waterfronts

of its lake-shore cities,

transforming raw materials
into products

bound for East Coast
cities and Europe.

Workers from around the world
flooded into the region.

And commercial fishing boomed
to help feed the exploding
population.

At the dawn of
the 20th century,

more than 100 million pounds
of fish were hauled from

Lake Erie's shallow
depths each year.

The commercial fishery
of Lake Erie targeted
a variety of fish species,

but most important
to that commercial fishery
was lake herring.

They were actually
ciscoes, or chorogonus artidae.

The reason why they got the
name herring is because

in the Atlantic Ocean there's
a native herring species
that's marine,

or salt water, and they have a
similar role that they play

as the herring in
the Great Lakes,

even though they're entirely
different species.

The fishing industries
around Lake Erie were built
on lake herring.

The shipping of fish,
the processing of fish...

It allowed cities to
be built near the water,
both in Ontario and the U.S.

When the Lake Erie cisco
fishery is at its height,

the commercial fishing
industry is experiencing

a lot of the same developments

that are taking place
in manufacturing.

Schooners are becoming
fish tugs.

Nets aren't being pulled out of
the water by hand anymore.

There are steam lifters.

You have these
technologies emerging,

and you have people learning
to use these technologies

in a very heavily
extractive way.

Lake Erie is much more
industrialized,
much more capitalized,

and much more resource-intensive

than the commercial fishery
was in Lake Ontario.

It's the same industry
with nicer mechanics.

In 1924, more than
32 million pounds of herring

were hauled from Lake Erie.

A year later, the catch crashed

to little more than 5 million
pounds and kept falling.

Everyone blamed everyone else.

No one had any idea what
happened to these fish.

All of a sudden,
there were no fish for those
fishermen to catch.

And this had huge ramifications,
well, for the economy.

It was really an impetus
for full-scale Great Lakes
science to begin.

Science into those fisheries
and what was going on.

We see a real investment,
particularly on the U.S. side,

from the U.S. Bureau of
Fisheries,

clearly driven by the economic
importance and value
of the fishery.

Otherwise, this investment
would not have been made.

The Bureau of Fisheries
opened a research laboratory

in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Its first director was the
fisheries biologist,

John Van Oosten.

He started out more or less
as a troubleshooter

for complaints that fishermen
had about particular stocks.

He really tried to find out
what was causing grief
to the fishermen

and to correct it.

Lab scientists began
to investigate a range
of potential causes,

from toxic dumping by
the region's factories
and chemical plants

to whether fishing nets
killed too many small fish

before they reached
reproductive age.

While scientists focused
on Lake Erie,

the markets moved their focus
to the upper lakes,

Lake Michigan, Lake Huron,
Lake Superior.

The commercial operations
were widespread throughout
the Great Lakes.

As you moved up the lakes,
you moved more into whitefish
and lake trout.

Lake trout are
the natural top-level predator

that once ruled all
the Great Lakes.

The largest ever taken
weighed 102 pounds.

The lake trout's probably
the most important

species of fish in
the Great Lakes.

They were a great
commercial fish.

They're large,
they yield a lot of flesh,

they're a really good return
on investment for fishermen.

It was just too easy to throw
a net in the water,
and pull money out.

That was far too easy.

Mark Rude's family
came to Minnesota from Norway

and began fishing
Lake Superior a century ago.

By the time
I was 12 years old,

I was involved with going
out on the lake

and working with the boats,
maybe helping to clean fish.

By the time I was 14,
I was taking one of the boats

and going out and doing
the nets myself.

Lake trout were what
everybody was looking for.

Way back in the old days

why, fat lake trout, or as
they're called up there,

siscowets, were desired.

Ralph Wilcox grew up fishing
Lake Superior's Whitefish Bay.

They got a lot of
names for them.

They're deepwater trout,
they're siscowets,

they're a lot of things,
you know, fat trout.

There's about 10 or 12
different varieties

Grandpa and Dad used to
say out there.

It depends on your habitat
where you catch them.

They'd all look alike,
when you put your nets
in a particular area.

You move your nets
a little ways away,

now you're liable to get fish
that looked entirely different,
still lake trout.

Manitoulin Island sits across
Lake Huron's North Channel

from the rest of Ontario.

George Purvis' family
launched a commercial
fishing business here

five generations ago.

We started here
in the late 1800s.

The fish were mainly
lake trout.

From the early 1900s,
where I have records,

the catch of lake trout
was approximately

350,000 to 450,000
pound a year.

A couple of times it made
500,000 pound.

Most towns on
Lake Huron's shores date
to the logging era

when timber companies built
lakeside sawmills to process
and ship white pine

from the forests
covering the region.

When the big cut or
the harvesting of timber,

which was central to that
northern part of the Midwest,

depleted the resources
and moved out of the area

and many of those companies
relocated to the south,

the commercial fishing
industry remained

a viable economic
alternative for people

that needed work and resources
in the region.

My Grandmother Mertz,
who lived in Rogers City,

owned part of the fishery
and her sons,

Clarence, Lawrence, and Louis,

my father, fished trap nets.

My dad was fishing down
in the Harbor Beach area

in 1934 when he drowned.

And then my mother took over
the fishing business.

My mother had no babysitter.

I grew up on that boat
'cause she worked on the boat

as well as my sister.

We had eight deep trap
nets that we put in
the straits here.

We used to catch
a lot of trout.

Lake Huron's fish
weren't immune to problems.

Lake Trout and all three
of the upper Great Lakes

underwent long-term declines.

The trajectory of decline
steepened dramatically.

Stock collapses reached a point
where the commercial fishermen

basically had to either
quit or move.

Different types of fishermen
are fishing

different types of gear,
and it's their fault.

It's not my fault.

But then they also start talking
to their legislators,

you know,
their members of parliament

or their representatives,
and say,

"Hey, you know,
our entire community

is based on this fishery.

If we don't do something about
it, it's going to disappear."

On the U.S. side,
those politicians looked to
John Van Oosten

and the Ann Arbor Federal
Fisheries Lab for answers.

As the Lake Huron fisheries
declined toward collapse,

fisheries biologists led by
John Van Oosten recognized

that they were seeing a replay
of population declines

that had already taken place in
Lake Erie and earlier in
Lake Ontario.

Van Oosten's being paid
by the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries.

He's not really looking
at fish for fish's sake

and the ecosystem,
but he's really trying to
get to the bottom of what

is happening to these
valuable species

and, you know, what can we do to

return them to their
abundance and sustain them.

Van Oosten knew
the Lake Huron catch
was declining,

but the sudden crash just
didn't add up.

After all, Lake Huron was
different from Lake Ontario
and Lake Erie.

Far fewer dams blocked
spawning streams,

and there were no major
industrial cities on its shores

with factories heavily
polluting the water.

Lumbering was the big industry
on Lake Huron,

and floating logs downstream
and across the lake

had destroyed spawning habitat.

But that wasn't anything new.

Like lakes Ontario and Erie,

overfishing was the most
obvious culprit.

It finally led to direct
involvement by federal, state,

and local political
bodies to come

together and try to address
the loss of these resources.

There was a treaty
proposed in 1946,

it gave regulatory power to
a binational commission.

Managing this
binational resource means
we have to think about things

like limiting the catch and the
size of fish that you can take

and how many you can take
and what gear you can use

and those are all sort of
regulatory kinds of decisions.

John van Oosten believed
strongly in regulations

and saw them as a way
of maintaining

the financial viability
of these fish stocks that
were being overfished.

They then ran into the very
organized political resistance

of the commercial fishing
industries themselves.

Political and elected officials
were not always in agreement,

especially after the New Deal
when some were still
you know chafing

from the great expansion
of the federal government.

Cross-border regulations were
not going to be issued.

Consistent regulations
were not in the cards.

As things went from
bad to worse on Lake Huron,

word reached van Oosten
about a curious development.

On a bright spring day,

some young people hiked
to a waterfall on
the Ocqueoc River

near Rogers City, Michigan.

They arrived to find their
favorite swimming hole swarming

with strange eel-like
creatures.

They hurried back to
town and told a game
warden what they saw.

The news reminded
John van Oosten of
another strange incident.

Alexander Crewe and his
brothers lived on Lake Erie's
Ontario shore.

On the morning of
November 8th, 1921,

Crewe and his helper motored
to one of several nets

he and his brothers left staked
into the lake bottom.

As they filled box after
box with whitefish,

something odd occurred.

They came across a truly
bizarre creature.

None of them in the boat had
ever seen anything like this.

Alexander Crewe lifted
up the fish

with this creature attached,

ripped it off the fish,

and put it in a jar and
sent it to the University of
Toronto to be analyzed.

The creature was identified
as Petromyzon marinus,

the sea lamprey,

a creature that's native
to the Atlantic Ocean

and not supposed to be in
the Great Lakes.

We have four species of native
lamprey in the Great Lakes.

Sea lampreys are wildly
different than our native
lamprey species.

They grow two to three times
the size of a native lamprey.

Sea lamprey were
known to be in Lake Ontario,

but Crewe caught the first
one ever found in another
Great Lake.

To understand how remarkable
that was,

it helps to know something
about Great Lakes geography.

The Great Lakes region holds
one-fifth of Earth's surface
freshwater.

The Great Lakes are really
one big system

and arguably one big slow-motion
river flowing out to
the Atlantic Ocean.

Rivers connect
the Great Lakes.

The most famous landmark along
a connecting waterway is
Niagara Falls,

over which water from Lake Erie
cascades almost 200 feet

en route to Lake Ontario.

Nature split the Great Lakes
into two distinct aquatic
ecosystems.

Fish and other aquatic
creatures migrated freely

from Lake Superior
to Lake Erie.

They also migrated between Lake
Ontario and the Atlantic Ocean.

But Niagara Falls was
an impassable barrier.

Niagara Falls would have
stopped anything from
getting into Lake Erie.

Nothing could make it
over those massive falls.

At least before
Alexander Crewe's odd catch.

Crewe caught his sea lamprey

200 miles upstream
of Niagara Falls.

Despite the curious location,
no one paid much
attention to it.

The sea lamprey wasn't seen as
being particularly dangerous

when it first appeared.

Six years passed
before another sea lamprey
turned up in Lake Erie.

And this time latched onto
a whitefish near Sandusky,
Ohio in Lake Erie.

John Van Oosten himself went
to confirm this sea lamprey
sighting.

He'd studied reports
about damage they'd caused
in Lake Ontario

and New York's Finger Lakes.

One report from 1897
called sea lamprey...

Having fastened itself,
it rasps away with the saw-like
teeth on its tongue

until it has worn through
the thick skin or scales

of its victim.

Then it has nothing to do but
to remain attached to the fish

and be carried around by it,
sucking blood when it's hungry

and occasionally rasping away
at its raw flesh,

making the hole deeper
and deeper,

if its victim has any
blood left.

Or if not,
it seeks another fish.

They're very primitive,
jawless fish that resemble eels.

But unlike eels,
they don't have paired fins,

jaws, or bony skeletons.

Lampreys are native
to the Atlantic Ocean.

They co-evolved there with
much larger host-species,

attaching to hosts that are far
larger than anything we have
in the Great Lakes.

So, in the Atlantic Ocean,
they act as parasites.

In fact, they're imperiled
in the Atlantic Ocean.

In the Great Lakes,
they are much larger than their
hosts in a relevant sense.

And when they attach
to the host,

they actually serve more
as a predator than a parasite.

There were some individuals that
were very alarmed at the start.

They were the ones that actually
knew the most about
the sea lamprey.

John Van Oosten
was one of them.

He knew that the swarming
mass at the Ocqueoc Falls
swimming hole

could spell catastrophe for
the already struggling fishing
families on Lake Huron.

But ten years had passed
since he identified the
Sandusky sea lamprey,

and no more had been reported
until the previous year,

when a skipper walked
into the Milwaukee Museum

carrying one attached to
a Lake Michigan lake trout
he'd caught.

As the fish swims,

logically you would
think the next step for
the invasion would be

through the Detroit River
into Lake Huron

and maybe through the Straits
of Mackinaw, around that area.

That is not at all what happened
and it's quite strange.

The next lamprey that was
detected was found all
the way over

in Lake Michigan
near Milwaukee.

It shocked everyone
at the time,

and no one could explain
how this jump happened.

A museum biologist,
T.E.B. Pope identified it

as the first sea lamprey
found in a Great Lake

upstream of Lake Erie.

Pope alerted the noted
ichthyologist Carl Hubbs

who helped him pen an article
delivering an ominous warning.

John Van Oosten
asked the Michigan Department
of Conservation

to have its game wardens look
out for them in other streams.

Another squirming horde
spotted near a cider mill

in Rochester, Michigan,
20 miles inland

from the nearest
Great Lakes waterway,

confirmed his worst fears

that something
alarming was underway.

As the wriggling
creatures were spotted

in more and more tributaries,

fishing families began
seeing a new kind of carnage.

The first sea lamprey
that they saw here,

apparently they say they
brought it to shore in 1934.

They played with it, thought
this was a real oddity,

and didn't know what
to think of this thing.

By 1944, the fish were dead
on the bottom of the lake,

especially in the fall
when they were spawning.

If you swept your nets a
bit on the bottom when
you're pulling them up,

it tugs and stinks so bad,
you couldn't stand

to be on the boat from
all the big fish laying
on the bottom.

I was about seven when I saw

my first sea lamprey
on a whitefish,

and I remember workers
on the boat told me

that was going to be my job
to take care of those,

and so I had
the knife in my hand

and I cut that sea lamprey
in about four or five pieces

before he threw it back in.

So that was that.

The Michigan
Department of Conservation

built a device on the Ocqueoc
River to trap sea lamprey

and gauge the size of the
spring spawning run there.

They caught over 3,400
spawning phase sea lampreys.

The Great Lakes Basin has
thousands of tributaries,

so 3,400 sea lampreys in one
small river like the Ocqueoc,

that's a huge red flag.

This was looking like a massive
infestation for the Great Lakes.

But why Lake Huron?

Two great lakes lie between

the sea lamprey's
natural habitat,

the Atlantic Ocean,
and Lake Huron.

Why didn't sea lamprey cause

a similar level of
destruction there?

The sea lamprey needs
access to high-quality water

upstream in every
river where it spawns.

It was in Lake Ontario
for quite a while,

did do a lot of
damage initially.

Its spawning habitat
was really depreciated.

If you look at old maps,
you'll see that

every river had 10, 12,
15 mill dams on it.

The next lake it got
in was Lake Erie.

A lot of the Lake Erie
streams, they were polluted.

They were marginal
for the sea lamprey

to really expand
its population.

The lake trout, which
was the primary prey,

was already essentially
gone from Lake Erie.

It exploded in Lake Huron next.

In 1940, more
than 2,726,000 pounds

of lake trout were caught in
Lake Huron and Georgian Bay.

By 1946, the catch had dropped

to only 760,000 pounds
and kept falling.

By 1944, the lake trout
were pretty well gone,

and then we started fishing
whitefish on a regular basis

to try to make a go of it.

When we fished out here,
especially in the fall,

we would get a washtub full
of lamprey every day

attached to the whitefish,
and it was really bad.

We would just see all the fish
on the bottom of the lake dead

with the lamprey marks on them
and it was pretty obvious
what was gonna happen,

that it wasn't going to
be only a matter of time.

The late 1940s is
when we start seeing

lamprey mentioned at
congressional hearings
and parliamentary debates.

Fred Bradley,
the congressman representing
Rogers City, Michigan,

persuaded his colleagues
to hold a hearing about
the catastrophe

devastating Great Lakes
commercial fishing.

The head of the Michigan
Fish Producers Association

testified before
the House Committee.

Even some of the most diehard
anti New Deal-ers out there

would say in the
congressional hearings

that there is no way we're
gonna tackle the lamprey problem

until we work across borders

and we have
the federal government

with its resources step
in to deal with the problem.

The hearings
convinced Congress

to fund research on ways
to control sea lamprey
in the Great Lakes.

The allocation was a mere
$20,000 per year for 10 years,

the equivalent of about 270,000
per year in current dollars.

John Van Oosten's federal
lab led the effort.

Van Oosten understood
that no one had a clue

about how to control
sea lamprey, and that
had to change.

He needed someone tenacious
with innovative research skills

and a dogged attention
to detail

to discover their
vulnerabilities.

A University of Michigan
graduate student caught
Van Oosten's attention.

Vernon Applegate grew
up in Queens, New York,

and served in the army
during World War II.

His mil-spec discipline
and determination

impressed Van Oosten
who offered him

the chance to earn his PhD

by developing the intel needed
to wage war on sea lamprey.

Vern Applegate is
a big part of this story.

He's a pioneer researcher
in the sea lamprey world.

Van Oosten sent
Applegate to Rogers City

to set up shop at a former
Depression-era

Civilian Conservation
Corps camp

with an earshot of
the Ocqueoc River.

He tapped its ready
supply of sea lamprey

to launch the most
detailed study ever made

on the animal's lifecycle.

Vern Applegate was
a relentless researcher

and a hard worker.

It was actually said he lived
on cigarettes and coffee.

He applied a military
mindset to his new mission.

Applegate assembled
a team of conservation
workers and locals.

Cliff Kortman hired
on as a handyman.

I come here and asked
for a job and Dr. Applegate
gave me a job.

So I stayed on for 33 years.

Over the next three years,

Applegate's team measured
the sea lamprey invasion

and studied the organism's
behavior and spawning streams.

In December 1949, Applegate
delivered an alarming report.

Where the first
Ocqueoc River weir

caught 3,466 adult sea
lamprey migrating upstream,

five years later, new weirs
there trapped more than 24,000.

Commercial fishing
families were only too aware.

When the
sea lamprey come along,

we were running two gill net
tugs and a trap net operation.

As the fish got fewer
and fewer,

we had to go down to one
boat, lay off two crews.

We stopped fishing
entirely in the mid-'50s.

Whole operations of commercial
fishing boats moved

through the straits
into Lake Michigan,

and then they contributed

to an already
serious decline there

by adding even
more fishing effort

and mortality onto those stocks.

And then some of
the fishing operations

moved over to Lake Superior.

Stuart Sivertson's family

was already well
established there.

My grandfather came here
with two brothers in 1892.

He came to Duluth
emigrating from Norway.

He was in it for good.

I don't think he ever did
anything other than fishing.

And they learned about
opportunities at Isle Royale

and he raised
children who wound up

getting involved in the
commercial fishing industry.

They managed to garner
a fairly large fraction

of the catch from Isle Royale.

We first heard about the lamprey

at Isle Royale in the 1940s.

This terrible thing had
happened in Lake Michigan

where the annual
catches of lake trout

had gone from 6 million pounds
annually to 400 pounds

within a stretch of
about three years,

A catastrophe
has been visited

upon these fisheries
by the invasion

of a voracious marine
predator.

Commercial catches
diminished as this parasite

multiplied in
unbelievable numbers.

And then tragically
and abruptly,

the lake trout fisheries
of Lakes Huron and Michigan

collapsed completely as the
fish all but disappeared

from the fishermen's nets.

We were warned by fishermen
from down on the lower lakes.

I remember, as a youngster,
seeing a magazine.

It was Stag magazine
that had a picture

of a fellow staggering out of
the waters of Lake Michigan

with lampreys
hanging on his chest

and a horrified
look on his face.

Newspapers
dubbed sea lamprey

"Dracula of the Lakes,"
spreading the hysteria.

The question was,
is this problem gonna hit us

here in Lake Superior?

We were at a loss as to
what we were going to do.

Vernon Applegate presented

his doctoral
dissertation in 1950,

providing the first
scientific description

of the sea lamprey's
remarkable life cycle

in the Great Lakes.

It all begins when lake
water warms in the spring

and adult sea lampreys
venture from deep open water

to gather near shore,
where streams drain the land.

They anxiously roam there
until the water warms

to just the right temperature,

signaling optimum
conditions for procreation.

Then, under the
cover of darkness,
the lampreys move inland,

squirming their way
upstream in search

of suitable river beds where
they spend days building nests.

Once all is ready, males and
females move onto the nests

and intertwine in wriggling
embraces that mix male sperm

with tens of thousands of
eggs released by each female.

Their writhing kicks
up small pebbles

and sand grains from the nest

to which a sticky substance
on each egg's surface adheres.

The pebbles and
sand carry each egg

back into the nest,
anchoring them there.

Lamprey repeat
their mating dances

again and again over
the course of a day or two.

Then with nothing left
to give, they die.

Within two weeks,
hatchlings appear.

Lamprey larvae are
called ammocoetes.

The lampreys live
as harmless larvae

in the tributaries

and filter microscopic
organisms from the water
as feed

and grow from almost
microscopic size

up to about five to six inches.

You'd never know
they're there,

but hundreds of thousands
of larval sea lamprey

can live under the muck
in an infested river.

After about four
years, ammocoetes metamorphose

into free-swimming juveniles
called transformers.

Their mouths become
spiny fish clamps,

and their digestive tracts
convert to handle
different food.

When these changes complete,

transformers migrate
to open water

and enter what Vern Applegate
called the lake phase.

They're now
fish-seeking missiles,

ready to spend up to 18
months latching onto fish

and draining them of
their bodily fluids.

Each lamprey can destroy
40 pounds of fish

in about 12 to 18 months while
they're out there feeding
in the Great Lakes.

So in a very short
period of time,

you can have huge
numbers of lamprey

and each lamprey is
killing or devastating

a large amount of fish.

After serving
their destructive

term of gluttony, lamprey
answer nature's springtime call

to move shoreward and
await the water temperature

green light to head
into streams

and pass the torch
to a new generation.

Vern Applegate's studies
learning the natural history

of the sea lamprey to look for
the points in the life cycle

where control could be feasible,
that was critical.

When Applegate
delivered his dissertation,

few lake trout remained in
Lake Huron and Lake Michigan.

Economic losses
have been severe.

On Lakes Huron and Michigan,

entire fleets have
been tied up.

Equipment and buildings have
been abandoned to the elements.

How did such
a destructive invader
get past Niagara Falls?

Most blame the Welland Canal,
which bypasses the falls,

lifting ocean-going
vessels more than 200 feet

from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie.

The canal opened
for shipping in 1829,

so if it's to blame,
why did almost a century pass

before Alexander Crewe
caught the first sea Lamprey

known to have entered
Lake Erie?

Today's Welland Canal
is not the first configuration.

The Welland Canal
was not much more

than a glorified
ditch in the 1800s,

and it was fed
from a water source

in the middle of the
Niagara Escarpment

and created the Welland Canal
channel that split two ways,

so there was no unified flow

through the canal from
Lake Erie into Lake Ontario.

When the canal
was upgraded

to handle larger vessels,
the original water source

proved incapable of providing
the increased flow required.

Engineers tapped Lake Erie,

whose water began
flowing downstream

through the entire canal.

For sea lamprey, that
made all the difference.

Sea lampreys are
programmed adaptively

to move into rivers through
something called positive
rheotaxis.

What a lamprey does is feels
the current with its face

and it instinctively
swims upstream.

After the turn of the century,
when that Welland Canal was
modified, deepened,

and began to flow from Lake Erie
directly into Lake Ontario,

we essentially turned that
canal into one giant river.

Sea lampreys
moved through into Lake Erie

and just continued
right upstream

through connecting
channels from lake to lake

and up the thousands
of tributaries

that feed those Great Lakes.

The economic devastation

spurred the US Congress
to approve emergency funds

to expand the fight
against sea lamprey.

A lot more changed that year.

John Van Oosten retired

and turned the Ann Arbor
Federal Lab over
to James Moffet,

who shifted focus from
studying sea lamprey

to finding ways
to eradicate them.

He hired Applegate
to lead the assault

and laid claim to an abandoned
US lifesaving service

lifeboat station on
Lake Huron's Hammond Bay,

near the mouth of
the Ocqueoc River,

where Applegate devised
a new battle plan.

Prevention of spawning through
the blocking of the stream,

the destruction
of larva lampreys

before they emerge from
the mud and silt flats,

and the destruction of
the newly transformed migrants

on their way to the lake.

Of the three approaches,
the first

and third appear to offer
the greatest promise.

He focused on those.

When they found a stream
teaming with lamprey larvae

they built barriers there.

They started
mechanical weirs first,

fences across the stream,

and then the cart
worked on those fences

and they were
stopping the lamprey.

All it would take
would one breakdown,

and if it occurred
during a spawning run,

you had a spawning population
of lampreys upstream.

Mechanical
barriers came up short,

so Applegate tried
something else.

These were
the electrified barriers.

It was his big ticket idea,
almost like a silver bullet

that he thought was gonna save
the Great Lakes fisheries.

Crews strung
gauntlets of electrodes

from bank to bank powered
by a gas generator.

There was a world
of problems with these.

That electrified field wasn't
selective against any type

of fish or animal whatsoever.

Anything that got into
that electrical current

would be shocked and killed.

They quickly realized
that these were not

gonna be the silver bullet they
thought they were gonna be.

Mechanical
or electrical barriers

didn't validate
Applegate's first strategy,

so he devised versions
to test the third.

But catching
transforming lamprey,

moving from streams to
the lake didn't work either.

Three years in, commercial
fishing on four of the five

Great Lakes was all but dead,

and Applegate still had no
way to stop sea lamprey.

Some in Congress grumbled

that it was a hopeless
waste of money,

but James Moffet
refused to surrender.

Moffet shifted focus away
from blocking those migrating

adult sea lampreys and over
to the larval sea lampreys

that were living
burrowed in the stream.

At the time, there was a lot

of new technologies
coming forth,

especially in
the chemistry world.

There had been chemicals
used for pest species,

things like
controlling mosquitoes

or controlling toxic
invasive plants.

But really nothing had
ever been discovered

to selectively kill
a vertebrate animal before.

Moffet backed the research

of a University of
Michigan doctoral student

named Philip Sawyer
to try something new.

He set up shop at Hammond Bay.

They helped him set up a little
bioassay station all to himself.

What Philip Sawyer
did was to look at

all kinds of groups of chemicals

that might have selective
toxicity to lampreys.

He found that some of
the chemicals he was testing

were killing lamprey before
the other creatures in his jars,

and he also noticed that they
had this weird nitrophenol
group to them.

So he was starting to put
together these patterns.

Sawyer moved
to the East coast
after earning his doctorate,

but his work with
chemicals showed promise.

So Moffet and Applegate
transformed Hammond Bay

into a full-blown
chemical research lab.

It was a tremendous long shot
to try to find this chemical

that would selectively kill
sea lamprey without harming

other aquatic animals and
organisms in the stream.

It also couldn't harm animals
that drink from those streams.

It couldn't interfere
with crop irrigation,

human activity in those
streams, people swimming.

It had to be completely safe

and selective to
killing sea lamprey.

They followed
Philip Sawyer's lead

using 10-liter glass jars.

They would fill 'em
with five liters of water.

I'd weigh up the chemical
and put in each jar,

and we'd put two larvae
and two fish in each one,

and then every hour
on the hour, we took
the observation

and most of the time,
it'd kill the fish it didn't
kill the sea lamprey.

We simply tested any chemical
that would dissolve in water.

Chemical after
chemical was tested,

but 1953 ended without
reason for hope.

After more grueling work,
1954 did, too.

1955 was more of the same.

The number of chemicals tested
climbed into the thousands.

Meanwhile, lake trout fishing

was officially declared dead
on lakes Michigan and Huron,

and Lake Superior
showed troubling signs.

Grandfather and his
brother and my dad

fished long lines
for Lake Trout.

Lampreys started showing up
and all of a sudden the trout

that you were getting
up were so ate up

that buyers in Detroit,
Chicago where they would ship

most of them, didn't want
'em all marked up like that.

It went downhill so fast just
in a three or four year period

that you went from catching
a ton or ton and a half

of lake trout in
a day right down to

catching hardly nothing
the next spring.

My mother and father
would write regularly back

and forth when he
was at Isle Royale.

It was the only
communication available.

There was no telephone
or radio at that time.

I remember seeing my
mother crying one day

while she was reading
a letter from my dad,

and I asked her what was wrong,

and she said, "The lamprey
have reached Isle Royale."

It turned out to be
the beginning of the end

of the Lake Trout fishery for
many families at Isle Royale

and along the North Shore

and throughout all
of Lake Superior.

The fishery was collapsing.

The economic results
were terrible,

and the condition of
the resource was appalling.

There was no end in sight.

Hammond Bay
technicians soldiered on.

After nearly four years
of frustrating work,

a Dow Chemical company
product named Dowlap

finally showed promise.

The team tested it in
a stream near the lab.

It killed nearly 96%
of the sea lamprey

in the stream without
harming any other organisms.

But it proved to
only be effective

in really large concentrations.

So you just needed too much
of it to get the job done.

So Cliff Kortman
weighed scores more chemicals

and lab technicians tested
them in glass containers.

While Applegate and the
Hammond Bay chemistry team

searched for a miracle,
James Moffet worked
on Congress.

He had help from commercial
fishing industry leaders

and a growing number of
legislators in Congress

and the Canadian Parliament.

In 1955, after years
of stubborn resistance,

the United States Congress
and Canadian Parliament

ratified a bilateral agreement

establishing the Great
Lakes Fishery Commission.

The two nations formally
joined forces to eradicate

or minimize sea
lamprey populations

and ensure
the maximum productivity

of fish of common concern
to the two countries.

Though it really took 'til we
were in pretty dire straits

to get sort of a milieu,
or a time

where US and Canada
could come together

on the Convention for
Great Lakes Fisheries,

and even then, the fishery
commission that was created

under that convention is not
given regulatory authority.

They're given authority to
manage sea lamprey populations,

but they don't have
any authority over

managing any other fish.

In 1957,
five years into the search,

Cliff Kortman weighed
another nitro-group compound

used to make color dyes

for the textile, print
and paint industries.

It surprised him.

Where Dowlap was
killing sea lamprey

at a concentration of
around 13 parts per million,

the new chemical
was killing sea lamprey

at around two parts
per million,
so substantially less,

and it was significantly
more selective

at killing those sea lamprey.

Its name
was a mouthful.

...so the Hammond Bay crew
dubbed it TFM for short.

On May 14th, 1958,
James Moffett
and Vern Applegate

watched the first
application of TFM

in Michigan's Mosquito River.

It gave off a vivid
yellowish-green color

when it was applied
to the river,

which made it easy to analyze

so that we knew what
their concentrations were.

They placed
mesh cylinders

filled with sea-lamprey
larvae downstream

to measure how the
chemical's killing power

diminished as it traveled.

Inside the cylinders,

all of the larval
sea-lamprey were dead,

all the way downstream,
so they knew right away

that they had something
big going on here.

The first test worked
better than anticipated,

prompting a second on another
Lake Superior tributary.

Again, it exceeded
expectations.

The team applied TFM

to eight more Lake Superior
tributaries that fall.

In 1959, a full decade after
Vern Applegate began,

the strategy he assumed
least promising,

attacking larvae in streams,
looked like it might succeed.

And the Great Lakes
Fishery Commission

approved an all-out assault.

Everyone focused
on Lake Superior

at the beginning of
sea lamprey control,

because lake trout had not
disappeared completely.

There were remnant populations
scattered around the lake,

unlike Lake Michigan and Lake
Huron, where they were,

for all intents and purposes,
were gone completely.

Hammond Bay teams
applied TFM to 28 streams

on the American side
of Lake Superior...

While Canadian teams
treated nine streams

on their side of the lake.

When winter ended the first
round of TFM applications,

the Great Lakes Fishery
Commission faced a decision.

Their impact on the
sea lamprey population

couldn't be assessed
for two years.

That's how long any larvae
that survived the treatment

and transformed into adults
would be in open water

before returning to the
treated streams to spawn.

Should the Commission
suspend treatments

until their effectiveness
was confirmed?

Or should they continue
the full-scale attack?

They forged ahead.

By the end of the
following autumn,

American and Canadian
teams applied TFM

to all Lake Superior
tributaries

infested with sea
lamprey larvae,

as well as some streams

flowing into Lake
Michigan and Lake Huron.

The early results were
far from encouraging.

Instead of dropping,
the spawning run count

the following spring
almost doubled.

They were still
catching huge amounts

of migrating sea lampreys,
and some chalked this up to,

"Well, maybe there
are tributaries we
don't know about yet.

reproduction that's happening
in rivers that we're not in,"

others chalked it up
to the fact

that we just aren't
killing enough,

and this just wasn't gonna work.

Undeterred,
the Commission relied

on Moffett's and
Applegate's assurances

that the story would be
different the following year.

Eighteen months later, when the
Great Lakes Fishery Commission

met at Ottawa, Ontario,

the future of Great Lakes
fishing hung in the balance.

If hordes of adult sea
lamprey had returned

to treated spawning
streams again,

the 13-year battle to
save Great Lakes fish

would be a failure...

And a fundamental aspect
of life

deeply rooted in the
history of the region

would likely be lost forever.

The Commission chairman
took the microphone.

TFM devastated
the sea lamprey population.

And there were no reports of
harm to people or animals.

The first spawning runs
after the initial treatments

demonstrated, without a doubt,

that the lampreys had been
reduced in significant numbers.

TFM accomplished
the Great Lakes Fishery
Commission's first mission,

to control sea lamprey,

freeing it to focus
on its second.

Sea-lamprey control was
the necessary first step

to restore
the Great Lakes fishery.

Without lamprey control,

fish in the lakes would
not have a fighting chance

to survive old
enough to reproduce,

or to be caught by humans,
or to lead a natural
life in the system.

Government-run fish
hatcheries had been
around since the 1800s,

and most people assumed
that hatchery-raised fish

would restore things to
how they were before
sea lamprey arrived.

After sea lamprey
control proved effective,

officials looked to
hatcheries once again.

The general assumption

was that the native fish
were gonna be restored

to revive these commercial
fisheries that were at
the docks and idle.

Lake trout were
the principle focus

of all of the effort to
restore fish populations

after sea lamprey control
was proven to be effective.

The idea was to put the native
species back in the lake,

and hopefully, that would
lead the whole system

back towards its
original state.

The effort invested
in lake trout recovery

is probably the largest-scale
species recovery program ever.

It exceeds, by quite a margin,

the amount of federal
effort invested

in any other species-recovery
in the country.

From the start,
there were problems.

No matter how many lake
trout they planted,

the populations in
Lake Huron and Lake Michigan

just wouldn't increase.

Sea lamprey weren't
targeting young lake trout,

because they really can't
target that small a fish,

something else was going on.

In the midst of being optimistic
about sea lamprey control,

we got invaded by another
species in the Great Lakes.

The alewife
is a small prey fish

native to the Atlantic Ocean

that first appeared above
Niagara Falls in 1931.

From there, it spread to
Lakes Huron and Michigan,

catching the public's attention
when mounds of smelly dead fish

washed ashore in
the early 1960s.

I remember, all up
and down Lake Michigan,

no one was going to the beach,
no one could could go swimming.

It turned what was, you know,
paradise into hell, basically.

Sea lampreys
facilitated alewives

by eliminating predators that
might have stood in the way

of alewives, or at least,
impeded their progress.

95-or-more percent of
all the fish biomass

in Lake Michigan was alewives.

They kind of threw our plans
for lake trout restoration

a curve ball, because they
turned out to be not that great
for lake trout either.

Alewives are a double-edged
sword for lake trout.

When lake trout are
smaller than alewives,

they're vulnerable to
being eaten by alewives.

But the reverse is true when
alewives are smaller than
lake trout.

So alewives were probably
one of the reasons

why lake trout could not
reproduce successfully.

Alewives prayed on
lake trout eggs and larvae,

threatening the recovery
that TFM made possible.

Beyond that, lake trout
takes several years

to reach maturity.

So it might be a decade

before hatchery-raised
lake trout that survived

could dent the
alewife population.

But what could be done?

Howard Tanner was
the Chief of Fisheries

for the Michigan
Department of Conservation.

While most people saw
alewives as a problem,

Howard saw a tremendous
opportunity.

When Howard first came
to be Chief of Fisheries,

there had been a 10-year decline
in fishing license sales,

which was the only
source of revenue

for the department
for fisheries work.

The then-director,
Ralph McMullen, said,

"You know, things
aren't going well.

You need to try
some things new."

Ralph called me into the office,
we had a long conversation,

and he ended my
conversation with,

he said, "Do something.

And if you can
make it spectacular,

why, please make
it spectacular."

What Howard Tanner did

dramatically changed the
future of Great Lakes fishing

and made sea lamprey
control more crucial

than anyone ever imagined.

Tanner knew something
about the kind of fish

that excites sport anglers.

He also knew what
those fish like to eat,

and alewives were
definitely on the menu.

The state's
Department of Natural Resources

chose the coho salmon.

A million coho eggs
were flown from Oregon.

Dr. Howard Tanner tells
why this salmon was picked.

You want a fish that's big
and beautiful and grows fast

and eats alewife, and is
attractive to the sportsman,

and one that he likes to catch,

one that fights well,
one that's beautiful,

one that tastes good.

And I guess you'd have to
ask one that's kind of dumb,

because after all,
you want the fishermen

to be capable outsmarting
him and catching him.

Before Michigan put
salmon into the Great Lakes,

anglers mostly fished smaller,
more tranquil inland lakes.

The big lakes were for
commercial fishing.

Salmon changed that.

They drew fishing fanatics
to the big lakes in droves,

and not just from local towns.

Sport anglers from
around the world

traveled to fish
the Great Lakes.

And you saw all kinds of boats.

I mean, small row boats,
speed boats, pontoon boats,

going out of the
beyond the break walls,

dangerously into open water
with very little freeboard

on many of these skiing
boats to fish for salmon.

They were that excited,
and they were catching fish.

You could go out
there without trying

and not having
a ton of knowledge

and catch a lot of
fish and quality fish,

and it was consistent.

They call it salmon
fever for a reason,

because once you start catching
salmon, it's hard to stop.

Salmon fight like crazy.

They roam
the entire water column,

so you don't always
have to fish deep,

and they return to
streams to spawn,

giving landlubbers the chance
to get in on the action.

Most importantly,
for fisheries managers,

salmon grow much
faster than lake trout

and they eat
alewives voraciously,

so they quickly put a big dent
in the alewife population.

Every state with
a Great Lake shoreline

got in on the action,

planting salmon
in their own streams.

So did Ontario, making it
an international effort.

Salmon made the Great Lakes
a world-renowned fishing
destination,

launching a multi-billion
dollar industry

that revitalized struggling
lake shore towns.

Lots of salmon early on
had scarring and-or had
sea lamprey attached,

so without the
prospect of control,

we would've never
introduced salmon.

Before the
recreational fishing boom,

TFM was never applied
to tributaries

feeding Lakes Ontario and Erie.

That changed when Ontario,
New York State, Pennsylvania,

and Ohio began stocking salmon.

It was a very high wounding
rate, so the folks down
there decided

that there was no sense of
us putting in fish if
they're not gonna survive.

So we started our original
survey work down there

in the early 70s,

and then picked up
on the treatments.

The recreational fishery
opportunities in
the Great Lakes

were really unexploited
at that time

and offered tremendous
opportunities.

The salmon introduction
kind of paved the way

for looking at the Great Lakes

as a source of recreational
fishing opportunities,

more so than it had ever
happened in the past.

Sea lamprey control
made it all possible.

Salmon are just as susceptible
to sea lamprey attacks

as lake trout are,

and so people came
back to the water.

There was a new thing
to come back to.

It was salmon fishing,
it was sport fishing.

Even fishing for lake
trout became popular again,

and still is today.

As they have
since Vernon Applegate's day,

crews still inspect streams
for sea lamprey larvae.

And treatment teams deploy

to where troubling
numbers are found.

People think that the
sea lamprey problem

was dealt with years ago.

They don't realize that
it's an ongoing program.

TFM remains the foundation

of the Great Lakes
Fishery Commission's

sea lamprey control program.

TFM stood
the test of time.

It has been studied
and followed.

Once it reaches the
open water of the lakes,

it dilutes to concentrations
that cannot even be measured.

TFM is very selective.

It's not persistent
in the environment,

it doesn't bioaccumulate,

and it's really one of the
safest pesticides there is.

Obviously, you don't
want chemicals in water,

you don't want chemicals
in the Great Lakes,

but chemicals are a form
of pollution that dilutes,

that disperses.

Invasive species are a
pollution that reproduces.

If you can find a way to
contain that explosive growth

of this living, reproducing
awful pollution,

then you gotta take
a serious look at doing that.

Sea lamprey management
and the use of chemical controls

has been going on for so long,
and it has been successful.

And so I think by and large,

people in the
environmental community,

members of the public,
don't actually think too much

about the fact
that it's going on.

We have to be
exceptionally careful

with what humans
put in the water.

I don't think that means
the method has to be stopped,

but I think a lot of
thinking needs to go into,

how can we ensure
that there continues

to be no material
deleterious effects

by introducing these chemicals
into the water system?

Sea lamprey control
is constantly evolving,

and this is really important.

It's evolving both
with technology,

but also to a changing society.

The goalposts
are moving on us.

The problem is going
to be to find a way

to control sea lampreys

when actually the Great
Lakes have been made

much more hospitable to them.

Water flows from
Lake Superior into Lake Huron

through the St. Mary's River.

Canadian and American cities,
both named Sault Ste. Marie,

straddle the rapids
where whitefish spawn,

drawing Indigenous people

long before Europeans first
came to the Great Lakes.

By the 1950s, much of
the river was transformed

into a canal and lock
system for ships,

and whitefish no
longer came to spawn.

In the 1960s, Dr. Jim Tibbles,

the director of the Sea Lamprey
Control Center at the time,

referred to the St. Mary's
River as a biological desert,

meaning that it didn't
support life of any kind.

It was highly polluted and
very little usable habitat.

The Canadian Parliament

and US Congress passed
major environmental laws

that dramatically
cut pollution.

When the water cleared,

whitefish returned to their
historic spawning grounds.

But they weren't alone.

We saw a gradual increase

in the abundance of larval
sea lamprey in the St. Mary's

to the point where it was
probably the number one source

of parasitic sea
lamprey in Lake Huron,

if not the Great Lakes.

Their numbers
rocketed so dramatically

in Lake Huron, they threatened
to destroy the fisheries

that took so long to rebuild.

There are certain rivers
that can't be effectively
treated with TFM

because of their size,
water volume.

When you get down into the
bigger connecting channels

down in the St. Clair, down in
the Detroit River area and that,

they're just so huge
and so vast

that TFM wouldn't be the answer
at all to try and treat.

As the streams tributary of
the Great Lakes clean up,

there's more and more
habitat for sea lamprey.

We need new technology
that's less costly

and can work on
these big rivers.

Lamprey are not
going to go away.

They are here to stay.
They're part of the Great Lakes

and every fishery management
decision that has been made

since the lamprey invasion
has to take sea lamprey
into account.

This is very much about
countries working together,

states working together,

communities, tribes working
together, local communities.

Sea lamprey are not only ugly,

but they're ugly for the lakes.

Don Dubin lives
near Chicago, Illinois.

Fishing is my life.

I started fishing
as a young kid,

probably, oh, five,
six years old.

My grandfather took me
out to the Chicago parks.

His basement is
a museum to his passion.

As a young kid, I dreamed of
someday catching a big
trophy fish

and putting it on my wall.

And I learned
taxidermy on my own.

Today I have all the fish
that I really tried to catch.

I became a woodcarver.

So I have become an activist

because fishing in
the Great Lakes is

such a valuable
resource for people.

Sportfishing in the Great
Lakes is one of the reasons

that people live here.

We pull people in from
all over the country

who think this is a great
fishery and come to fish.

This is a fisherman's dream.

Joe King retired
from the insurance business

and launched a hunting
and fishing club

in Indianapolis, Indiana,

that teaches inner-city
children to fish.

How do you think it's
about what you wanted?

It's about any other
fish in the world.

They are some tough fish.

Every fall,
he brings mentors from his club

to Michigan to fish for salmon.

Over 30-some-odd years
I've been coming up here.

But you see young adults.

You see women and you see
men and they're all fishing.

They just enjoy it.

It's just a beautiful place

and a true outdoorsman,
this is heaven.

Commercial
fishing came back too

and is an important
economic engine again

for First Nations,
tribal communities,

and small towns on both sides
of the US-Canadian border.

But the history of Great
Lakes fishing teaches us

that nothing can be
taken for granted.

It takes a lot of effort
to control the sea lamprey.

But without that control,

there wouldn't be any
fish in the Great Lakes.

Without
sea lamprey control,

we couldn't talk about restoring
Great Lakes native fishes.

We wouldn't talk
about lake trout.

We really wouldn't talk about
invasive species control at all,

because there just would be
no fishery out there
to talk about.

One side is good,
this side is bad.

The lamprey eel was on it.

The Hammond Bay
Laboratory still stands

on the Lake Huron shore.

In a dusty corner of
a storage shed there,

stand some forgotten cabinets
filled with index cards,

each cataloging a chemical
that was analyzed at the lab

in the search for a weapon
to defeat sea lamprey.

Vernon Applegate's
team tested thousands

of compounds acquired
from chemical companies,

universities, and other
sources around the world.

The 5,209th compound
tested

proved to be the needle
in the haystack

that no one knew
would ever be found.

Killing fish is
not that difficult.

There are chemicals out there
that will kill fish effectively.

What is difficult is
killing exactly the fish

that you want to kill
and not harming the fish

that you want to leave in
the river or in the lake.

I remember talking to
Louie King,

and he told me of the pit
that he had in his stomach

when he arrived in northern
Michigan for the first time

and looked out at Lake Huron
and just saw all this water

and thought, "How in
the world are we going

to control a species in
this vast body of water?"

It's been described
as a moonshot.

They took a long time,
very methodically,

to figure out exactly where
the chink in the armor was

in this devastating species.

It's truly a remarkable thing

to find something that
could be so selective.

If we hadn't discovered TFM,

the whole economy of the Great
Lakes would probably look

dramatically different
than it does now.

Even today, in invasive
species control science,

sea lamprey is looked at

as one of the biggest
success stories in existence.

It's one of the only cases

where a very destructive
invasive species was

completely brought under
control, held under control,

and has allowed an ecosystem
to recover and function.

It's an amazing program.
Who could have guessed

that you could actually
control these things?

The important lesson here is
that government investment

and science benefit the economy

and benefit us in our small
communities on the coasts

who really enjoy and
need the Great Lakes

as part of our culture.

The management of
sea lamprey has granted

the Great Lakes region
a second chance to bring back

a thriving, naturally
reproducing native fishery,

and that's got benefits
written all over it

for Great Lakes communities
across the region.

It required US and Canadian
ingenuity and expertise

to work together
to find the solution

and then to implement it and
to continue that program.

So we need to work together,
not just on sea lamprey,

but on other invasive species,

on other common
challenges in the region.

We don't know what other
species may be coming.

And often those mix
of other things,

we don't know how they'll
relate with each other

and with what we're
living with now.

We want to celebrate
the success of the sea lamprey
control program,

but we also want to
take it as a reminder

to try to focus on preventing
new invasive species

from getting into the Great
Lakes in the first place.

We don't want to have to rely
on technology silver bullets

or the need to continually
control a species

in order to protect
the Great Lakes

for the people who live here.

The best solution is not
allowing the invasive species

to get into the Great Lakes
ecosystem in the first place.

It's so important.
We don't want to lose this.

We've got to protect it.

I want to make sure we
have this in the future.