The Pollution That Breeds: How the Great Lakes Stopped Invaders

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in 1988 someone found a small stripe
muscle in Lake St.

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Clair. and it was about the size of a
fingernail.

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Nobody had seen it in North America
before.

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And within a few years, there were
actually billions of them coating pipes,

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boats.

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And the bottom of the Great Lakes.

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It didn't look good. A lot of the fish
populations went down.

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It would like the lakes were changed quite
significantly.

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Then the Great Lakes pulled off something
that no other freshwater system

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in the world has managed. And that's what
we're gonna talk about

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on today's episode of the How to Protect
the Ocean podcast.

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I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.

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Marine biologist and science communicator
here to tell you

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all about what's happening with the ocean.

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Today we are talking a lot about ~
invasive species,

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right? It's a we're gonna talk about some
of the stories ~ that usually

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end in the same way. some something
arrives,

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they take over, and then use is like this
is here forever,

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we can't do it.

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And you feel helpless because you see
these animals here.

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And how are you gonna get rid of them?

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How do we get rid of them in the Great
Lakes?

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Like these mussels and other like
lionfish.

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How do you get rid of them into the ocean?

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And there's all these things that you you
look at and you're my gosh,

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how are we doing? ~ but this episode shows
two places where people did push back,

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and the numbers have proved that we can
manage some of these invasive species.

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I'm not saying it's easy, but it's
something that we can do.

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~

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Just to kind of give you an I an idea,

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like I've been watching the Zebra Mussels
for a while.

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This this whole invasive zebra mussels
thing since high school.

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So I was in high school in the 1990s.

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they were the poster poster child for it's
too late,

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quote unquote, it's too late. And and I've
been waiting a long time

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to tell the other half of the story.

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This was something that I did a project on
in my science and society class,

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which is one of like my favorite classes
looking back at at high school.

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And it it's something that,

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We never really talk about in terms of
pollution.

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This is a type of pollution. And we've
been talking all about pollution this
week.

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We had, the author of the second edition
of Marine Pollution,

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Dr. Judith Weiss, who's here to talk to us
on Monday about all

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the different types of pollution.

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Then we start to dive in. We looked at
sewage in New York Harbor and how it's,

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we stopped the flow and the harbor started
to recover.

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~ and recovered. Now we have, a great ~

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organization that's looking at whale
counts because the whales are back

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and the Mendaton are back. the next day we
talked about on Wednesday

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we talked about drugs in our water like
pharmaceuticals.

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to try and stop the dose and and and we
see that the the lake can recover

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and we have the technology to do that.

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And then yesterday we talked about plastic
and it it only grows when

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we make more and so that we know that we
can stop making it

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and everything is better.

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Now, every one of those pollutants needs
us to keep adding it,

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right? Like the like plastic,
pharmaceuticals,

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sewage, everything is added in there.

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But this one, the biological pollution,

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breaks that rule, right? A chemical spills
and gets diluted over time.

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an invasive species as a population gets
bigger because it reproduces.

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And that's why like some scientists call
invasive species like biological
pollution.

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living things in the wrong places and
changing the system around it.

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That's what we need to do. So let's let's
talk about,

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the zebra muscle situation and how that
started and then how we we're

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and getting to the point where what we are
doing to really stamp this out.

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Cause I think it's it's really important
when we think about

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the ramifications of this.

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So the big cargo ships that you see in at
ports carry water in their hulls

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to keep them steady, It's a called
ballast.

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So a ship takes on water in one port,

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sails across the ocean, and pumps it out
into another.

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So if it arrives in Hamilton Harbor here
in Canada in the Great Lakes,

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~ in Lake Ontario, then it will,

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it'll pump out that water. Now

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Not anymore, but it did that's what it
did.

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So along with that water comes whatever
was living in it.

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So it could be larvae, tiny crustaceans,

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fish eggs, plankton. a ship's ballast tank
is is pretty much a free ride across

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the planet. And

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In 1988, a small striped mussel was found
in Lake St.

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Clair. It's the little lake between Lake
Huron and Lake Michigan.

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And it was a zebra mussel, native to the
region around like the Black

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and Caspian seas in Eastern Europe and
Western Asia.

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It almost certainly arrived in the ballast
water.

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That's what pretty much we have on
ocean-going ships.

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it spread pretty quickly. So zebra mussels
and their close cousins,

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the quagga mussel, can pack in about
20,000.

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per square meter. That's how that's how
close they can get and that's

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how dense they can get. And they're small,

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like they're like the size of a
fingernail.

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and at some of the power plants intakes,

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so the pipes that that bring in the water,

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people have counted up to 750,000 per
square meter.

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they clog the pipes, jam valves,

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they they damage cooling systems

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I remember I worked for one of my first
jobs in private environmental consulting.

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I worked for a company, a wastewater
company,

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that would try to get rid had like a type
of natural chemical that these erbamos

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didn't like. And they would they would
help industry get rid of them from their

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pikes because they would clog them up so
much.

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Now, the estimated economic damage in
North America since they arrived runs
between

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one and one and a half billion dollars.

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that's a pretty large sum of money,

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especially when you look at all the stuff
that happens along the Great Lakes.

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And they changed the lakes themselves,

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like completely. A single adult can filter
up to two liters of water a day.

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And Lake Erie's muscle population can
filter a volume of water equal

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to the whole basin in a single day.

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Now, Lake Erie is not the biggest lake,

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but it's still a pretty big lake.

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And that made the water clear,

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which sounds to be good news. That's
great.

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Like it make it nice and clear.

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But clear water here means the plankton at
the bottom of the food

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web has been stripped out. There's like a
lot of the the brownness or

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the the the murkiness, I guess,

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of the water was plankton. And when you
don't have plankton,

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the fish that depend on it, including like
the young species like walleye

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and leg trout, pay the price. they're not
there anymore.

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And unlike a spill, the mussels

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didn't fade over time. They reproduced
every year.

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There were more and more and more.

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That's the type of biological pollution
we're looking at.

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It's not like that it dilutes,

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it multiplies. So now let's head south to
a warmer water and a fish that's pretty

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beautiful, venomous a little bit,

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and very hungry. it's the stuff that
nobody really recognized,

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like lionfish. Lionfish are stunning.

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red and white stripes, long fan-like fins,

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a crown of venomous spines. Like they're
pretty cool.

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They're native to the reefs of the Pacific
and the and the Indian Oceans.

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And for years, they were a popular fish in
home aquariums.

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And in mid-1980s, lionfish started to turn
up along the Florida coast.

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And people were like, where did this come
from?

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And most likely the explanation is that
they were released from the aquariums,

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like the marine aquarium hobby.

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So essentially people had them in the
aquariums.

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And they said, what, we don't want them
anymore.

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We don't want to ret we're not going to
return them to the store,

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which is what they're supposed to do.

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They don't want to kill them. So they
release them into the ocean because it's

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the ocean. It's one big ocean.

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This is where they should be. Well,

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yeah, they do belong in the ocean,

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but they're from Indonesia. They're not on
the Atlantic.

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They're not in the Caribbean. So since
then,

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they've actually spread through the
Caribbean,

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the Gulf of Mexico, and the US as far
north as Carolina.

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I've gone diving in the Caribbean multiple
times and I see them

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on every single dive. It's actually

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Quite insane to see them. The only time I
didn't see many of them

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was in Grand Cayman, and that was
pre-COVID.

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So that was quite a long time ago.

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Now they had every advantage. A female
lionfish can spawn every three to four
days,

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releasing more than two million eggs a
year.

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their venomous spines mean almost nothing
in the Atlantic wants to eat them.

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So there's no natural predators.

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And the native fish had never seen a
predator like this before.

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So they didn't know like to swim away.

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So lionfish had been recorded eating like
more than 70% of the native species that

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were on there, the native fish that were
on there,

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because they're predatory species.

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And in 2008, two scientists from Oregon
State University,

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Mark Albans and Mark Hicks, measured just
how much damage they do.

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On a small experimental reef in the
Bahamas,

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they compared reefs with lionfish to reefs
without.

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Over just five weeks, the reefs with
lionfish saw about 79% fewer young native
fish

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settling into that area. That's crazy.

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Like young fish are like the reef's future
and lionfish are eating.

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And I've covered this on Ocean Dakota Live
~ earlier this week,

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where we talked about how if you have a
coral reef that is suffering from
bleaching,

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having the layers of fish that you need.

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To make sure that there are fish to take
off algae,

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to allow young corals to settle after a
pretty devastating like

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six month bleaching event or six-month
heat wave event.

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It's really important to have those there,

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to have that like layers of fish and and a
and a healthy food web.

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If you don't have that, then the coral
reefs are not going to be able

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to survive for very long. So now you have
like we talked about two invaders,

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right? We two different places,

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very different places, one freshwater,

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one marine.

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And like I want to talk now like how how
people are are fighting back,

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because that's really what this comes down
to.

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This is not anymore where we're just like,

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hey, these species are here. We're just
gonna have to deal with them.

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That was part of it. But there's been
research going on for decades

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to kind of figure out how we can get rid
of them.

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So between eight 1959 and the mid 2000s,

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the Great Lakes picked up a new invasive
species,

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roughly like every six to seven months.

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It wasn't just the zebra mussel.

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Some had more impact than others.

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And scientists have said no other
freshwater system on the planet

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was invaded that often. It's almost like a
war of the species.

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And it's because, the Great Lakes are such
an important navigation area into central

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Canada and the US. Now today there are
close to 190 non-native species
established

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in the basin. And about two-thirds of the
ones that have arrived after 1959 came

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in the ship's ballast water. So Canada and
the United States went after the ballast.

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Like that's that's you found the the the
problem.

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Now you gotta go after it. So in nineteen
ninety-three,

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ships coming into the Great Lakes from the
ocean have to swap their ballast water

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out and it's at sea, replacing the fresh
or brackish water with salt water.

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So it gets rid of all those animals that
were in there.

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And anything that stays around,

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get if they're freshwater, they're gonna
get killed by the salt.

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And the idea was simple like freshwater
hitchhikers from the from the port

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in Europe usually can't survive a

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With a full strength ocean water.

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And the the early rules had some gaps.

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So ships that said they had no ballasts on
board often still carried leftover water

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and sludge in the bottom of their tanks,

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and invasive and invasions kept coming in.

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So between 2006 and 2008, both countries,

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United States and Canada, tightened up the
rules.

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Ships had to flush even those empty tanks
with salt water.

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And every ship heading into the St.

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Lawrence Seaway would have its tanks
checked.

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So they were all inspected. In 2022,

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two Canadian scientists, Anthony Ricciardi
at McGill University and Hugh McIsaac

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at the University of Windsor, looked at
what happened next.

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They compared three 13-year periods from
1981 to 93.

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19 new non-native species were detected.

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From 1994 to 2006, 26 were detected.

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So obviously that the f now they're gonna
have to really flush them out.

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From 2007 to 2019, after the tougher
rules,

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just four not native species came in.

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That's an 85% drop. The invasion rate in
the Great Lakes is now the lowest it's
been

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in two centuries. So we're starting to see
some progress here.

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There's still obviously some work to do,

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but there's some progress here in not
allowing more in and trying to get

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rid of the ones that are already here.

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And Ricky already put it this way.

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He goes, I'm aware of no other documented
case

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In which the invasion rate of a large
aquatic system has been suppressed through

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a management intervention. Like the same
lesson as New York Harbor.

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Find the door to the problem that comes
through and pretty much close it.

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That's the idea, And in 2017, an
international treaty on ballast water
management

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00:11:44,741 --> 00:11:48,382
came into force. So ships around the world
now have the to manage their ballast

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00:11:48,382 --> 00:11:51,444
water too. So it's not just people coming
into Canada or the US or the St.

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Lawrence Seaway. Now closing the door.

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00:11:55,412 --> 00:11:58,223
works for new arrivals, but what about the
lionfish already here?

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You can't flush an ocean. Like it just
doesn't work that way.

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So once the lionfish had spread across
thousands of kilometers of reef,

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most people assumed nothing could be done.

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you'll never catch every lionfish in the
Caribbean.

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That's just not going to happen.

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And a team led by Stephanie Green,

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~ working with Isabel Cote at Seven Fraser
University,

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00:12:17,527 --> 00:12:21,628
asked a different question. What if you
don't catch every single one?

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they worked on 24 coral reefs near
Eleuther Island in the Bahamas.

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On some reefs, divers regularly speared
lionfish,

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removing somewhere between 75 to 95% of
them.

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enough to keep their numbers below the
level where they start to wipe

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00:12:36,398 --> 00:12:38,890
out the native fish. Others were left
alone.

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The results came out in 2014 on the reefs
where lionfish were kept low.

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native prey fish numbers went up by 50 to
70 percent fish that matter

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00:12:47,211 --> 00:12:51,013
to local fishers like nasal grouper and
yellow tail snapper they came back

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too and Stephanie Green summed it up like
this by creating safe havens small pockets

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of reef where lionfish numbers are kept
low we can help native species recover

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and we don't have to catch every lionfish
to do it

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And that idea caught on. So in Florida,

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the state now runs a lionfish challenge.

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In 2024, 285 divers removed 31,773
lionfish.

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Holy cow. The highest total since the
challenge started in 2016.

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One diver speared 915 by himself.

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And the lionfish ended up on restaurant
menus,

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where it turns out like they're quite
delicious.

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I've actually had them before.

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They're they're they're quite meaty.

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Noah has even promoted eating lionfish as
a way to help control them.

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we are very good at overfishing.

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Overfishing an invasive species,

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it's not a bad thing. So the thing is,

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I think what I want you guys to keep in
mind here is you don't need

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to completely win. Keeping an invader low
gives the local ecosystem time to recover.

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But the thing is, like ballast rules close
one door and

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There are still others that are still
open,

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00:13:56,219 --> 00:13:58,940
right? You have recreational boats moving
between lakes,

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00:13:58,940 --> 00:14:01,581
aquarium and pet releases, bait buckets,

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00:14:01,581 --> 00:14:04,783
and invasive carp moving north through US
rivers.

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00:14:04,783 --> 00:14:09,005
And there are programs out there to try
and keep them out as much as possible,

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00:14:09,005 --> 00:14:11,006
but we can't control everything.

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00:14:11,006 --> 00:14:13,937
Like zebra and quagga mussels aren't
leaving the Great Lakes.

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00:14:13,937 --> 00:14:16,909
They're still there. The wind is keeping
them from reaching new lakes

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00:14:17,089 --> 00:14:19,070
and keeping new species out. They're even

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00:14:19,384 --> 00:14:23,567
Have been experiments to try and keep them
out of smaller lakes and even just like

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00:14:23,567 --> 00:14:26,859
eradicate them from smaller lakes by
dosing the lakes.

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00:14:26,859 --> 00:14:28,660
I don't know the exact chemical to use,

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00:14:28,660 --> 00:14:31,772
but it's usually natural and it doesn't
affect the rest of the lakes because they

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00:14:31,772 --> 00:14:33,243
do a lot of studies around that.

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00:14:33,243 --> 00:14:35,735
Now lionfish aren't leaving the Caribbean
either.

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00:14:35,735 --> 00:14:38,307
They're gonna be there. The wind is
managing them reef by reef.

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00:14:38,307 --> 00:14:42,330
So it's all gonna be down to local
management and whether the local
authorities

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00:14:42,390 --> 00:14:45,532
or the countries or the islands that are
around there have the ability

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00:14:45,532 --> 00:14:47,273
and the resources to do this type of
stuff.

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00:14:48,762 --> 00:14:50,683
And it's like this is where where you come
in,

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00:14:50,683 --> 00:14:54,135
I mentioned earlier, if you have a boat
and you're going from lake to lake,

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00:14:54,135 --> 00:14:56,986
which is fine. I want we want people to be
on lakes.

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00:14:56,986 --> 00:14:58,466
But the thing is you should clean,

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00:14:58,466 --> 00:15:01,848
drain, and dry every time you move a boat,

303
00:15:01,848 --> 00:15:04,409
canoe or kayak, anything, or a paddle
board even,

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00:15:04,409 --> 00:15:06,500
from one lake or river to another.

305
00:15:06,500 --> 00:15:09,532
Sometimes it just takes a couple of larvae
pieces to attach onto

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00:15:09,532 --> 00:15:12,934
a paddleboard and then it goes into
another lake and it starts to

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00:15:12,934 --> 00:15:14,274
it starts to invade that lake,

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00:15:14,274 --> 00:15:16,556
Clean off any kind of plants, mud.

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00:15:17,034 --> 00:15:19,826
Anything struck under the hull or a
trailer,

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00:15:19,826 --> 00:15:22,478
Drain all the water, anything that will go
into the water,

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00:15:22,478 --> 00:15:24,749
like clean them off, drain all the water,

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00:15:24,749 --> 00:15:27,012
including the bilge and live wells.

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00:15:27,012 --> 00:15:29,353
Let everything dry before you launch
somewhere new.

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00:15:29,353 --> 00:15:31,675
And in Ontario, it's it's pretty much the
law.

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00:15:31,675 --> 00:15:37,079
Since January 1st, 2022, you have to
remove aquatic plants and animals

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00:15:37,079 --> 00:15:39,591
and drain the water before you move the
boat overland.

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00:15:39,969 --> 00:15:42,230
Fines could run up to at least $350,

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00:15:42,230 --> 00:15:43,390
which doesn't sound like much,

319
00:15:43,390 --> 00:15:44,611
but for a recreational boater,

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00:15:44,611 --> 00:15:46,112
you don't want to have to pay that much.

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00:15:46,112 --> 00:15:50,365
we saw a zebra mussel spread from the
Great Lakes to inland lakes,

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00:15:50,365 --> 00:15:51,925
largely on boats and trailers.

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00:15:51,925 --> 00:15:54,036
And the ballast ruse close the big door,

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00:15:54,036 --> 00:15:57,377
they're less likely to come in through
through the ports.

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00:15:57,377 --> 00:16:00,383
you clean, drain, and dry, that closes the
small ones.

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00:16:00,383 --> 00:16:03,044
you're the one who's who's holding them
shut.

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00:16:03,880 --> 00:16:05,521
Like we want to close these doors.

328
00:16:05,521 --> 00:16:07,283
We want to close these areas that they can
come in.

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00:16:07,283 --> 00:16:09,724
Now, this week we had five episodes.

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00:16:09,724 --> 00:16:12,346
The first episode was all about the
different types of pollution.

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00:16:12,346 --> 00:16:14,448
Then we broke down four different types of
pollution,

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00:16:14,448 --> 00:16:16,589
Sewage in New York, drugs in the lake,

333
00:16:16,589 --> 00:16:20,412
plastic in Canada, invasives in in the
Great Lakes.

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00:16:20,412 --> 00:16:22,114
Obviously, a focus on Canada because I'm
Canadian.

335
00:16:22,114 --> 00:16:24,376
I'm I'm close to these ~ ideas,

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00:16:24,376 --> 00:16:25,997
but this is happening all around the
world.

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00:16:25,997 --> 00:16:28,279
And the pattern is pretty much every time.

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00:16:28,400 --> 00:16:30,181
We find where the problem comes from,

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00:16:30,181 --> 00:16:32,944
we act on it, and give nature time.

340
00:16:32,944 --> 00:16:36,249
It responds faster than most people
expect.

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00:16:36,249 --> 00:16:38,621
You'd be surprised when policies go into
place.

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00:16:38,621 --> 00:16:40,092
Getting them in there sometimes is tough,

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00:16:40,092 --> 00:16:42,574
but once they're in place and they're
enforced properly,

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00:16:42,574 --> 00:16:45,896
they work. Like look at the Great Lakes.

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00:16:45,896 --> 00:16:49,568
It was home to over 150 non-native
species,

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00:16:49,568 --> 00:16:53,270
invasive species, Once a bit more often
than any other freshwater system on Earth,

347
00:16:53,270 --> 00:16:55,120
and is probably one of the biggest
freshwater systems on Earth.

348
00:16:56,362 --> 00:16:57,492
And now it's holding the door shut,

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00:16:57,492 --> 00:17:01,173
like with ships flushing their their tanks
at at sea and boaters cleaning their

350
00:17:01,173 --> 00:17:04,134
hulls at the launch. pollution can breed,

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00:17:04,134 --> 00:17:06,204
sure. And it can spread and it can hide.

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00:17:06,204 --> 00:17:09,546
And we've shown again and again that we
can stop it.

353
00:17:09,546 --> 00:17:12,597
All we have to do is put the policies in
place and enforce those policies once

354
00:17:12,597 --> 00:17:15,748
they're in. Mistakes happen. Sometimes
they're bigger than others.

355
00:17:15,748 --> 00:17:19,989
Totally understand. as the world becomes
more globalist and we're we're

356
00:17:19,989 --> 00:17:22,770
all mixing in, we have to ensure that
there are

357
00:17:23,528 --> 00:17:27,640
Policies and regulations in place and laws
enforced to ensure that everything

358
00:17:27,640 --> 00:17:30,692
is not being changed. one study that I was
a part of,

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00:17:30,692 --> 00:17:33,423
it was really just a more of a exercise,

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00:17:33,423 --> 00:17:37,605
I guess, is we looked at how similar the
fish populations got within

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00:17:37,605 --> 00:17:41,796
the Great Lakes over years. So we had data
all the way back from the 1800s,

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00:17:41,796 --> 00:17:46,879
and we looked at it presently at the time
was like mid 2016 and we or mid 2012.

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00:17:46,879 --> 00:17:47,879
And I I looked at it.

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00:17:48,259 --> 00:17:51,061
Like as the years went by, the decades
went by,

365
00:17:51,061 --> 00:17:56,895
we started to see a like it it was less
diverse and more similar because

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00:17:56,895 --> 00:17:59,126
of the lock system, because of all the
travel,

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00:17:59,126 --> 00:18:03,650
these fish are able to get into different
places and there are certain fish that

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00:18:03,650 --> 00:18:06,842
will dominate others. And it changes the
diversity,

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00:18:06,842 --> 00:18:08,363
it changes the biodiversity that we see,

370
00:18:08,363 --> 00:18:10,425
and it can switch up the system.

371
00:18:10,865 --> 00:18:14,517
Having other species that come in from
other places around the world that

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00:18:14,517 --> 00:18:17,188
can take advantage of these like Asian
carps and so forth,

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00:18:17,188 --> 00:18:20,610
that becomes a dangerous situation because
it can change habitat.

374
00:18:20,610 --> 00:18:24,439
Anything that changes habitat can really
have an effect on the populations that

375
00:18:24,439 --> 00:18:26,690
are here, whether they're fish or
invertebrate populations.

376
00:18:26,690 --> 00:18:29,472
And this happens not only in in the Great
Lakes or in lake systems

377
00:18:29,472 --> 00:18:31,793
and freshwater systems. This is happening
in the oceans.

378
00:18:31,793 --> 00:18:33,064
We just saw that with the lionfish.

379
00:18:33,064 --> 00:18:35,245
It's great to see them in the southeast
Pacific,

380
00:18:35,245 --> 00:18:37,626
but not in the Caribbean, not in the
Atlantic.

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00:18:38,228 --> 00:18:41,679
which we gotta make sure that we keep them
where they belong and to make sure that

382
00:18:41,679 --> 00:18:43,780
the systems where they are are pretty
safe.

383
00:18:43,780 --> 00:18:46,301
And this happens in ecology all the time.

384
00:18:46,301 --> 00:18:51,242
~ and it and it changes how a system will
run with underwater.

385
00:18:51,242 --> 00:18:55,486
And I think we have to be very careful on
how that diversity gets affected

386
00:18:55,546 --> 00:18:57,686
in that way. But that's it for today's
episode.

387
00:18:57,686 --> 00:18:58,927
I would love to hear your thoughts.

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00:18:58,927 --> 00:19:00,447
If you're listening to this on Spotify,

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00:19:00,447 --> 00:19:02,648
I love Spotify because it has a comment
section.

390
00:19:02,894 --> 00:19:05,866
I normally listen on Apple, but I'd love
Spotify for the comment section.

391
00:19:05,866 --> 00:19:08,818
So let me know what you think about this
episode in Invasive Species.

392
00:19:08,818 --> 00:19:10,910
If you have a story to share, love to hear
that.

393
00:19:10,910 --> 00:19:13,592
Also, you can just hit me up on my
socials.

394
00:19:13,592 --> 00:19:16,554
The links are in the show notes to see to
have that conversation.

395
00:19:16,554 --> 00:19:17,975
Cause this is the beginning of that
conversation.

396
00:19:17,975 --> 00:19:20,797
Unfortunately, podcasting, I can't get
responses back quickly,

397
00:19:20,797 --> 00:19:22,939
but I would love to hear what you think.

398
00:19:22,939 --> 00:19:25,571
because ideas are what leads to solutions.

399
00:19:25,837 --> 00:19:27,418
And we really need a lot of solutions.

400
00:19:27,418 --> 00:19:28,718
So thank you so much for joining us.

401
00:19:28,718 --> 00:19:31,931
Thanks for being a part of this community
I can't wait to talk to you next time.

402
00:19:31,931 --> 00:19:34,412
This has been another episode of the How
to Protect the Ocean Podcast.

403
00:19:34,412 --> 00:19:35,913
I'm your host, Angela. Have a great day.

404
00:19:35,913 --> 00:19:38,204
We'll talk to you next time and happy
conservation.