Under the Canopy
On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, former Minister of Natural Resources, Jerry Ouellette takes you along on the journey to see the places and meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and Under The Canopy.
Under the Canopy
Episode 73: Sustaining Great Lakes Fisheries with Greg McClinchey
How do you keep a multi-billion dollar fishery thriving while taming invasive species and bolstering local ecosystems? Join us as we unravel the complexities of the Great Lakes with Greg McClinchey from the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. You'll gain a deeper understanding of the innovative strategies and international cooperation required to preserve these critical waters. We'll dive into intriguing topics like lampreside for controlling sea lamprey populations and smart dam technologies that help maintain ecological balance.
Hi everybody. I'm Angelo Viola and I'm Pete Bowman. Now you might know us as the hosts of Canada's Favorite Fishing Show, but now we're hosting a podcast. That's right Every Thursday.
Speaker 3:Ang and I will be right here in your ears, bringing you a brand new episode of Outdoor Journal Radio. Now what are we going to?
Speaker 1:talk about for two hours every week.
Speaker 3:Well, you know there's going to be a lot of fishing.
Speaker 5:I knew exactly where those fish were going to be and how to catch them, and they were easy to catch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's not just a fishing show. We're going to be talking to people from all facets of the outdoors From athletes.
Speaker 4:All the other guys would go golfing Me and Garth and Turk and all the Russians would go fishing. To scientists. But now that we're reforesting- and everything.
Speaker 5:It's the perfect transmission environment for life.
Speaker 2:To chefs If any game isn't cooked properly, marinated, you will taste it.
Speaker 1:And whoever else will pick up the phone Wherever you are. Outdoor Journal Radio seeks to answer the questions and tell the stories of all those who enjoy being outside. Find us on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 7:As the world gets louder and louder, the lessons of our natural world become harder and harder to hear, but they are still available to those who know where to listen. I'm Jerry Ouellette and I was honoured to serve as Ontario's Minister of Natural Resources. However, my journey into the woods didn't come from politics. Rather, it came from my time in the bush and a mushroom. In 2015, I was introduced to the birch-hungry fungus known as chaga, a tree conch with centuries of medicinal applications used by Indigenous peoples all over the globe.
Speaker 7:After nearly a decade of harvest use, testimonials and research, my skepticism has faded to obsession and I now spend my life dedicated to improving the lives of others through natural means. But that's not what the show is about. My pursuit of this strange mushroom and my passion for the outdoors has brought me to the places and around the people that are shaped by our natural world. On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, I'm going to take you along with me to see the places, meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and under the canopy. So join me today for another great episode, and hopefully we can inspire a few more people to live their lives under the canopy. We can inspire a few more people to live their lives under the canopy.
Speaker 7:Okay, first of all, the same as always, we want to thank all our listeners across Canada and all across the world, those in Trinidad, tobago and Switzerland and through the states that have us ranking so high in those jurisdictions, and as well, as always, in Ghana, and I see there's big changes. You've got a major election taking place there and a lot of the environmental issues I see are some of the key things that are happening in Ghana that people want to know about, which was, quite frankly, very well reported on the BBC. Found that very interesting and sometimes, when I see things happening in Ghana because we're rated so high there that we want to find out and make sure that our listeners, we know what's going on in the place where our listeners are at, anyways. So today we've got a special guest from the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission, greg McClinchy. And welcome to the program, greg. Thanks for coming on, thanks for having me. Yeah, no problem. Now tell us a bit about yourself. You know how long you've been with the Great Lakes Fishery Commission and things like that.
Speaker 3:Sure Well, I spent my formative years growing up on the Great Lakes in near Goderich Ontario in southwestern Ontario and spent a lot of my time in politics and kind of community work, did some radio work and eventually made my way into the employment of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. I've been with them just over five years but my association with them goes back probably closer to about 30 years, so it's an organization that does fantastic work. They're funded. It's a treaty organization that was established by the governments of Canada and the United States to help manage this wonderful resource we have in almost the center of the continent of North America, and that being the Great Lakes and the fisheries the multi-billion dollar fisheries that exist in those lakes.
Speaker 7:Oh yeah, so originally you're from Goderich, as you mentioned. Yeah, and I recall. Let's see, let's date ourself a bit. Back in the early 80s I used to work for a company called International Imports and it was a learning experience for me and was a great way to see a lot of the country, and Goderich was some of the places that we used to sell the hardware stores and feed mills and all through that neck of the province, and I very much appreciated all.
Speaker 7:Uh, well, quite frankly, the, the amount of the vastness of the farmland in in godrich was great to see, and, and the one things I I found very interesting was a lot of those back roads and side roads down through that part of the province were all paved, which was very interesting, whereas a lot of the ones up our way, where I am, just outside oshwares, when I was growing up north of a place called newtonville, we're at a spot called crooked creek, you know, just south of starkville, east of brownsville, where most people have never heard of. Anyways, um, it was always, uh, gravel roads but interesting to see and it was a great part of the the province. So, um, so what, actually, greg, is your position with the Great Lakes Fishery Commission?
Speaker 3:Right. So I'm the director of what we call policy and legislative affairs. It's one of six directorates that the commission has and that means that it's so in the convention, in the treaty that governs us, there is a requirement that the commission make recommendations to government, that we communicate with the governments involved, so the two federal governments, the province of ontario and then the eight great lakes states to keep to keep them advised of what's happening scientifically, what's happening, you know, with the ecology, what our programming is, how we're, how we're making progress or what challenges we might face. So my primary role is to do just that to talk to governments to make sure they're aware of what we're doing and, of course, to make sure they're aware of the consequences if we don't do it. Like if for some reason there was to be a cut to our funding or a shift from one priority to the next, what precisely would the outcomes of that be?
Speaker 3:So I am the kind of the outward face of the commission to government and then, of course, bringing any messages that come from government back to the commission.
Speaker 3:So I'm really that piece where we keep those lines of communications open and make sure that everybody understands the priorities of the other and what needs to be done on a day-to-day basis, but also on a long-term basis. You know we also try and plan. When you're helping to manage this kind of a resource, you have to think long-term. So that's another element of what we do. And then I suppose, lastly and not least, of course, course is we also have a responsibility to we, the commission, have a responsibility to manage um systems and regulations and so on. We're not a regulator ourselves, but we do bring together those who are regulators, facilitate a process where all of the states and the province of ontario, who do have, you know, jurisdiction for managing the fishery in the great lakes, are talking to each making joint decisions that are not just for their own benefit but rather for the benefit of the lake that they're talking about or the basin more broadly. So again, keeping those lines of communications open, those relationships strong, that's a big part of what we do.
Speaker 7:Yeah, that's interesting. That's a big part of what we do. Yeah, that's interesting. So you mentioned both the US federal and the Canadian federal government involved and, of course, the province of Ontario being the only province. Now, when you say the Great Lakes, it doesn't include the St Lawrence at all, or just because the St Lawrence goes through, obviously through more than just Ontario.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so technically speaking our treaty does stop at the edge of the Great Lakes. So the St Lawrence River is not technically part of our area of responsibility, although we do have some off-treaty work that the US government has charged us with in Lake Memphremigog and Lake Champlain, which are in the states of Vermont and New York, and then the tip of those lakes expand upward into the province of Quebec, so we do have some interest there as well. One of the you know another one of our duties is working to make sure that habitat is appropriate, so that I mean you can't have good, healthy fish stocks without good healthy fish habitat. So it's a little bit of a challenge to confine our concerns just to the Great Lakes, because of course it all connects and it's all interrelated. So even though if officially we are the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, I think we have over time developed a broad interpretation of that, such that we do care very much about what happens in freshwater bodies both connecting and not connecting to the Great Lakes. And in fact, just to kind of build on that, we have a science mandate. One of the three pillars of our program is to establish a science program and with that is a science or a knowledge transfer Right program and with that is a science or a knowledge transfer right. So so the work that we we we're doing and the the outcomes that we get and the information that we learn is something that we share broadly and freely with other, with other bodies and uh and, and that way it can be deployed in other freshwater uh environments like lake winnipeg and the st lawrence.
Speaker 3:As much as it's freshwater, of course, it becomes saltwater down the river a little bit, right, um. And then of course we freshwater environments like Lake Winnipeg and the St Lawrence. As much as it's freshwater, of course, it becomes saltwater down the river a little bit. And then of course, we also work internationally. We work with international, other international fisheries commissions and we have a very close affiliation with something called the African Great Lakes Program, which is something that a former staffer of ours now heads, ted Lawrence, and there's a program called ACARE, which is African Women in Science. So they do a lot of really important work to try and take the successful model.
Speaker 3:Because, remember, before the Great Lakes Fishery Commission came along, there was we call it the era of divided governance in the Great Lakes and it was really a terrible time, from a management perspective, fisheries were collapsing. They weren't being managed properly, the decisions that were being made there were being based perhaps, if I can say, on political science rather than on actual science, and that presented a whole range of problems. Over time, we've developed processes and vehicles to make sure that that divided governance is something that's relegated to our history, so that model, which has worked very well. It's not something that happened easily, but it is, over time, working very well. We're now trying to, in some ways, export parts of that to places like the African Great Lakes, so that they can help to manage their resources as well, and we'll learn from the things they're doing too.
Speaker 7:So you mentioned the eight states. What can you? What are those eight states? Because a lot of people may not know that it's basically the province of Ontario and eight states that all connect with the Great Lakes. So what can you? Just list those Great Lakes, yeah we've got.
Speaker 3:So we deal with all of the states that border the Great Lakes and so, as you can imagine, there's quite a diverse political environment, because we've got everything from New York, like it starts off, we've got the states of Illinois. Well, I mean, I guess, if I can give them to you in geographic order, we've got Illinois, indiana, michigan, minnesota, new York, ohio, pennsylvania and Wisconsin. I think that's eight if I just off the top of my head. So there's quite a range of interests there, which is what led to that divided governance is, you know, we cover that.
Speaker 3:You know, while it's only the province of Ontario in Canada, because it's a big province and covers all. Well, it covers four out of five Great Lakes. Of course, lake Michigan is entirely in the United States, but those eight Great Lakes states, they make up the bulk on the US side, and that era of divided governance was certainly a time when those states and Ontario might have been at variance, but even quite a variance within the environment of those Great Lakes states. So they often had competition against each other during that era and we've tried to make it so that that's not the case any longer.
Speaker 7:Yeah, I recall back in the 80s because for about five years I ran a charter boat on Lake Ontario. We had a 26-foot crisp, a charter boat on Lake Ontario, we had a 26-foot crisp. Anyways, at that time I reached out to the biologist from the Ministry of Natural Resources because I was reading details out of Lake Michigan how what happened was essentially they did the introduction of the king salmon, the Chinook salmon, along with other salmonoids as well, into the area and because of the introduction the amount of bait fish that became available started to deplete. So what happened was with the chinooks they hit a peak of 40 to 50 pounds era and then as the bait fish started to decrease, the size of the large chinook salmon also started to decrease. So you weren't getting the same size of those larger ones, so it was like a 30-pound one. Or if you got a 40-pound one, that was like wow, whereas 40-pounders at one point in Michigan was the same.
Speaker 7:And I tried to reach out to see if you know what can be done before it happens in Lake Ontario where I was having the charter boat. But at that time they were quite surprised. So I provided them with the research that I got out of Lake Michigan, about all that kind of details and see that. But those were just some of the things and I know so. Lake Michigan was one of the key ones because, as you mentioned, it's solely in the United States, so governing of that one would be a little bit different, I would imagine, because I don't know how much input Ontario would have into what takes place on Lake Michigan, or do they have much at all?
Speaker 3:Well, first off, it's a great memory on your part because the 1980s was a pretty pivotal time for the work that we do and Great Lakes management jointly and broadly. One, because that was when the Great Lakes Fishery Commission and our partners in the states and the province basically came about or came up with the concept of a joint strategic plan of management for the Great Lakes fishery. That's when it was launched and that process we actually created something we call the lake committees. So there are five Great Lakes and each lake now has a lake committee, so a committee that is specific to that lake. And so, for example, on Lake Michigan, ontario wouldn't sit on the lake committee, it would only be the jurisdictions with shoreline, and that model is followed for all the lakes. But those lakes get together, they make decisions, regulatory decisions and so on, that fall within their jurisdictions for that lake broadly rather than just for their state or province. But then those lake committees come together at what we call the Council of Lake Committees, where all of the lake committees come together and talk to each other about the basin, you know, kind of right across the board. So what you have that's emerged from that plan is a time when, for example, ontario had no input at all into what was happening on the one, the other side of a shared lake, or two in Lake Michigan, for which Ontario doesn't have any shoreline, to a place where we now have processes that by default brings the regulators together.
Speaker 3:Again, we don't manage fish, the commission. We manage the people who manage the fish or help to manage those people and help to guide them through to a collaborative decision. All of our processes in the lake committees are voluntary, consensus-driven decisions. But over the course of time, over the course of 30, 40 years, it's really developed into a place where the other jurisdictions you know, if you have four or five jurisdictions on a Lake Committee they become really reluctant to make decisions without unanimity and without all of the players at the table. So it really it begins to force one to look at things more broadly, based on scientific data, and then they become, I guess, self-correcting right where they really hold each other to account for the promises and commitments that have been made. So it's that buy-in, that voluntary, consensus-based buy-in, that's really brought it to a new level and it did take root in the 80s and has since then been growing and expanding and kind of solidifying and it now works quite well.
Speaker 7:Very good. So, greg, what sort of stuff or areas does the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission deal with? So, is it like shoreline, is it discharge into the lakes, is it fish docking or is it? D? All of the above and kind of give us a background and rundown of the sort of things that you deal with, sure.
Speaker 3:So at the high level, the treaty itself. If I condense it into very simple terms, the treaty itself gives us really three primary areas to focus on. One is the establishment and propagation, if you will, of a binational science program. So we run a binational, multi-million dollar science program where we take the questions that emerge out of those Lake Committee processes that are being discussed, you know, kind of throughout the basin, that kind of bubble, up to the top, and we try and come up with solutions to them and our science program informs the other elements of what we do.
Speaker 3:So the second pillar, so science being first, in no particular order of course, but the second one is control of an invasive predator, the sea lamprey. So back in the well, about 100 years ago now, the sea lamprey made their way into the Great Lakes. They're a species that originated in the Atlantic Ocean. They are an ancient fish, you know, a 350 million year old fish that bears a close resemblance to an eel or a snake. They have a round mouth and they generate a suction. They're about maybe 14 inches long, 12 inch, well, 14 inches long. They have a round mouth that's ringed with about 100 to 150 teeth. They will generate a suction and they'll bite onto the side of a fish, their tongue will rasp a hole in the fish and then they drink out the juice. And every sea lamprey will consume about 18 kilograms or 40 pounds of fish in its lifetime and every female will have about 100,000 eggs, many of which would come to adulthood without our intervention. So we have a program that's designed to keep them in check, because they really present a huge threat to fish stocks and the sustainability of habitat in the Great Lakes.
Speaker 3:And then the third pillar and final pillar, which I think is perhaps the most important, is our requirement to establish and maintain working relationships across borders. We learned, prior to the commission coming into being, that even when you have all the jurisdictions doing things that they think are good, without that coordination and that border-blind functioning of the program, it failed miserably and these other problems really kind of took over. And so those are the three kinds science, sea lamprey, control and cross-border coordination problems really kind of took over. And as you know, so those are the three kinds, you know science, sea lamprey, control and cross border coordination. And then within that, that's when you find the late committees and we get into having involvement with stocking decisions and various total level, catch limits and so on. It's through that broad coordination mandate that we have responsibilities for some of these other things, these management of fish stocks of common concern, but at the highest level. That's what we do.
Speaker 7:So lamprey, when you talk about sea lamprey, it's not a problem for them to relocate from saltwater to freshwater and back and forth. Obviously, the ones that are breeding here would be used to freshwater, and you know if saltwater freshwater issues with that at all.
Speaker 3:It's a great question. You know you have to a little bit admire the sea, lamprey. They are a brilliantly resilient and efficient design. I mentioned there are 350 million year old species of fish. That has really changed very little. They're part of the fossil record and they've changed very little.
Speaker 3:And as far as their ability to tolerate both salt and freshwater, they have an interesting quirk in their biology and that is while in their native range, the Atlantic Ocean, they live their life and feed in what we call their parasitic phase, when they're feeding in saltwater they live their formative years, so as in their larval phase, as well as when they go to breed in freshwater.
Speaker 3:So they would live their formative years, so as in their larval phase, as well as when they go to breed in freshwater. So they would live their formative years and then eventually, at the end of their life cycle, breed in freshwater streams and tributaries. So they've always had this tolerance for both. So when they moved into the Great Lakes they came in through shipping canals and unfortunately, again that lack of scientific basis we didn't at the time understand that we were simply opening the door for them. When we did work on things like the Erie Canal and the Welland Canal. We just opened the door allowed them to get past things like Niagara Falls that would have been a natural barrier and into the Great Lakes system fully. So they have no problem tolerating saltwater or freshwater and they have found their way into the Great Lakes and very much enjoy their time here and have flourished, much to our chagrin.
Speaker 7:Yeah, it's surprising. I can recall my father. He was a diver in the Navy and then when he joined the police force he did diving, for you know, vehicles go into the lake and things like that and I can recall it would be the 60s and the 70s Dad doing a dive in the local harbor and coming up with his rubber suit. Lamprey stuck to his rubber suit when he was diving back then because the population of them was so high that it was kind of like ugh.
Speaker 3:We're very fortunate now. Oh, first off, lamprey. While they don't typically like humans, because they like a cold-blooded meal and we present as warm-blooded, of course and of course for the most part we don't smell like fish, but one. With your father wearing a heavy rubber suit being in the cold water, he'd be a wonderful target. They wouldn't detect his warmth. But also, they're fundamentally a lazy fish, right, for the most part they'll grab onto something just to get a ride, even if they don't intend to prey upon it. So that's, you know, number one and number two is the program. You're right.
Speaker 3:During the 50s and 60s, lamprey were a huge menace and in fact we had species of fish living in the you think just how destructive humans have a history of being when it comes to this kind of harvest were successful in finding a compound that could be introduced to the water in the freshwater streams when they're in their larval phase, which is lamprey-specific.
Speaker 3:We call it lampreside just because it kills lamprey, and basically what it does is it introduces a compound to the water that this ancient fish has never evolved an ability to metabolize.
Speaker 3:So other, more contemporary fish species can metabolize it and it's perfectly fine, lamprey. It goes into their body and they're not able to deal with it and it kills them. And the really neat part about this compound other than, of course, that it targets lamprey specifically is that it photodegrades, which means it doesn't become diluted, it doesn't just kind of dissipate the water column, it actually in sunlight breaks down to its inert component parts and is completely undetectable in the environment. It's simply gone. And that's allowed us to take a species that threatened you know, not just you know that species being the lamprey, that threatened not just you know, kind of the top sport fish, but the entire range of fish within the Great Lakes, the entire ecology, and to lower its populations by about 90% to a place where they can. We can sustain both the human fishery, the commercial and recreational fisheries, as well as that 10% take from lamprey. So we are in a much better place now from a control perspective.
Speaker 7:So, greg, there's no impact on the American eel, because I know a lot of the American eel uses the same tributaries, for I believe it's for spawning purposes, but I'm assuming that's the same thing with lamprey, and there's no impact on the American eel at all.
Speaker 3:No, and part of our science program is such that we explore things like by kill and so on. We want to make sure that that damage to other species is kept as minimal as possible. And the neat part, actually, and another kind of advantageous quirk of lamprey physiology and life cycle, over and above the fact they can't metabolize this particular compound, is the fact that they don't have an annual life cycle. Over and above the fact they can't metabolize this particular compound, is the fact that they don't have an annual life cycle. They have a life cycle. Now it's impacted by temperature of the water, so the colder the water, the longer the lifespan. So lamprey populations in Lake Superior, which is the most northern lake, versus Lake Erie, which is much warmer, and so on. They differ.
Speaker 3:But the benefit of that is we don't have to treat every stream and tributary every year. So while other species even if there was some damage and there isn't, but even if there were to be damage to other species you would have a situation where they have annualized life cycles so that you could get two or even three life cycles in of various other species of fish and we would only have to treat one year out of, say, every two or maybe three, depending on where the stream is. So it's another advantage that we have, and we're able to wipe out any breeding adults that are in the system, as well as one, two, maybe three years of juveniles that are in the water column, all at the same time, and then we don't have to come back for another one, two, three years, depending on the stream.
Speaker 7:So, greg, is there any natural predator that feeds on sea lamprey?
Speaker 3:Not really, certainly not in the Great Lakes environment. In their native environment it's a different situation altogether. They co-evolved with species in the oceans. They do get a little larger in the oceans, but it's the same species. But in the Great Lakes I would say no. I mean, you obviously have when you know if a bird or something can get a hold of one, it would eat it, just like it would any other fish. I'm talking when they're small. They also could be consumed. You know, in their very, very larval phase, because they're so small, you could get filter feeding fish and so on. That would get them, but ultimately not in enough quantity. The ironic twist here is that in their native range places like Portugal, spain, the United Kingdom, et cetera, they're highly sought after. They're a desirable food species and in many cases, in fact in most cetera, they're highly sought after. They're a desirable food species and in many cases, in fact in most cases, they're under threat. In fact, in some of their native spaces they are extinct.
Speaker 3:There are stories that go back into the Middle Ages where lamprey sea, lamprey, and it is the same species. I think you had a. It might have been Shakespeare that wrote about a king that died from eating a surfeit of lamprey. This is the species he was talking about, so it's highly prized in certain other areas. Unfortunately, this is what invasive species do, right, they come into an area they might be perfectly benign and even helpful in their native range, but then they come into a place where they don't belong and they rewrite food webs and they cause havoc and, in the case of the lamprey, really place an existential threat to the Great Lakes. If we weren't to control them, we kill. Just to put it into perspective, we kill between eight and nine million sea lamprey every year, just to hold their numbers steady.
Speaker 7:So there's potential for a new business then for companies looking because if they can find a way to capture lampreys, to sell the meat to these other jurisdictions that you're saying, that prize, that meat.
Speaker 3:It's a great question, but unfortunately no, and here's why. First off, lamprey in the Great Lakes they're smaller, so they're not the same. They just it's kind of like a goldfish. You know, the bigger the environment they grow larger. Lamprey in the Great Lakes are just smaller than they are in their native environment but unfortunately, because we in North America haven't always had a great legacy when it comes to caring for the Great Lakes. Fortunately we're getting better and we're cleaning them up. But because of how lamprey feed at the top of the food chain they do things like concentrate heavy metals, so the lamprey in the Great Lakes tend to be of much higher concentration of things like mercury, which means they're not appropriate for human or pet consumption. And other than you know, we have somebody, a group that's emerging 100% Fish it's called that's trying to find ways to use parts of fish for things like leather and so on. Other than that, there really wouldn't be a way to utilize Great Lakes lamprey for human or pet consumption.
Speaker 7:Interesting. So now, one of the other things that I've seen, greg, is that when the lampricide goes through and there's a die-off, I've seen things like great blue herons, for example, was the one I recall seeing, and then I saw some bald eagles, which I was assuming that they were consuming a lot of the lampreys that were killed off. It's not problematic for them to consume these dead lampreys that were killed off.
Speaker 3:It's not problematic for them to consume these dead lampreys. No, no, it isn't actually. In fact, you're absolutely correct in saying they have a bit of a feeding frenzy during a treatment because you have, I mean, over and above the thousands and thousands of lamprey that are just kind of tiny little puffs of matter in the water column that simply dissolve and are reabsorbed, there are, you know, yearlings and so on that are larger the size of worms, yearlings and so on that are larger the size of of, uh, of worms like large, larger worms, and so on, uh, and the birds scoop them up pretty quick. So, no, there doesn't seem to be a problem. I mean, you have to put into perspective at that first off, at that point, uh, that you don't see concentrations of heavy metal right, cause the, the, the larvae, haven't gone out and fed on the fish and lived their life cycle. They're eating those young ones.
Speaker 3:It's a much safer environment, but also one these birds in many cases are eating fish their whole life anyways. Obviously, that's been something that's kind of baked in, but it does speak to the reason why cleaning up the Great Lakes and that's certainly something that's happened in much greater there's been a much greater effort to clear up what we called areas of concerns under the legislation between Canada and the US. So there's making huge strides. We're just not there yet. But the short answer to the question is no, the birds have a feeding frenzy and they really love it.
Speaker 7:Yeah, I was quite surprised. I could tell what was happening when you see great blue herons and that at the river Is there a certain time I think it's what in the spring that they put the lemphersite in. Is that when it is?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the season gets underway anywhere between you know. Again, it depends on the year, of course, and weather conditions, and you know different places. It might be more wintry, you know, in Sudbury or Thunder Bay than it is in Leamington, ontario, but it starts in the spring, you know, march-ish, and it carries on into the late summer when their cycles or their breeding cycles are on. So we have an established cycle where we're able to treat streams. We have crews that go out. We work with crews from Department of Fisheries and Oceans and US Fish and Wildlife Service and we get out there, we treat these bodies and try and make sure that lamprey never get out into the lakes to feed.
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Speaker 6:Very good, and you had great results, and now it feels like normal skin again.
Speaker 7:Very good, and you didn't try anything else, so you figured, that's what? No, that worked.
Speaker 7:So I'm sticking with that. Very good. Well, thanks, trevor, here in Millbrook. Yeah, okay, okay, we interrupt this program to bring you a special offer from Chaga Health and Wellness. If you've listened this far and you're still wondering about this strange mushroom that I keep talking about and whether you would benefit from it or not, I may have something of interest to you. To thank you for listening to the show, I'm going to make trying Chaga that much easier by giving you a dollar off all our Chaga products at checkout. All you have to do is head over to our website, chagahealthandwellnesscom. Have to do is head over to our website, chagahealthandwellnesscom, place a few items in the cart and check out with the code CANOPY C-A-N-O-P-Y. If you're new to Chaga, I'd highly recommend the regular Chaga tea. This comes with 15 tea bags per package and each bag gives you around five or six cups of tea. Hey, thanks for listening Back to the episode.
Speaker 7:It's surprising these invasive species that come in, and I can recall myself where I had actually brought in a piece of legislation and I presented to a US Senate committee on it, where it was invasive species legislation which, essentially, if any organization, group, company can be identified as being responsible for the introduction of an invasive species that they were responsible for the cleanup for it.
Speaker 7:And you can just imagine from the shipping industry's perspective that presented both at the at the hearings that I was at, they were not very happy, let's say, because they do this deep water discharge that they talk about to eliminate invasive species. But if I remember correctly because this has to be now over 20 years ago that I brought that piece of legislation in and I think it was the round Gobi could be identified to one single ship coming in being responsible. And so I think the results of it was that the senator wanted me to present before a federal committee on this very legislation but I wasn't able to because of our legislative agenda here in Ontario. But the thing about it was that the shipping industry was now bringing in UV lights to kill off other things and most of it comes in ballast. And are you familiar, greg, with how they get introduced into places like the Great Lakes through ballast discharge?
Speaker 3:Absolutely In fact the Fishery Commission has been working. So, as I'm sure you know, canada is a real leader in this. 30 years ago it would have been a very different story. I remember in my days working on Parliament Hill dealing with ballast water exchange. You know, exchanging saltwater and freshwater. So you had species that were drawn in, say, in freshwater, that would be flushed out for the most part in saltwater, and vice versa was helpful. You know, you mentioned UV lights, but Canada has become a real leader on ballast water regulations.
Speaker 3:There's obviously a number of concerns and some of our US partners maybe aren't as keen on those things, but it's become really clear. And the Lamprey is but one example. In fact, I kind of refer to it as the granddaddy of invasives. But the challenge is that we have 186 aquatic invasives living in the Great Lakes right now Round goby, quagga mussels, zebra mussels, viral hemorrhagic septicemia, and the list goes on. They all come in. There are different vectors for introduction and so on, but the end result is they're all a challenge to the food web and the real thing we've learned over time is that it is much easier to prevent a species from becoming established than it is to control them once they get here, and you know, as a prime example of that we have an invasive carp species that we've now we now see in Lake Erie, that is, it shouldn't be there. It's now.
Speaker 3:The fish has been there for many years for lots of reasons, but we always thought they were there in a sterile form. They were introduced in a sterile form to do things like keep golf course ponds clean, etc. And we've now detected evidence of breeding. And so the Great Lakes Fishery Commission has been funded by the US Congress to run an invasive carp program, and we have boats on the water pulling invasive carp out of the lake. Our science indicates that if we're able to take somewhere about 300 individuals out of the system each year, the fertile ones will never find each other and we can have a situation where that species might be present but will never be established.
Speaker 3:Now, that's not a perfect world. The perfect world is getting back to where you were going, which was preventing introduction in the first place, and that's why we are doing some advanced work, for example in Chicago, with the US Army Corps of Engineers and some other partners, to try and prevent invasive carp from making their way up the Mississippi River, which would deliver them to the Great Lakes Basin. So there's a lot of work being done to simply try and do that, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention I talked about our science program. One of our big projects right now is something called Fish Pass, which is happening in Traverse City, michigan, and we are. It's a large scale construction where we would be installing a dam that, in layperson's terms, would be able to sort fish in real time.
Speaker 3:Dams are pretty important to us in keeping invasive species out of certain areas and keeping them into other areas, but the problem with dams is they block everything. They block good species and they block bad. We have a situation where we're looking at trying to sort fish in real time so that the dam would be able to pass desirable species and block undesirable species, and if that works out, then we would be able to export that knowledge globally and we could, if you will, smarten up dams.
Speaker 7:Yeah, it's interesting and I know I'm not sure if you've ever heard of something called the screw fly.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 7:You have? Yes, I have. Oh, most people I talk to and I bring up the screw fly thing, everybody's like what are you talking about? So the screw fly essentially, I believe they're being controlled by the release of basically sterile breeders. Absolutely yeah, and that was one of the ways it was being controlled, because it has huge impacts on the livestock industry out there.
Speaker 3:They basically consume live animals, yeah, and so it's funny because you know some of these lessons learned, you know whether it's the screw fly or the lamprey, have crossover implications.
Speaker 3:So, for example, the notion of sterilizing males and releasing sterile males to complete a life cycle and consequences no offspring, is something that the Fishery Commission was using as well as part of our supplemental control measures. It's also, you know, we do work, our scientists are doing work genetically, to kind of figure out the lamprey with greater and greater clarity, to find out if there are ways we can use their genetics against them. So, just as Lampricide identified that they couldn't metabolize a certain product and that worked effectively, there is also an effort, for example, to say if we did that male sterile release program, example to say if we did that male sterile release program and yet were able to somehow increase the aggressive breeding nature of sterile males, would they out-compete the sorry of the males that aren't sterile or that are sterile? Would they be able to out-compete the males that are breeding males and have a consequence of lowering birth rates?
Speaker 7:males and have a consequence of lowering birth rates. Yeah, it's well, certainly all these options and what's taking place with our environment as a whole, whether we're talking, you know, the impact of, quite frankly, ticks and Lyme disease or whether it's, you know, lampreys coming in and the huge impacts on the fisheries that they're having and all these other things that are coming forward zebra mussels, and you mentioned a bunch of invasive species coming in. But to try and find, like you said, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, absolutely, and I know I worked. When you talk about AOCs, the areas of concern, it was kind of interesting.
Speaker 7:You know, fate has certain things happen and I happened to be in a vehicle leaving an event in Queen's Park in Toronto and the person who was giving me a ride back to Queen's Park was actually in charge of a fund that was established when Norm Sterling was the Minister of the Environment and it was to clean up AOCs, the environment, and it was to clean up AOCs.
Speaker 7:But he was having difficulty because ministers come and go, governments change, premiers change, but, however, the bureaucracy stays forever, and he had this pocket of funds that weren't being allocated to go anywhere. So what I did was. I think I might be able to help you out. So what I did was I approached Ducks Unlimited and I worked with DU because DU has a matching fund basis where Ducks Unlimited brings up money from the states, if we have well, in this case I can't remember it was $3 or $5 million Ducks Unlimited joined partnerships with this particular fund and they doubled the amount of funds they had in it because they brought in funds from the states to do areas of cleanup and they worked on AOC's areas of concern and the Great Lakes and we're talking, you know, the Love Canal and all those kind of things or different areas that had problematic and needed cleanup. And it was just a way that organizations could work together and DU is doing a great job and very, very thankful to work with this particular committee to clean up AOCs in the Great Lakes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I will say, you know you may have started something there, and I mean that in the best possible way, and certainly Ducks Unlimited and many other partners do wonderful work on areas of concern. Right now, as I'm sure you know, the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement has identified I believe it's 43 AOCs, 12 of which are Canadian and five of which are a shared space. The rest, uh, are american, are located in the united states, um, and since since about 2012, um, there's been a real effort. Before that, you know, what you describe is an ad hoc where somebody said, man, this needs to be cleaned up and let's get some money. But since, since 2012, it's been a little bit more coordinated and kind of deliberate that there's a firm commitment from both Canada and the US to begin restoring water quality and addressing those AOCs.
Speaker 3:So great progress has been made. There have been, I think, since 87, 88 in that area. There's been over 1,200 projects that have been supported to do that cleanup work. There's much more work that needs to be done. We get to both wag our finger and pat ourselves on the back on this one is that we made a horrible mess of the Great Lakes. We've gone a long way toward cleaning them up, and there's still more work to do so. The good news out of all of this and again, I really do think it took root in the era that you were describing is that there is now an understanding that this has to be resolved, and there is real progress being made to do just that.
Speaker 7:Right, and the more research I did and actually it was kind of surprising a lot of historical stuff that I happened to come across, where once upon a time for ballast, I found that some companies were actually using limestone blocks as ballast. Yeah, when they came from Kingston to places like Oshawa, where I am in the port out there and they would dump a lot of these limestone blocks and where they are, and which I found rather interesting, that and it was a I think it was a prisoner program that they created to deal with ballast, but now there's piles of limestone blocks in various sectors outside harbors in the Great Lakes that are now doing different things to the environment by because it you know what limestone does.
Speaker 3:Well, and I think that's precisely why things like the Great Lakes Fishery Commission's science program are so critical, because you know, I mentioned right off the top that we were doing things back in the 50s and the 60s and the 70s and even into the 80s that we simply had no scientific basis for why we were doing them or we didn't understand why we shouldn't do them. I mean Lamprey as a perfect example. You know, when we opened up the Welland Canal, we could have stopped Lamprey from infiltrating the canal by and large by simply installing, you know, installing very minor, very inexpensive lamprey barriers which are the size of a coffee table as far as a height goes, and we could have saved ourselves all of that problem of having lamprey infiltrate the system. We simply didn't do it because we didn't understand that that was a problem I always say. At that time we were managing fish stocks. We broadly not the commission, not any state or province, but just people broadly. We would allocate fishing licenses or total allowable catch limits based on how many people wanted the fish rather than how many fish were in the water.
Speaker 3:Today that's changed a lot.
Speaker 3:It's nothing is ever perfect and better is always possible, but it really has changed where, where you know we have just you know, in March of this year, for example, one of our lake committees released a total allowable catch limits for perch in Lake Erie and it went down because that's a species that is not as strong as we might like to see it.
Speaker 3:But yet, two and a half weeks ago, we were able to announce in Lake Superior and this is a huge news story, lake Superior is the largest of the Great Lakes we were able to announce the complete restoration of lake trout in Lake Superior is the largest of the Great Lakes. We were able to announce the complete restoration of lake trout in Lake Superior. It's taken 70 years to do it, but it's been done because we work together and those are the kinds of like it's easy to talk about. You know, there are 43 areas of concern and we need to clean them up because of the terrible legacy of the lakes. But I think we also need to celebrate when we hear things like the complete restoration of lake trout populations in the largest Great Lake. That is a huge news story that nobody you know, 10 or 15 years ago nobody would have imagined, but now it's real and it's there.
Speaker 7:Yeah, that is good news now, and there was a bunch of things that took place. I believe I'm not sure if it was Great Lakes Fishery Commission that established stock releases, the enamel of salmonoids that the jurisdictions were putting into the Great Lakes. Am I correct there or incorrect there, or do they just make recommendations on how things should go Well?
Speaker 3:what we do? No, well, we facilitate the process where the lake managers, so the jurisdictions that have regulatory responsibility, where they make those kinds of decisions, so we would get them together. So, rather than that decision being implemented in I don't know, say, you know, new York State, it's implemented by everyone that sits on the Lake Ontario Committee or whatever. So we again the commission itself is not a regulatory body we facilitate the processes that those regulatory authorities sit on. So those kinds of decisions would happen as a consequence of our strategic plan of management and our Lake Committee processes.
Speaker 7:Yeah, well, we have a huge impact with a lot of that. And I know when I was Minister of Natural Resources we discussed quite a bit about the Great when all the salmon derbies were huge. I know the ones in Ontario were large. You had the Star Derby, the Sun Derby, you had the local derbies as well and those derbies were taking out hundreds of thousands of tons of predator fish, salmonoids, because people were out participating in these activities and getting weigh-ins and there was a lot. So there was an increase in the number of salmonoids that were released into the Great Lakes. But some of the difficulty, from my understanding, was that once the derbies have done their cycle and I think there's pretty much only well, I know there's the one in Ontario, it could be Lake Erie as well, but up in Owen Sound there's one.
Speaker 7:But I don't know of near the numbers that would be there. That would take out huge tonnage of salmonoids. But my understanding was that the amount of salmonoid that were put into the Great Lakes continued to be the same number, even though there wasn't that many being taken out when the derbies had run their life and were no longer around. Are you familiar with any of that? Have you heard much about those details?
Speaker 3:I am, and so you're right on the Owen Sound Salmon Spectacular. The derby up there is still a big thing, but you're right, it doesn't take out that kind of quantity. So it is exactly. The coordination of stocking decisions is exactly something that's coordinated by the lake committees. Prior to that happening you had, you know, lamprey were running rampant in the system and it became a bit of a stocking or a smorgasbord process where the province and states were simply dumping fish in without understanding broader things.
Speaker 3:Now we do really aggressive tracking of adult populations. We, you know, as part of the Lamprey program as well, we have to do adult wounding rates on things like lake trout and so on. But we also have programs. I'll mention something like our acoustic telemetry program through something called GLADOS, and what it is is we install acoustic telemetry program through something called GLADOS and what it is is we install acoustic telemetry devices in the lakes and then we tag fish species and so on. There's this whole effort that goes on and we're actually able to track with high, high degree of accuracy what the fish populations are doing, specific individuals, where they're traveling to, and to get a better understanding of that for the purposes of lamprey control, but also for the purposes of stocking right. We can actually start to have a genuine, accurate, real picture of what's taking place, and that has changed the entire nature of stocking. It saves millions of dollars and not that it's a cost-cutting measure, but rather it's an efficiency measure.
Speaker 3:Understanding, you know, this year we have to do a lot more, but maybe next year we don't, because species are reacting in a certain way.
Speaker 3:So it's changed the entire nature of how they do that, rather than just kind of dumping fish in. We're even on the American side and this is really interesting there's something called. There's a specific program that they're trying. It's a mass marketing program and they're trying to identify with a nose tag fry that are released from hatcheries that they would be able to know if they were a hatchery fish or a natural fish, right, so they can actually decide and track. If they're able to cut back on stalking, you know, then that would be tracked, like when an angler catches a fish, they cut off the head and they determine whether it was a hatchery fish or a natural fish, and if you start seeing huge numbers of naturally occurring fish, then you can start to pull back on your hatchery fish and so on. So it's a much more scientific process and it speaks to the absolute importance of having that scientific understanding, that fact-based understanding of the Great Lakes and the entire system.
Speaker 7:There's a lot of fish out there, more than just the predator fish as well. It's the salmonoids, which include your salmon plus your trouts and things like that. But I can recall when I was young in the 60s and 70s and particularly in the 70s. It was a lot of fun in the 70s and the early 80s to do something called smelt fishing on Lake Ontario and it would be nothing to see, you know, 30, 40, 50 different groups out all smelt fishing when the smelt were running. But smelt aren't there in the numbers that they used to be and any idea on what's happening and what's taking place with a lot of smelt populations.
Speaker 3:No, certainly. I grew up, as I mentioned earlier, on Lake Huron and every you know April-ish you would go out and that's exactly what you would do. You'd do a smelt fishing and then you'd go back and you have a fish fry and it became this huge social thing. It was something that we did as teenagers back in the 80s and 90s. It was a very common thing and it isn't anymore. And I don't know. I mean, I'm not a fish biologist I mentioned earlier my background is in politics and kind of that political outreach and comms.
Speaker 3:But things are changing and that's where you know, when you I mentioned about the perch populations in Lake Erie are not where we want them to be.
Speaker 3:So we need to kind of refocus our efforts as opposed to lake trout in Lake Superior that have become more stable. So you know, there are definitely declines in population and some of it ebbs and flows, but some of it doesn't. Some of it's just that the populations aren't what they once were and I, without knowing precisely, you know, I would suggest that probably that's what you're looking at in some of these bait fish or some of the smelt or those kinds of things. But it just speaks to the reason why we need to continue the process to keep the ecosystem and the habitat itself, to restore connectivity, to do shoreline softening and to make sure that we shore up the shore lines in a different way than we once did. We need to explore different usage patterns for how we go down that road, because populations will restore If we clean up the water, if we make sure that we're not ruining the habitat and the shore lines. Populations and the Lake Superior example demonstrates that populations will rebound. We just have to do a better job at getting there.
Speaker 7:Well, it'll certainly be nice to see some like the smelt or the perch in Lake Erie, but much on deepwater cisco is much taking place there at all.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of science happening there, a lot of science. As I said, a lot of species of cisco were decimated. Some were eliminated but decimated during the early years of of sea, lamprey and and kind of before the program uh got underway. So there is some scientific work now being done at looking at reintroduction and and so on. So, uh, not really a lot to report now for the, for the layperson, I mean, if you're, if you're into the scientific journals, there's certainly a lot of work being done. But hopefully you know, if you invite me back in five years or ten years, maybe we have something much more precise to talk about when it comes to Cisco.
Speaker 7:And Cisco is for a lot of people like herrings and things like that. Yeah, it's just so people know, because they hear.
Speaker 7:Deepwater Cisco and it's just like what is that? Yes, yeah, so cisco. And it's just like what is that? Yes, yeah, so greg. What are the kind of programs does the great lakes fishery commission get involved in and and work with and deal with? Uh, you've mentioned quite a few. We've gone into great detail about lamprey and about the aoc's areas of concern. Are there other aspects that you get involved in that you think people might be interested to hear about?
Speaker 3:yeah, so, yes, we. So we mentioned obviously those are kind of primary programs some of our science work. We're working hard to expand the role that we have in things like infrastructure. Great Lakes infrastructure is something that needs much more attention than it's had. The Fishery Commission itself has had an infrastructure program in the United States for about eight or nine years and it's working out very well. It's proven economically to be a huge advantage. A very small investment in renewing and improving Great Lakes infrastructure has yielded millions and millions of dollars in returns.
Speaker 3:In Canada that's not been so robust in the past. We are looking at again, through partnerships with the federal government and maybe the province and with other partners. We're looking at doing things that would improve the shoreline infrastructure. So that's something that's been quite big with us Again refocusing some science elements dealing with things you know. Another very timely hot political topic is offshore productivity and nearshore productivity issues. So better understanding that.
Speaker 3:But again, the Fishery Commission is somewhat constrained and I mean this not in a bad way but in fact quite the contrary that we have that primary focus on three areas and really the thrust of what we do is lamprey, control, science and coordination, and we do get some wiggle room, if I can say that, because we have a responsibility for fish stocks of common concern, right, and that allows us to deal with a wide range of habitat things. We are a partnership-based organization, so we are a lean organization. We are a relatively small organization and we have taken to working with other partners, so we're always interested in partnership opportunities and in ways that we can do what we do better and different if it's better. But we're not that organization that goes out and gets involved in mega projects and expands. We're very happy to work quietly and behind the scenes and deliver results for the people of the Great Lakes Basin.
Speaker 7:Very good. So you don't get involved in things like wind turbines on the Great Lakes and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:No, sir, we get to steer clear of all of those kinds of things. No need to get into that.
Speaker 7:Oh, I know when I was minister that was one of the big things. We had one company one, and they wanted all the sole rights to have all the wind turbines in the Great Lakes and I wouldn't let that take place.
Speaker 3:There's lots of great controversies and emerging projects and so on on the Great Lakes. It's certainly an economic hotbed. Our focus has always been, I guess, on what we call the for lack of a better phrase the triple bottom line of the Great Lakes. So the ecological, the economic and the social advantages and benefits of the Great Lakes, of having them healthy and sustainable, and we continue to be laser focused on that objective.
Speaker 7:Right, and basically there's a bit of a difference between the commercial fishery and the recreational fishery that takes place on the Great Lakes and you work with both sectors. We do absolutely.
Speaker 3:There are many differences, of course, to the priorities and practices and procedures of those two groups, but when it comes to the work that we're doing, we have a great partnership with both of them, both sectors and it gets even more complicated because, of course, the commercial sector in the United States is different than it is in Canada and the recreational sector likewise. We have great relationships with both of them. Both are represented on our committee of advisors in both countries. So we have direct partnerships and would call both of those groups friends and supporters and collaborators of the Fishery Commission. So happy to have those kinds of partnerships because, again, at the root of it all is the sustainability of the fishery itself, and that benefits all of us in different ways.
Speaker 7:So when you deal with the commercial fisheries, what industries are still actively working commercially in the Great Lakes? I know with the perch fish industry.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and we have actually. In Canada, for example, the commercial fishery is quite robust, most particularly in Lake Erie. Lake Erie is our most productive from a commercial fishery perspective of the Great Lakes. We work very closely with, for example, the Ontario Commercial Fishers Association. They've had a longtime president there, jane Graham, who is, I guess, retiring in the year ahead. She is one of our committee of advisors members and we work very closely with them on everything from soup to nuts, really like I mean back a few years ago, uh, during covid there was, there were income issues because he couldn't be out in the water.
Speaker 3:There's always issues with fish stocks and trying to make sure that total allowable catch limits and so on are are such that we can allow, uh, their members to make a living, um and and yet still sustain the fishery. So that's a collaborative, cooperative, voluntary process and again, there isn't a single fisher you know, commercial, recreational, anywhere that wants to see the fish stocks collapse. So having those dialogues and having that strong partnership has yielded results in the past and looking very forward to working with them in the years ahead.
Speaker 7:Very good and so Perch. But are there other fish types that are commercially harvested? I know Lawrence, who I had on the program. He makes dog treats. He drives down southwestern Ontario and picks up smelt that he sells for, because he gets quite a few of his people with dog food treats. He has a dog food treat business. Is there a commercial industry for smelt or other fisheries out?
Speaker 3:there there is. I mean, I can't necessarily speak to some of those specifics. I do know that the commercial fishery in Ontario, if I remember correctly, took about 24 million pounds of fish last year. The dockside value was somewhere in the 40 to $50 million range. And so, yes, I mean, obviously you've got lake trout, you've got perch, you've got all the things that you would expect to find. In fact, ontario seafood is, you know, ontario fish is something that's highly sought after in markets around the find. In fact, ontario seafood is Ontario fish is something that's highly sought after in markets around the world. In fact, the Great Lakes contain the second or perhaps the largest freshwater fishery on the planet. So it's a big deal.
Speaker 3:And I will say a really important fact in Lake Erie in particular is they've gone through over the last I don't know eight or 10 years, they've gone through a process to become certified as sustainable. So you know this is something that most people don't understand this certification is, and I mean I'd urge you to get someone from the Ontario Commercial Fishers Association on to talk about it, because it's no, it's no small accomplishment and it's not an easy accomplishment, but they are now marine certified, which is something that tells you when you are eating Ontario fish, you're eating quality fish, you're eating fish that has been harvested in a sustainable way by people who are making a fair income. It really is a success story. When you think about where Lake Erie was 40 years ago 50 years ago, from the perspective of the cleanliness of the water and the value of the catches, to where we are today, it is a true success story that requires celebration.
Speaker 7:Very good. Yeah, I actually made note and I'm going to be contacting them, possibly later on today, to see if we can tape with them as well, because it's good to get information out, like from all perspectives.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. And again, people don't certainly. I mean, I grew up in the Great Lakes and you know, as a kid you didn't really think about it, right, when you went out and you did your smelt fishing in the spring or you had, you know, as a kid you didn't really think about it, right, when you went out and you you did your smelt fishing in the spring or you had, you know, perch at the restaurant or you brought home and cooked it, most often whatever you just you know you took your canoe out on the lake or whatever went to the beach. You just didn't think about it.
Speaker 3:The Great Lakes are a playground, right, for those of us who live there, they're basically inland oceans and they become a playground that shapes the entire culture and economy of the places around them. But they are so much more than that and they will only remain that playground and that economic engine if we continue we broadly the Fishery Commission, governments, communities etc. Continue to pay attention to them and do the right thing and treat them right. Continue to pay attention to them and do the right thing and treat them right. If we do all that, then my kids will find them. You know, my kids and maybe grandkids one day will find them to be the same playground that I did, and if we don't, you know, you don't have to look very far back in the history book to see just how bad it can go very quickly.
Speaker 7:Exactly, I know my wife and I have discussed that when our boys were growing up that it was too bad that we weren't able to take them out smelt fishing the way that we used to go when we were early 20s and saw the excitement, the things that happened with a lot of things that happened with a smelt fishing party as we used to have. But anyways, we see a lot of different things. But, greg, I really want to thank you for taking the time to be on our program today. Where can people get in touch with you or where can they find out more work and the great things that the Great Lakes Fishery Commission are doing?
Speaker 3:I'm so glad you asked that. So the Fishery Commission has a website. It's glfc, as in Great Lakes Fishery Commission dot org. I would urge you to go there. It has one. It has all of our contact website or email addresses and phone numbers, mine included, and it also provides an array of information, technical papers, scientific documents, press releases, updates that are given regularly, notifications of public meetings and so on. So again, glfcorg, and I'd welcome any comments or questions or feedback from any of your listeners.
Speaker 7:Well, thanks again, greg. It's great to hear these sort of things, and we certainly learned something a little bit different taking place in our communities, whether it's the water courses that Lampraside has put in and all the things that are happening out there. Just a little bit more information about stuff that's happening out there under the canopy. Thanks, greg. Thank you very much.
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