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A monthly podcast in which Stuart Carlton (a native New Orleanian) asks smart people to teach him about the Great Lakes. Co-hosted by the awesome staff at Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant.
Stuart Carlton 0:00
Can a boom in Great Lakes human populations affect fish as much as aquatic invasive species. What is a black carpet? Why should we care and what is in a name when it comes to invasive species? To find out, let's ask Dr fish. Oh,
that's right. It is ask Dr fish, Episode Six, June, 19, 2023 My name is Stuart Carlton, and I work with Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant. But I am not a doctor fish, but I'm fortunate today to be joined by multiple doctors. Fish. First, we have Katie O'Reilly, aquatic invasive species specialist at Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant Katie, how's the fish fishing?
Katie O'Reilly 0:50
The fish are the fish are fishing. It is a beautiful day here in central Illinois.
Stuart Carlton 0:55
We have a second dot one. Dr, fish is good two. Dr, fish are gooder. So we have Titus seilheimer Joining us from a boat. He's Titus. Titus, where are you?
Titus Seilheimer 1:07
I am on the lovely waters of lower Green Bay in Lake Michigan. Waters
Stuart Carlton 1:13
of lower Green Bay. Amazing. Look at that. Last but not least, this is not a DR fish, and not as exciting because she's not on a boat, but it's Carolyn Foley. Carolyn, my friend, I guess he should have come earlier. We should have had the big finish with Titus there. No,
Carolyn Foley 1:27
I'm happy to follow a boat because we can just watch where Titus is the entire time. So great.
Katie O'Reilly 1:33
Titus might be coming in and out.
Carolyn Foley 1:35
Yeah, we'll do the best. We
Stuart Carlton 1:37
can really go in quick with those questions. Yeah, if you are listening live, we are streaming live to Facebook, YouTube, everywhere, right? If you have any questions, just put them in the little comment box. If you're on Twitter, use the hashtag, ask Dr fish. We type in your we'll take your questions as soon as possible. And we are recording this as a reminder for a podcast. So sometimes we have to do some podcast stuff, right and go back and repeat something to make sure beautiful, clean audio for the listening audience.
Titus Seilheimer 2:07
Good luck with that, Stuart, I'm on a boat. Stuart, Ws,
Stuart Carlton 2:15
that is true. Try to eventually bring everybody down to my level of competence. Some we have to handicap by putting them on a boat. But that's neither here, nor here. All right. Topic, one more anglers, fewer fish during the last ask, Dr fish live for my angler, Carolyn, really wanted to talk about urban fishing, which is good. I like. I just participated in some suburban fishing over Father's Day weekend effect. But what does it mean if more people come into the Great Lakes region? So there was a study a few years ago. Carolyn, what tell us about this study that you have you found out about
Carolyn Foley 2:47
right? So basically, it was a study looking at the the influence of human population change and aquatic invasive species establishment on future recreational fishing activities to the Canadian portion of the Laurentian Great Lakes, that is the original title, but they were more or less looking like, if more people come to the Great Lakes region, say, because the ocean coasts are are kind of like people want to leave the Ocean coast because they're not as habitable as like the Midwest or something like that. What could that mean, if they come and they actually start to fish here? And the study was trying to suggest that, at least on the Canadian side, that that could have as big an impact, or, you know, a greater impact, than a new invasive species being introduced. So I guess, Katie, do you want to give a shot at, like, what this study sort of tried to encompass and like, anything else that you can, like,
Katie O'Reilly 3:50
share about it? Yeah, absolutely. This was a really cool study published only a couple years ago, back in 2021 and like Carolyn, you just, you know, said this was trying to get an idea of really teasing apart a lot of different factors that come into play when we talk about, you know, the the art and joy of fishing. And that's really cool as an ecologist, you know, looking at it from more of the human side of things, this kind of coupled social social ecological system. And so they were trying to look at different scenarios where population was increasing in the, you know, Ontario province, what that would mean for people taking, you know, fishing trips, whether those were on boats or on shore, what kinds of fish they were catching, you know, were they targeting things that are more warmer water or cool water, like walleye, compared to things like, you know, salmon or lake trout? So there were, like, a ton of different factors they were including in their models, in addition to the introduction and establishment of. Some invasive carp. So they were like putting all these different variables in and trying to tease apart what would have the biggest impacts. And, you know, kind of the spoiler alert we already said is that the human population increases would have almost like bigger impacts than just the scenario where there were the establishment of the invasive carbs. So, long story short, kind of the take home message is that it's really important when we're thinking about, you know, how do we manage fisheries, you have to take, kind of the human, ecological, you know, ecological and human side of things into consideration in these bigger, bigger pictures. So that's, it's definitely a plug for more social science research in the Great Lakes, for sure. All
Stuart Carlton 5:44
right. Well, that perks my ears up, as someone who always could use more funding. But so I have a question about these models and how they work. And I know you didn't do all of this specific work, but do we know that this is like they talk about, how all models are wrong, but some are useful. So, so should we think about like, or should we just think about these as inputs and potential scenarios? Or is this something that's going to happen? I guess, do you do? You know,
Titus Seilheimer 6:07
yeah, you know, I think it's a, it's a really complex issue. And, you know, I think the models are useful to kind of guide discussions now. But you know, when you think about how fish management works. You know, I think the man the models can help to just kind of guide future management decisions and actually start kind of brainstorming like, how do you change fisheries management so that you can have more people, more fishing, but also maintain those fish and, you know, also opportunities to, you know, target different fish. It's like, you don't have to just fish for walleye, you don't have to just fish for bass. You know, maybe there's a lot of other great fish out there that people might be interested in trying out. Yeah,
Katie O'Reilly 6:54
and I'll just add, you know, this was just one study looking at a couple of different things, you know, invasive species and human population growth. And the authors even talk about, you know, they didn't include potential effects of climate change in their model, which is another, you know, very big stressor. So I agree with Titus. I think it's kind of more of a guideline, not necessarily saying a crystal ball, saying this is what's going to happen in the future.
Titus Seilheimer 7:22
I mean, what's interesting is that angling, like in general, has just been declining for decades too. So, you know, more people doesn't necessarily mean more fishing or more anglers. And you know, there's also kind of a statistic that people throw around that like night, you know, 90% of the fish are caught by 10% of the anglers. So, you know, maybe, maybe it won't even change things as drastically as as their model inputs said. Okay, so
Carolyn Foley 7:51
I have a follow up question about species and climate change and things like that. So are there warm water fish that could establish in the Great Lakes to be a great fishery that people would be excited about. So, like, I know, if you say like, oh, the walleye might not, people are like, but I want to keep fishing for walleye. Is there a fish? Do either of you know of a species that, like, might be able to live happily in the Great Lakes, and people would have fun catching it too, if the lakes were to get a lot warmer, for example. And why is it bull sharks? No, no, no, no, no. Bull shark,
Katie O'Reilly 8:31
no. Bull sharks in Lake Michigan. You know, I will obviously let Titus do his input. I would say, my thought, based on some of the papers that have come out, is there, you know, the potential increase of bass fishing, because bass are generally more of a warm water species, and bass fishing is big business across the US, but there are limits on the bass too. Bass can't, you know, tolerate any temperature. So, Titus, I let you jump in your crystal ball predictions.
Titus Seilheimer 9:08
Yeah, it is, you know, actually, if you go back to, you know, when, when the state of Michigan was, you know, debating what, what species to stock in the 60s. And, you know, they went with coho salmon and then Chinook salmon. Actually, striped bass was one of the earlier, you know, options that they looked at. And, you know, I think that some of the, you know, temperature was maybe a limitation there. So that is a, you know, a sport fish that gets large and people might like to catch, and it is just, you know, maybe not new species, but maybe it's just a shift in, you know, what species are, you know, doing well, and that might be, you know, a shift in more bass. You know, where you have kind of a limitation now, but maybe with a future climate, it might support more bass, and so support more in that fishing. So. Yeah, that with climate change and fish, it's always like, you know, are they shifting? Are they moving within their range? Are they doing better for it? So, yeah, could go either way.
Stuart Carlton 10:09
Are there? Is there a striped bass fishery? Now, I've seen so I don't know. I've never really fished much in this area, but I was looking for places to go. My dad was in town, and so we're, I'm from Louisiana, we would go fishing for sea trout and red drum and all sorts of stuff. And so we're looking for stuff to do, and we're going to go salmon fishing, but it was like 50 and like five foot seas on Lake Michigan, and my dad expressed a desire to not go salmon fishing in those conditions and and so on some of the websites, they were talking about hybrid bass. Anywhere they call them wipers here, which I assume is this striped bass, white bass. I don't want to this. But are there, is there a stripe bass fishery at this point, or is it not much?
Katie O'Reilly 10:44
Not much. I mean, some of the wipers, which are, you're correct, white and striped bass are stocked in like, reservoirs around, kind of the Great Lakes region, but it's not a major fishery, at least in the grand scheme of the Great Lakes basin in other places across like the US and more, like Kansas, Midwest Plains area you're going to see, but not so much right now in the Great Lakes. But as Titus said, that there's always the possibility that that could change with a change in climate changing interests of angling populations.
Titus Seilheimer 11:21
Yeah. I mean, like in the idea that stocking new species to the region, I think, you know, the discussion they had in the 60s, it would be a very different discussion today. If we were, you know, widespread non native fish, stocking would be an interesting discussion to say the
Stuart Carlton 11:38
least. And it wouldn't just be one guy deciding to do it.
Carolyn Foley 11:42
Okay, we danced around this topic in the previous discussion, but let's talk about another invasive carp, invasive black now, hold
Stuart Carlton 11:53
on. Hold on. Now, before we talk about invasive carp in general, we have to show one of the classic invasive carp videos. Tammy, if you could put that up, please?
Unknown Speaker 12:03
Oh, yes.
Stuart Carlton 12:08
And so for those of you listening missing the video, we'll link to it in the show notes. But it's, uh, some dudes being towed behind a boat with weaponry, a lot of homemade weaponry. I think that's a sword. That's a trident, and they're trying to attack the jumping carp, which we cannot recommend. Oh, we got one. We cannot recommend you do this. But if you were to do it, we can recommend you sending us video, and we will absolutely play it.
Titus Seilheimer 12:36
What? What could? What could go wrong here? Stuart, I don't, I don't see any problem.
Stuart Carlton 12:40
Oh, slow motion. With the sword, he whacked his head off. Oh, my goodness. Anyway.
Katie O'Reilly 12:45
And I also say for the viewers too, that the two, the two young men in this video attacking the carp, are totally, like, covered it. Got helmets, protected gear. So if you're going to do this also,
Stuart Carlton 12:59
well, they're not that protective because one of them just did the just did the groin situation. Yeah, and you know, this is fun to show people do it. However, we really, you really shouldn't do this for safety reasons, for animal cruelty reasons, and for many other reasons. So, of course, don't send us your video. Sure
Titus Seilheimer 13:21
it is, it's, called, it's called a cod piece for a reason, and they should be wearing carp, carp pieces for protection.
Carolyn Foley 13:29
So, so let's talk. Okay, so that is crazy video, and I have not seen that in a long time. So those are silver carp in that video. Correct that they are the ones who do the jumping. But and we've heard about silver carp, we've heard about big headed carp, we've heard about grass carp. What about
Katie O'Reilly 13:51
black carp? Black carp, they're kind of the black sheep of the when we talk about invasive carps. So Black carps, first off, are not those jumpers. They're not going to be the ones you see jumping and mass out of the rivers, but they're part of this group that we refer to, you know, as invasive carps. You may have heard of them, referred to in the past as Asian carps, but it's really these four species, as you said, the grass, Big Head, silver and black. And the black, you know, despite being kind of the black sheep, like I said, they're they were introduced around the same time as these other species, mostly in like the 1960s 1970s they're really, really good at eating mussels and snails, and they were brought over from East Asia, where they're native to some of the aquaculture ponds in the southeast us to help control nuisance snail populations and like these, basically fish ponds. But you know, there's always, always the butt within. Avasive species. When the Mississippi River floods, as it tends to do, some of the black carp from these ponds escaped, got into the Mississippi River, and now they are established and kind of making their way up the Mississippi River.
Stuart Carlton 15:14
First of all, now they're showing more video of the carp jumping black car, but it's actually legitimately terrifying. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be in a boat. And all of that starts happening, right? So I have a question, thinking about this, and thinking about how we have a constructed ecosystem, essentially in the Great Lakes right at this point, when we stock non native species and whatever. But one of the big problems is invasive mussels. So if these eat snails, which grow, you know, which grow their own shells, rather than trading them out, as we all know, but and they eat mussels and things like that, why don't we just let them into the lake so they can eat the invasive mussels, kind of a old lady who swallowed a fly situation on
Titus Seilheimer 15:51
the surface. You know, that is kind of universal thought. I think that, you know, could be interesting, and maybe it wouldn't be bad, but I think you know, from a freshwater mussel. Perspective, freshwater mussels, which are already stressed and fairly rare throughout the Great Lakes, a lot of them are threatened and endangered. They would probably end up being the first fish because they're actually bigger bites and tastier food. So you know, maybe they could eat the invasive quagga mussels. But what if they also eat all the native mussels as well, which would not be good,
Katie O'Reilly 16:25
yeah. And that's especially not good because a lot of our native mussels in both the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River Basin are really in dire straits already. So like, this would just be, you know, another stressor that they don't need right now.
Carolyn Foley 16:42
So how far up the Mississippi have they been found?
Katie O'Reilly 16:45
So that's actually a really good question, and it's tough, because they're they're actually shockingly hard to sample, unlike the silver carp, which are just like, obviously, you know, they're there because they're jumping out of the water in these masks. The black carp are a little bit more secretive. And so they've actually had, you know, they've had some trouble knowing exactly how far upstream they are. They've been found in Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant, but it's almost like, you know, they've had to. A lot of scientists have relied on commercial fishermen to help us understand, like, where they're catching them. It's just, it's for some reason it's tough to catch these guys,
Titus Seilheimer 17:35
yeah, and it's also a challenge because although grass carp, you know, when you see a picture of an ideal black carp and an ideal grass carp, they look different. They can look very similar to the field and be fairly hard to, you know, to tell apart. And you almost need to, you know, do a genetic test to confirm that you're looking at a black carp. So, you know, that's an additional application.
Stuart Carlton 17:56
Are the genetics close enough or far enough apart? I guess that you could use something like Edna environmental DNA for those listening. I'm not an environmental DNA expert, but essentially, you can look for little bits of DNA in the water, if the fish, or whatever, might leave, and kind of detect it after the fact. And there's questions about how accurate that is. But do you know if that's something they might be able to use here? I
Katie O'Reilly 18:19
think it's a possibility. You know, I think there's also, they're doing. A lot of folks are doing work to try and figure out how Edna moves in ecosystems, which can be a challenge in some of these bigger flowing river systems, because you don't know exactly where upstream necessarily, that Edna was coming from. So it's, I think it's going to require both, you know, some research into the technology of Edna, coupled with some of this more traditional sampling and having eyes on the ground in the form of these commercial fishermen,
Carolyn Foley 18:54
or put like, a bunch of like cameras along the bottom, or something like that. Tons of tons of
Katie O'Reilly 19:00
GoPros. Exactly. We
Stuart Carlton 19:02
need them on the buoys. We need buoys. Cool.
Carolyn Foley 19:04
Okay, so I have one more question, because we've had some conversations over the past year about names and even Katie. Earlier, you said, you know, you may have heard these referred to as Asian carps, but they're invasive carps. That's how we refer to them. Now, if you're in Illinois, there's a whole branding scheme called Kobe, yeah. And so can we talk a little bit about, like, Why does invasive species terminology matter? Yeah, no, that's
Katie O'Reilly 19:33
a really good question, because you know, when we're thinking about how we communicate about invasive species. We want to make sure we're being as accurate as possible. And so the shift from, like I said earlier, Asian carp to invasive carps, and actually, a lot of folks now are more just referring to each species individually. It just. Kind of in this, it's important in the in the vein of accuracy, because these species all have different life histories. The silver carp and big head carp eat a ton of plankton, so they're going to have different impacts than, say, like the grass carp, which eats aquatic vegetation, and the black carp, which eats smallest so they all have different life histories. And if we want to be accurate when we're talking about the potential impacts, we want to make sure that we're not sort of just kind of lumping them all together. But when we think about, you know, in general, how we're referring to invasive species, we really want to make sure that we're using language that is not going to turn people off, whether that's some language around invasive species, has historically been xenophobic or used kind of needlessly aggressive metaphors that refer to war. And there's a lot of people you know, such as El Lauer with Michigan Sea Grant. Sam Chen with Oregon Sea Grant, who are really, you know, doing a lot of really cool work to better understand, like, what are the impacts of the way we talk about invasive species, on getting people to understand the, you know, the impacts that these species might have, as well as how we prevent them. So I think there's a lot of work that's being done because we want to make sure that we are including everybody in these conversations, because invasive species are such a threat to abide ecosystems.
Carolyn Foley 21:32
Cool, and I've listened to some of the discussions, and they were people were also saying that it's it's more helpful to call it by something that helps people identify it definitely. So that's also kind of a cool aspect, especially
Stuart Carlton 21:45
because they are different, right? Thinking about the black card versus the silver and the big head or whatever it's like, we can use more precision in our language, and if you can do that without, you know, and reduce the risk of saying something that is either offensive or challenging to someone, seemed like pretty good call, right? Yeah.
Katie O'Reilly 22:02
I mean, again, we really are just trying to make sure that we're clear when we're communicating, that we are making, like, making it accessible to everyone, because we need all hands on deck when it comes to preventing and managing invasive species.
Titus Seilheimer 22:18
I mean, Australia, you know, like, I mean, common names are very, you know, they're not that set in stone. I mean, you look at a species like a both in and there's like 20 different common names, you know, regional names. And, you know, seeing these accepted names. And I think, yeah, being precise, and not labeling species on their region of origin, you know, and thinking about kind of indigenous views on invasive species too. Even the term invasive species is fairly negative. And you know, the those species are not here on their own, you know, we brought them here, so, you know, maybe we need to kind of think about them differently. It gives it a little more respect and still help them to not not impact our ecosystems.
Stuart Carlton 23:08
Too much interesting to compare that thought, which I think is a good one, to us all cracking up two minutes ago at a video of people murdering carp so we're large. We could contain multitudes. I think that's excellent. Now it is our favorite question asked. This is an evergreen topic, and that is fish spawning. This could happen literally time here, Titus, what is spawning right now? And do you have video of it?
Titus Seilheimer 23:34
Man, I wish I did. But you know it is, it is early summer. You know, it's going to be, I'm going to say perch are probably done spawning now. But definitely, if you're at your lake, you might see those little round circles of rocks. And hey, it is sunfish spawning season. Maybe a little bit on the end of it. But they they nest, and the males guard the nests, you know, because that helps their little babies survive. So yeah, it's getting into the, you know, minnows, shiners, lots of little babies swimming around.
Stuart Carlton 24:12
So with that, sorry, on our internal chat, people are worrying that Titus is going to drop his phone in the water, and so we're all very concerned about your phone Titus, but for those of you listening, he's on a boat. Oh, we're getting risky here. This is very exciting. He's teasing us. He's taunting us like a mascot with a T shirt cannon. So thinking about the bluekiller or whatever bedding up there, because this is a good time you can go catch them. Is that a problem to catch male bluegill that are guarding their nests? Is that, you know, hashtag problematic? Or is it, is it okay to do?
Titus Seilheimer 24:50
Yeah, it, you know, it can definitely be a concern. It's same with like, large mouth and small mouth bass. I mean, it is. It's a whole lot easier to catch a. Fish that's guarding a nest because they're aggressive, because they are going to bite at or go after things that are in their nest. So, you know it is, it can lead to overfishing, and you know you're also targeting, you know, male fish, or, you know, a single, single type of fish that is currently guarding nests. And once those fish are pulled away, even if you catch and release them, that opens up those nests to predators coming in, things like round gobies might just pop right in there for a quick snack, even if that that fish is released and comes back to its nest. So yeah, it can be
Carolyn Foley 25:40
can be a problem. We as collectively, but Titus in particular, talk a lot about eating fish. So there's an initiative in the Great Lakes to use white fish, which is a very tasty fish, in my personal opinion. Um, but use the whole fish, 100% white fish. So what can you all tell us about that initiative? Yeah,
Katie O'Reilly 26:07
so I can kind of lay the framework for this. So this is called the 100% white fish initiative. It was kicked off by the Conference of Great Lakes governors and premiers. So it's bi national, and the idea kind of spawned from something similar that was done with cod in Iceland, which is basically saying, you know, a lot of times when we catch these fish, they are primarily, you like, what we use is the filet, which is what people eat, and then the rest of the fish, every basically, everything else that's not that muscle filet becomes pet food, fertilizer or it's just kind of tossed so it's not having a whole lot of value. So the idea behind this original group in Iceland was to take whatever is left of cod after you get the filets and really figure out uses for these different parts of the fish. Basically using everything from the head to the tail. And I was looking at some of the stuff they were coming up with, you know, it's the usual like, oh, you know, dried fish that can be used later on, etc. One thing that really got me was using fish collagen, which is kind of like, you know, muscle cartilage, you know, basically just like protein that was being used in, like a drink. And someone said it was like, it tasted like Lacroix. And I want to know what kind of Lacroix these people are drinking? Because I'm not, I'm not sure I've seen like hint of hint of cod Lacroix at my local grocery store. But apparently that's a thing in Iceland, so
Titus Seilheimer 27:50
I think that probably tastes better than actual Lacroix, my preference of sparkling waters.
Stuart Carlton 27:59
That'd be a different podcast. We'll write those one time. But so that idea of using a whole thing from like the tongue to the spice, as it were, is really good, or it's good in terms of trying to be more efficient. Is that something that we could do with, like carp here? I don't know. So we've had the carp. They're bony. You can make a dip out of them. Or if you're our director, Thomas hook, you can make, you can call it a moose, which just sounds disgusting. And but are there other and they're doing cat food and that sort of stuff, is that a movement you're seeing elsewhere? Is that just something that's kind of unique to that situation?
Titus Seilheimer 28:34
I throw in a little bit on the Iceland example. I mean, one of the reasons they like they have a value, like 1000s of dollars per fish. And part of that is because they were able to create a whole industry that has these, like using a fish product to make these burn bandages, which are very, very important for burn victims. But also, you know, a lot of value to that. And so that would be the question for us in the Great Lakes. So they are looking at, you know, whitefish, 100% whitefish. And also, you know, what are the other species? And I have, you know, kind of seen their pitch, and it was in a room with a bunch of commercial fishermen. And I, you know, I think the question that came up there was, you know, you could create this. But like, who is going to get the value out of this 100% thing? It doesn't seem like the fishermen are going to make a lot of extra money on it. So, you know, that is a concern. But you know, I think using all pieces of fish and getting more value is a great thing. So let's, let's get creative and use more whitefish leather for our I don't know, cheese, that's something we can do.
Carolyn Foley 29:47
And so are they focused on whitefish to start, because it's a relatively big fish and is also pretty prevalent or and it's just one that people care about already. Are there other species that they're considering, I guess is where I'm going with that. Yeah. I
Titus Seilheimer 30:05
mean, so they started as 100% white fish, because that is the Great Lakes number one kind of total, you know, poundage, and it's the top fish. So there's a lot of it out there, but they've kind of shifted to 100% Great Lakes fish, just to expand more to other species. So, you know, I think there's interest in looking at other species too.
Carolyn Foley 30:28
That is super cool. And I definitely, I kind of want to try that drink human I know,
Stuart Carlton 30:34
at this point, just just to say you've had it. I mean, we had poutine and ketchup chips. So we could probably have, you know, white fish,
Katie O'Reilly 30:42
physic, fish, collagen, yeah, mccroy, I mean,
Stuart Carlton 30:46
we could, there's a counter offer, which is, we could not.
Carolyn Foley 30:51
This is Ask Dr fish a show, where are two Dr Fish's answer your fish questions, science questions and life questions. If you're watching live, please feel free to ask a question that is related to what we've been talking about or not related at all, because we are comfortable. We have super professional Dr fishes, doctors fish who are really comfortable pivoting so you can put their questions into the chat right now and we will see them. You can use the Twitter hashtag ask Dr fish. Or you can email us at ask doctorfish@gmail.com and I believe our next question actually came from the hashtag, ask Dr fish. Stewart, do you want to introduce it? It
Stuart Carlton 31:32
did. It came from on Twitter, Shad from DC, and this was actually a question in Haiku form. So bonus points for shad. You can follow them at shad from DC on Twitter. And so I will read the Haiku, and then there'll be an embedded question, although I would point out shad, you ended it with an exclamation point, not a question mark, but it's a question. Anyway, this is it. Parents named me shad, if you were named after a fish, which would you choose exclamation point. Which would you choose? So if you could choose to be named after a fish, which fish would you choose? Or alternately, are there any cool things named after fish that you know of?
Katie O'Reilly 32:12
Well, I'll go right ahead, because I have an easy one. Because, you know, I named myself catfish at this point. So just for, like, you know, k instead of a C. So that one's pretty obvious. I mean, there's, yeah, so I'm going catfish, but, I mean, there's so many, I was like, thinking about all the things that I know named after fish. You have things like places, you know, Cape Cod.
Unknown Speaker 32:38
You have a bunch of, I never thought about that?
Katie O'Reilly 32:41
Yeah, Cape Cod named after named after Atlantic cod. Lake fishing, lake fishing, Whitefish Bay and here in the Great Lakes. So lots of places, lots of cars, actually named after fish. You've got things like Stingray, barracuda, and you even got things like plants. There's a wildflower called the trout lily. So I mean, we could go on and on about things named after fish, but Well, if
Stuart Carlton 33:09
I were going to be named after a fish, while Titus had just his ear, this is actually easy, because my parents were going back and forth between Stuart and Humu, Nuka, Nuku apua, which is the state fish of Hawaii, the reef Trigger Fish. So they chose Stewart, yeah,
Unknown Speaker 33:25
it was a toss up.
Carolyn Foley 33:27
I can say I would not be named after a fish. I'll just be boring. Nope.
Titus Seilheimer 33:35
Is my sound? Okay, great,
Stuart Carlton 33:37
man. It actually is amazing what technology can do. You're on a boat, Titus. We should reiterate that you're on a boat in the middle of the Fox River, not named after a fish, named after a mammal. And yeah, you're, you're going to tell us if you could be named after a fish. Yeah.
Titus Seilheimer 33:52
So my answer, what would I think e Sox would be a good, good name. That's the genus for, you know, Pike and muscalange. But I have always advocated, you know, people having daughters, I think persona, which is the genus the log perch, is a great name. And, hey, name someone after it. It's a great name.
Katie O'Reilly 34:13
It's a very pretty name, yeah. Okay,
Carolyn Foley 34:16
so since we do not have any questions from the audience, and thank you shad for Thank you shad for sharing that question and subsequent discussion. So since we don't have any questions, I'm going to bring up PFAs and PFOs and all of that. So these are in the news all the time. This is a contaminant of emerging concern, which means it's been around for a long time, but people are starting to be worried about the potential health effects. There's a lot in the news about PFAs and pfoas in fish. And I have published on June 15, 2023 a story. From Connecticut, where they have put up some warnings about eating fish in particular locations. And my understanding is that with PFAs and PFOs, it's really like their contaminant load is really location based more than like a particular species or things like that. So this is the story that we have up right now from Connecticut, where they're talking about warnings from eating fish from 11 bodies of water. I'm wondering what you all know about eating PFA, eating fish from other locations that may or may not be contaminated with PFAs or PFOs. Yeah.
Katie O'Reilly 35:40
Yeah. So I'll, I'll kind of jump in here. You know, there's still a lot we really don't know about. One the impact of PFOA is on kind of human health or PFAs, but also, just like how PFAs move in the environment, how they get taken up by organisms such as fish and incorporated into different tissues. But we do know, like you said, Carolyn, that a lot of it can be very specific location based, for instance, there's often kind of PFAs hotspots around places like airports or military training centers where they use these firefighting foams to because the firefighting foams contain PFAs. It's a way of, sort of extinguishing. So there's very much, in the very much, very local hotspots, or where there's factories that have created things. PFAs are also kind of common to anything that's sort of non stick, or kind of hydro, what we call hydrophobic, so things like Teflon, stuff like that. And when that gets into the water, then, you know, kind of acts as you one of your normal contaminants. That's like, okay, where does it get stored in the sediment? Does it get stored in organisms, etc. So all that to say, there's a lot of unknowns. I think we're just starting to get a sense of the scale that and prevalence of PFAs in the environment, in organisms. And you know, even in places that are remote, we're finding fish that have PFAs. So it's really kind of like, you know, and I think we may have talked about this on a past episode, but when we're thinking about, you know, eating fish with contamination advisories, there's a lot of balancing risk between, you know, knowing, like, where your fish are coming from. Is this a place near a hot spot? What kind of you know, potential life history might influence its contaminant uptake? All that to say it's one of those, yeah, very complicated factors. Yeah. So
Stuart Carlton 37:56
every time we talk about eating fish, there'll be a comment or two on the Facebook thing about how you know, and that's well taken, right, that. But one thing that's really challenging, especially with this, these emerging forever chemicals, as they like to call them, which seems so long. But one of the one of the challenges with them is we're learning kind of one at a time, like one species or one type of animal at a time. And so there was that paper that came out talking about how bad it is in fish, but we don't know what about other sources of protein, right? Ranging from things like beef or chicken or whatever to even, I mean, heck, if I know, maybe it may be all the soy that we love to eat, you know? I We just don't know. And so it's really hard to contextualize. And I'm told we have a question. See, there we go. This is from Keith. Wonderful name Keith den I'm Dungeness. I believe. How many species? Oh, this is going back to whitefish, all right. So let's put a button on PFAs, and then we can go back to, then we can go to whitefish. I think so. Titus, did you have something on PFAs? And then we'll, we'll go back.
Titus Seilheimer 39:04
Oh, yeah, PFAs, yeah. I was going to just say, you know, here I am in Green Bay. We've got a, there's a rock mass consumption advisory on PFAs, because Wisconsin does, has been monitoring it. And we, you know, there are specific PFAs for advisories for, you know, some of our Great Lakes waters, but also inland waters as well. And it is a an emerging topic that, you know, the science isn't there yet. I don't think on what are the impacts, where we just don't know what they are, but yeah, it sounds like, you know, being cautious, making good decisions, eating healthy. I think fish can have a place for that. And,
Stuart Carlton 39:43
yeah, well, it's gotta be healthier than what I ate yesterday for Father's Day. That's for sure, excellent. And so yeah, Keith Dungeness wants to know how many species of whitefish are indigenous to Lake Ontario. That is a good question that I do not know.
Katie O'Reilly 39:58
Tight. Is going to take that one, because I do not want to get into systematics of whitefish and Cisco's. Yeah.
Titus Seilheimer 40:06
I mean, you know, we could definitely say there's Cisco and whitefish and they're both core gonads. Bloater was another cordon that is, you know, historically was there. It's not anymore. So definitely those three. And from the the last Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant, we haven't lost any of those deep water Cisco's. They have confirmed they all exist, and they might actually be two more that they're going to add. So take that. But yeah, I think you know, there's at least those three in Lake Ontario. I don't you know historically if some of the other ones had been there. I don't know that off the top of my head.
Carolyn Foley 40:47
So are they all, are they all interbreeding? Or are there distinct populations? Yeah,
Titus Seilheimer 40:55
so they're, you know, it's more of an issue like historical population decline for a lot of these some of them will, or can hybrid, hybridize potentially, but, yeah, they usually stay pretty distinct, species wise. And you know, our kind of interesting Cisco whitefish situation in the Great Lakes is really because of the, you know, the historical declines, there's been, you know, loss of some species in some of the lakes because of, you know, pollution and overfishing and all these changes that happened at the 20th century. And now, you know, we're more of a restoration mindset for a lot of the lakes, like Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, Lake Ontario as well. I mean, talking about Cisco, there's that, that classic Lake Erie Cisco picture of, you know, there used to be the biggest fishery for Cisco in the world in Lake Erie, and now they basically don't have any. So, you know, it takes a long time for these things to recover and get back to where they're at.
Carolyn Foley 42:03
Cool. Did you have anything you wanted to add? Katie?
Katie O'Reilly 42:07
No, I just my joke about not wanting to talk about white fish is because there are, it's almost I've heard them called kind of Darwin's finches of the Great Lakes. There was a lot of speciation and a lot of debate about what particularly makes a distinct species of Oregonians, which is kind of, you know, our this group of white fish found in the Great Lakes. And so it's one of those subjects where scientists get very, very animated about what makes a species a species, so I'm glad Titus took that one.
Carolyn Foley 42:46
So at some point we're going to have to get on a like somebody who does morphology and someone who does genetics and just let them go.
Stuart Carlton 42:55
I came from that world. I came from that my master's degree, I work on fish phylogenetics, and I'm reminded of Sayers law in any dispute, the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake. That's all Illinois to say about that. Keith degens also asked about Blue pike. Is it officially first of all, what is it? That's my question. Second of all, is it officially extinct in Lake Ontario.
Katie O'Reilly 43:21
So speaking of what is a species and what's not, blue Pike is actually now considered to be a subspecies or a color morph of walleye. So this is where we get into common names being a little bit confusing. And so there's this idea that blue Pike, which were just essentially looked like walleye, but with a bluish, silverish color, used to be pretty common in Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, to my knowledge, I don't know if they're Well, they're not really considered extinct because it's a color morph, walleye, um, not like a an entire species. So
Stuart Carlton 44:06
like extinction would be the wrong term, even if they were gone. Is that kind of what you mean? Yeah. I
Katie O'Reilly 44:11
mean, if we're getting into kind of the the technical, you know, terminology of it all interesting.
Stuart Carlton 44:17
So officially extinct would require them to officially exist as a species, I suppose. Okay, aha, that's one way to solve the extinction problem, right? Is just to find everything as one, one species. Fantastic.
Katie O'Reilly 44:30
Everything's one species, one love.
Stuart Carlton 44:35
Carolyn, do you want to transition us into the next phase of our
Carolyn Foley 44:39
Yeah, I was trying to find a cool picture of blue because, I mean, walleye are so cool themselves. And, yeah, so alright. So the first thing I want to say is that we did have a comment come in during the naming that my name is Amon preets, but I change it to Amon prial. Well, that's lovely. That's wonderful, fantastic. Thank you. Aman, okay, so now, if you've not joined us before, so we do do these every other month, and toward the end, we have our doctors fish, play a game, and then the winner gets to have a soapbox for I forget how long, 60 seconds, 30 seconds, I can't remember, but yeah. And so we're doing a slightly different game today, and so, but I have to share my screen in order to do it. So tell us the game. What's going to happen? Yeah, I'm so you're going to see an image. It's pixelated. It's going to turn into, it's going to become de pixelated, or more more refined. Anyway, I'm going to get go down rasterizing and stuff like that. We don't need to talk about that right now. But the question is, like, basically you're racing. So there are three different gifts that you're going to watch, and whoever guesses first two out of three wins. Alright? So if you have comments
Stuart Carlton 46:11
on Carolyn's appreciation of gift, please put those in the chat as well.
Carolyn Foley 46:15
Yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, serious.
Stuart Carlton 46:18
Sunglasses are off. He's squinting in on the phone. Oh, this is exciting.
Titus Seilheimer 46:24
I don't need my polarized sunglasses for this. I'm ready. All
Carolyn Foley 46:28
right, so one sec, let me just get it so that it is starting up again and All right, so this is what you're seeing. Tell me what it is, a fish.
Stuart Carlton 46:41
It's a fish. Done. Here's my soapbox. I know what it is. I know what I'm
Katie O'Reilly 46:46
gonna say. Johnny darter,
Carolyn Foley 46:48
Katie wins, that one was a Johnny darter,
Unknown Speaker 47:00
sorry. So
Katie O'Reilly 47:05
no problem exactly this is, this is biased in my favor, so I am so
Carolyn Foley 47:11
here one second.
Katie O'Reilly 47:18
Johnny darter,
Carolyn Foley 47:19
you are killing me. Smalls. Johnny darter, lovely, alright. Okay. Everybody ready for number two? Yeah,
Stuart Carlton 47:25
we already have a guest of northern pike. So is that right?
Carolyn Foley 47:30
No, it was Johnny darter, no,
Stuart Carlton 47:31
the next one, he's already guessed for the next one. Carolyn Titus is using strategic trying to get it, yeah, cuz he can't actually, alright, that's alright. Roll it. Roll it.
Carolyn Foley 47:39
We're all professional. Sorry, no, sorry, I accidentally closed this thing. See, this is what happens when I try to do something new. But y'all are gonna love this one. Alright, okay. Tammy is like me,
Stuart Carlton 47:55
right here.
Unknown Speaker 47:57
Alright, here we go.
Katie O'Reilly 48:01
Oh, it's Newton. Newton. What is that? Newton is Ohio sea grants. They have a stone lab facility in Lake Erie, and Newton is the island dog, a dog. He's the best. Why don't we have a Sea Grant dog
Stuart Carlton 48:21
writing this down, that's true. First, first island, the dog, Katie
Carolyn Foley 48:28
already won. But we're doing this because we're doing it. So Okay,
Stuart Carlton 48:35
the third gym, we'll be up in a Giphy.
Carolyn Foley 48:39
All right. Number three,
Stuart Carlton 48:47
what now you got sturgeon? I
Titus Seilheimer 48:48
said, sturgeon. I can't really see it
Stuart Carlton 48:51
kind of a salmon. Okay, a trout. I
Katie O'Reilly 48:54
was gonna say, is it a brook trout?
Titus Seilheimer 48:56
Nope, no. Green brown trout, brown
Stuart Carlton 48:59
trout, nope. Purple trail,
Carolyn Foley 49:03
nope, well, to be fair, oh, I only know common name. Go ahead. Is
Katie O'Reilly 49:07
it lake trout?
Carolyn Foley 49:07
Nope,
Titus Seilheimer 49:08
no Atlantic salmon.
Katie O'Reilly 49:13
We're just going down the list.
Titus Seilheimer 49:17
Imagine that on my phone it is smaller than a postage stamp.
Stuart Carlton 49:23
Well, you still got it. Only 17 guesses in Titus. So,
Carolyn Foley 49:27
nicely done. Nice
Titus Seilheimer 49:29
edit it to sound like I was right the first time. Yeah,
Stuart Carlton 49:33
Quinn, if you could do that, and there's 2% Quinn, actually, what you should do is leave this whole little spiel in, and then we will all hear how corrupt Titus is he's always winning.
Carolyn Foley 49:43
Okay, so there we go. So we had Johnny darter Newton, the best boy on stone lab and a an Atlantic salmon. Were the three gift GIFs, whatever you want to call them. So Katie, you are the official winner, and you get your soapbox. And Stuart can do the timing for however
Stuart Carlton 50:01
long it is, alright, 30 seconds. We should we should have like a Jeopardy esque theme song, but we don't. So 30 seconds beginning now.
Katie O'Reilly 50:10
So it is summer in the Great Lakes, and I hope you are getting a chance to go out and enjoy everything the region has to offer. You know, while you're out there on your boat, paddleboard, canoe, kayak, your fishing. Just make sure that you know what, if you're taking your your stuff between different bodies of water that you Clean, Drain and Dry, we don't want to potentially move any invasive species between between water bodies. And you know, those guys can be little hitchhikers. So it's just really important that as you're having fun, as you're enjoying this beautiful summer we've been having that we keep our streams, rivers, lakes, ponds, everything you know, free from any future invasive species movement. So
Stuart Carlton 50:56
fantastic. Katie O'Reilly, aquatic invasive species specialist, Illinois, Indiana, Sea Grant. Twitter, follow. Twitter, follow her on Twitter. At ask, Nope, not at ask anything. At doctor,
Unknown Speaker 51:07
don't ask me anything.
Stuart Carlton 51:10
Thanks for coming on. Katie joining us from a boat. Titus seilheimer, Dr, Titus, Dr Katie O'Reilly too, from a boat. He's in the Fox River. Titus, anything fun coming up this month?
Titus Seilheimer 51:22
Hey, I'm I'm out here on Green Bay all week. Isn't that great? It
Stuart Carlton 51:25
is great. Yes, what are you actually doing on Green Bay,
Titus Seilheimer 51:29
surveying fish and looking at Wild price with coastal
Stuart Carlton 51:34
wetlands? Well, thank you so much, Titus, and
Carolyn Foley 51:38
let's acknowledge that we are recording this on Juneteenth. So happy Juneteenth. Everybody.
Katie O'Reilly 51:43
Happy Juneteenth. Happy
Stuart Carlton 51:44
Juneteenth. Everybody. Thank you for that. Ask. Dr fish is brought to you by the fine people at Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant, Wisconsin Sea Grant and Goby dog media. The show is produced and hosted by Stuart Carlton, Carolyn Foley. Dr fish, Katie O'Reilly, Dr fish. Titus seilheimer, the live broadcast Guru is Tammy winsole and produced by our great pals at Great Lakes. Now, sorry, sorry. The podcast version of the show is edited by the awesome Quinn rose, and we thank Quinn for everything. Thank you, Quinn. Drop out of graduate school. The podcast artwork is by Ethan kosack. Go check out his portfolio. Ethan cosack.com, that's k, O, C, A, K, we should ask him his fish name, probably one at farts. If you have questions for Dr fish, send an email to ask Doctor fish@gmail.com use the Twitter hashtag, ask Dr fish or call our hotline, our fish hotline. Nobody else has one of these, 765-496-4474, or if you cared, I ISG, Hey everybody, thanks for listening. We'll see you live on YouTube, Facebook at 11 o'clock Eastern on the second Monday of every month. Every now and again, we'll be randomly live from some other place or at some other time. But that's the plan anyway, in between now and then, though, if you have fish questions, science questions or life questions, just ask Dr fish. I
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