55: Ask Dr. Fish

Fish questions? Science questions? Life questions? Titus Seilheimer and Katie O'Reilly, our Dr(s) Fish(es), have answers!

Show Notes

Show links:
Video stream of this episode (apologies for Stuart's low audio...we're all learning here)
Titus Seilheimer Twitter
Katie O'Reilly Twitter
Wisconsin Sea Grant
Lamberti Stream and Wetland Ecology Laboratory
Battle Without Honor or Humanity
Eat Wisconsin Fish
Eat Midwest Fish
Cedar Point

Show credits:
Host & Executive Producer: Stuart Carlton
Co-Host: Carolyn Foley

Producers: Hope Charters, Carolyn Foley, Megan Gunn, & Irene Miles

Associate Producer: Ethan Chitty
Edited by: Quinn Rose
Podcast art by: Joel Davenport

Music by: Stuart Carlton

Creators & Guests

Host

Stuart Carlton

Stuart Carlton is the Assistant Director of the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant College Program. He manages the day-to-day operation of IISG and works with the IISG Director and staff to coordinate all aspects of the program. He is also a Research Assistant Professor and head of the Coastal and Great Lakes Social Science Lab in the Department of Forestry & Natural Resources at Purdue, where he and his students research the relationship between knowledge, values, trust, and behavior in complex or controversial environmental systems.

What is Teach Me About the Great Lakes?

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.

This is an automated transcript. If you notice any problems, please email the show at [e-mail]. Thank you.

Stuart Carlton 0:00
teach me about the Great Lakes. Teach me about the Great Lakes. John, welcome back to teach me about the Great Lakes a twice monthly podcast in which I A Great Lakes novice, ask people who are smarter and harder working than I am to teach me all about the Great Lakes. My name is Stuart Carlton, I work with Illinois Sea Grant Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. I work with all the C grants, but in particular, Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant. And I know a lot about walking into the doctor's office and waiting to get your blood drawn and seeing a bunch of people go in before you and get their blood drawn, and then waiting for another 10 minutes while nothing seems to be happening, and you hear some noises, and you wonder what those noises are. Exactly. And then there's quiet, and then they call you back. And you say what just happened? And they don't say anything. But I don't know a lot about the Great Lakes. But today is a special day. The one the only the special. Teach me about the Great Lakes. Ask Dr. Fish lives. We're really excited. I'm joined today, first of all by Carolyn Foley. The one the only the special Carolyn Foley. Carolyn, what is up?

Carolyn Foley 1:04
Not much. We only have two viewers, but there's the cat that he always sees. So yeah, I'm doing all right. Thanks. How are you, Stuart?

Stuart Carlton 1:12
There we go. We got a live cat. I'm super fired up. And so yeah, this is our first experiment in live streaming. And so if you are watching it live or on video, hello. And if you're listening to it in the podcast, look in the show notes. To them, you get to hear about the great lakes.com/ 55 You can check it out there. All right, but so with that, let's just go ahead and introduce our guests. You know, I didn't prepare this weekend I I did spend some time coming up with a new teaching about the Great Lakes theme song or interstitial music, but it wasn't related to this and that was kind of a mistake. But I got this sort of thing in my head and I wasted all my time doing that instead of a appropriately fish themed transitional song. So we will have no fish theme transitional song and said we will go straight to the guests. So first we are joined today by not one not but to Dr. Fish, doctors fish, Dr. Fishes. So we will introduce them one at a time. First of all, Titus timer. Dr. Fish SG on Twitter from Wisconsin Sea Grant Titus. How's it going?

Titus Seilheimer 2:08
It's going very well. Great to be here and great to talk about fish. I'm excited.

Stuart Carlton 2:12
Yeah, I'm excited to I'm excited to it should be fun. Have some questions. Have some games maybe

Carolyn Foley 2:17
Alright, so the biggest field there was we totally had an opportunity to do like wrestling like walk on songs. They're all

very real like, and in the left corner. Dr. Fisher's G.

Stuart Carlton 2:30
Yeah, yeah, that was a huge mistake pick you up. I agree. Or we could have that was at that time could have been on could have. But you know, it's baseball season. We could have done that. But we failed. Anyway. We're also joined today by Dr. Catfish Katie O'Reilly of the Notre Dame streaming wetland Ecology Lab. Katie, how are you?

Katie O'Reilly 2:48
I am doing well. Now I just have it stuck in my head. I got to think about what my walk up song is going to be for like an upcoming conference. So

Stuart Carlton 2:55
you do conferences should have walk up songs. It's kind of there are many reasons why conferences need to be improved. I think starting with nevermind, but walk up music I think would be a really good start. So Titus, if you had to pick a walk up song for your conference? What would it be?

Titus Seilheimer 3:11
Put me on the spot here?

Stuart Carlton 3:13
I don't know. That's fine. I mean, you got to start with that song. What is it called? It's called like war without it's got this really overburdened, overbearing title. Do you know that's what I'm talking about? It's like war without honor. Or I can't play it because they'll throw us off YouTube, but I'll send you the link after. And it'll be good. Alright, great. Anybody else have their walk on music? If not, we're just going to start asking Dr. Fish and if you're there, watching on YouTube just pasted in the old chat link.

Carolyn Foley 3:37
I can do Job's final character did it. Anyway, yeah.

Stuart Carlton 3:44
Yeah, that's a solid one, too. I feeling Carolyn actually, it would be whatever very strong walk up music game.

Titus Seilheimer 3:50
You know, I think in the bonus of the walk on, it's also a walk off music. Like you're playing off that presenter who was right before you who is still up there. Because they went, you know, 19 minutes. And so it's a nice, not especially subtle, but, you know, I think it's fair.

Katie O'Reilly 4:10
It's like the Oscar music.

Stuart Carlton 4:11
Yeah, where they start to bring you up. Yep. Well, they go too long. You can do a different thing you learned at the Oscars. So the person in front of you, I suppose. Or we can, you're gonna have Keyboard Cat at the ready, I think all times. Alright. Well, let's go straight into questions. Right? We ask people hashtag ask Dr. Fish. We got a handful of questions here. We're going to ask and I've got a bunch more questions. But even before that, let's let's start talking about like, initially, how did you get into fish stuff? Right that's a question we get a lot like not just what is your career path? Exactly. But what how'd you get where you are and why did you decide to do it? Exactly. Titus, you

Katie O'Reilly 4:47
want to go first since you have the real job.

Titus Seilheimer 4:50
Okay, okay. I will. Yeah, so, you know for me and you know, I'm always jealous of people like Solomon David who have this, you know, array Juric themed love story with gar I just I grew up in northern Wisconsin, I grew up on a lake I grew up in and around the water. And I think I was just sort of, you know, from birth kind of shunted towards aquatic ecology, fisheries ecology, you know, it's it's mainly a curiosity for me, I think a lot of people, a lot of fish biologists, especially, you know, it's angling that gets them started and you know, for me, I can I can angle if I need to, but I guess I'd rather snorkel with the fish and see them so yeah, it was, you know, just sort of a subtle thing. You know, Lars read Saddam at at Cornell. So the quote from Lars is that, you know, fish are, you know, why work with fish, they're big, you can hold them with your hands. And when you tell people I work with fish, people know what that is. You don't have to explain what is Oh, plankton is or what a what algae is. So, you know, it was sort of the most obvious it's the most fun thing. And fish are the best.

Stuart Carlton 6:03
Excellent. Katie, are you an angler? Can you angle or do you have a different sort of entry point.

Katie O'Reilly 6:08
So mine is a little bit more of the Ranger Rick side of things. But I grew up in the western basin of Lake Erie around the Toledo area. And some of my earliest memories were of like, you know, going to the beach and seeing this pea soup, green water wash up on the beach, zebra mussels covered like their shells covered the beach. And so you had to wear water shoes, so you wouldn't cut your feet. So my introduction to the Great Lakes was a little bit like, maybe something isn't quite right here. But that was coupled with watching like nature documentaries, like NatGeo specials about like the ocean. And for the longest time, I didn't realize like you could study like people studied freshwater, it's like, oh, well, you know, the scientist, I go out to the ocean and study that. And so I I actually did my undergraduate in marine biology, before coming back to the Great Lakes and taking all my ocean skills to the Great Lakes for graduate school. So a little bit a little bit of both.

Titus Seilheimer 7:07
Katy coming to your senses and coming back homing device

Katie O'Reilly 7:10
senses. Yes, exactly. Exactly. There's too much saltwater, too much solar what you're doing your undergrad where you did marine biology, the University of Miami? Oh, yeah. A bit different than Yeah, quite a bit different than the University of Notre Dame.

Stuart Carlton 7:23
Yeah, but you're from up here, right. So when you got to Miami, we're like it's just miserably hot.

Katie O'Reilly 7:26
It's just too hot. Too hot, too salty. Come back to the Great Lakes.

Titus Seilheimer 7:32
You thought you were going to Miami, Ohio and ended up in Miami, Florida. And you just went with it

Katie O'Reilly 7:38
took a left turn at Albuquerque, you know, just just went off the rails.

Stuart Carlton 7:43
My master's advisor, Cecil Jennings was his name at the University of Georgia. He's from the US Virgin Islands. And he don't care. Like, you know, he just retired. So that's his generation. He and his buddy looked at a map and saw the University of Wisconsin lacrosse and looked at it it's like oh, that's near New York City. And so he chose USC Wisconsin lacrosse and flow in flew in in the winter with his body and they were both football players so enormous guys who didn't look like a lot of the population of lacrosse Wisconsin. And so the first thing he did was by wandering the winter actually was September right but it wasn't Virgin Islands weather and bought these you know, these Christmas Story style coats. And we're walking around lacrosse Wisconsin, it's six for whatever enormous. Anyway, so once I have Titus for you with so I heard like a like for a lot of people. There's the there's fishing is one entry point. Another entry point is like watching National Geographic or Jacques Cousteau or something like that. And that's why actually, I think the work that you to do is so important, right? Because it's, it's a different version of that, but it's kind of the same thing. Was there something like that in your youth as well? Were you like, watching, you know, sharks eat a bunch of kids or not kids, maybe? Baby Fish rather? Or what?

Titus Seilheimer 8:55
I did love jaws. I mean, JAWS is my favorite one of my favorite movies of all time. Yeah, you know, it was, you know, it was growing up around the water. And like, I grew up, we were commercial beekeepers, that was the family business really, like biggest in Wisconsin, we had 1000s of hives, I can talk to you about beekeeping. It's the reason that my wrists, you know, still don't really work that well, because I, you know, messed him up as a young, a young worker doing that, but, you know, so we were farmers growing up on a farm, but both my parents had ecology graduate is, you know, whereas my, my grandmother didn't even graduate from high school. So, you know, I have that, you know, the not first generation story of going to college and, you know, having to kind of biologist ecologist parents, who also, I think that was sort of, you know, really, from the very beginning, just sort of interest in nature, the curiosity of it, you know, and that's not what they did professionally anymore, but, you know, we grew up around it and I think I kind of I was like, I'm gonna do something else in college. And it was it was always gonna be biology. And then it was ecology. I was like, I like this stuff, you know, I'm just interested in learning how things happen and, you know, aquatic ecology, you get to study fish, you get to see what makes the fish work, why they do, what they do, where they go, when they go there. And so it's, you know, I think I think Fish, fish biology is great. Just for a curious person who wants to, you know, learn more about what, what fish are doing and why.

Stuart Carlton 10:34
And so that'll take us actually, now, we got to get back to this before because I have a lot of questions. But that may be today that may be a different episode, we have our first listener question this is from so the great Tim, we call our listeners the great Tim. Well, unless their name is something different. And and so he asked on Twitter, if someone wanted to become a doctor of fish, what fun or interesting hashtag Great Lakes, fish research ideas or opportunities do you see out there? What are some cool research ideas or opportunities that are out there?

Titus Seilheimer 11:05
Yeah, you're so you're not like this? Where are we at here? Like this is getting into it? Or what is an idea?

Stuart Carlton 11:11
Yeah, I think just getting into it. So here I am. I'm in college. Right? That's That's what I think. Now this particular Tim is already a an expert on aquatic invasive species across the Great Lakes. But but let's assume that we're talking about a different term. And, and so we want to, I'm in college, that's what it is. I'm in my IQ theology class learning about things that I'll ask you about later. And I want to go into fish stuff like what what areas of research? Like is it a lot of life history stuff? Is there a bunch of ecology? What are the most exciting areas? Do you think kind of looking forward?

Katie O'Reilly 11:41
I guess, as you know, the most recent graduate student, I think some of the most emergent, like interesting emerging areas are using using like advanced technology, things like genetic techniques, some some more of the advanced data and like big data sets that are coming out people who have things like buoys and the Great Lakes and taking that technology and applying it to someone just still the basic questions we have about the Great Lakes like, you know, why are certain fish doing well? What kind of changes are we going to be seeing? Because that's one of the biggest things, you know, the Great Lakes are always changing, for good and for bad. And so, you know, can we get an idea based on some of these new and emerging technologies? Or can we use those to help us better understand and maybe predict some of the changes we're going to be seeing, and how do we adapt to those? I think kind of, generally speaking, it's like, Okay, we have all this cool, fancy new technology, but how do we use it to answer some of our really basic questions?

Carolyn Foley 12:47
Yeah, and some of the people who are doing cool things like that, like sending out gliders that, you know, kind of thinking skim the surface, or things that can die of or things that follow where everything else goes. But you can say, Okay, you're a particle, if you're a sailor that's being blown around. What happens if you're a teeny tiny fish or things like that? I think there's lots. Yeah, I think that's a cool set. And like you said, The Great Lakes are always changing for good or bad, but they're always changing. And we can always try to make the best of them. The other thing I think that's cool is in the Great Lakes in particular, is how every single Lake has something different that is, you could ask a question about like a yellow perch in Lake Erie is facing very different things than yellow perch in Lake Michigan and things like that. I think that's really

Titus Seilheimer 13:35
cool. Yeah, and I wouldn't, you know, throwing in there that even like a yellow perch, lake trout, you know, these are sportfish, they're commercial fish. They are species we know a ton about and yet, ask a specific question about, you know, like, what does a, you know, larval lake trout do? Or what, what is that first year of, you know, trout or salmon habitat, like in Lake Michigan, or any of the Great Lakes? And who knows, like, you know, there are still like, basic biology questions about a lot of species that we don't know. And so that, you know, there's just, I think there's always opportunities and the great Tim would know, you know, every time we get kind of new, a new invasive species coming in it almost, you know, can reset the whole ecology of the lake. And, you know, we've seen that again, and again, especially, you know, in the last 50 or 100 years, you know, you get a new species profoundly changing the lake. And, you know, the biologists have to learn, basically, a whole new food web and a whole new ecology. So, you know, that is job security and constant curiosity.

Stuart Carlton 14:45
Yeah, that's interesting. And then I think another one, sort of a couple themes that we see there are, you know, Katie, brought up the idea of big data, right, we see that a lot. We've talked to a lot of people about the importance of data, I think across this show. And so that's something that's really important. The other thing I would point I would I feel required to point out is the fact that you know, it's not just, it's not just physical biophysical science research, right? There's a lot of research to do. On the social side social science idlers, economics, there's how attitudes and behaviors a lot of issues with trust, I think in science have become very apparent in the last couple of years and things like that are you know, things like market research? You know, a lot of people are wondering about the idea of can we develop a market for Goby dogs in the region and things like that. And so there's research to be done on that as well. One person,

Carolyn Foley 15:32
one person is wondering, there's a

Katie O'Reilly 15:35
single single individual wondering about

Titus Seilheimer 15:38
this, I hear it every day, every day on the street. someone's like, Where can I get Goby dogs? I hear about Gobi dogs all the time. So there's an I just don't

Katie O'Reilly 15:47
have answers for them. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 15:48
yeah, that's the thing. So I mean, that would be the number one recommendation.

Carolyn Foley 15:52
But people are looking for markets for like, walleye that are cultured in, you know, aquaculture or things like that. Right. Like fish that come from, like Asian carp, you know, like, there were people who do economics on like, you know, what would you pay for Asian carp so we can try to eat them out of existence? Yeah, exactly.

Stuart Carlton 16:11
So there's a ton of stuff. But that's, that's really interesting. But and it does tie into the I was being silly with the goby dogs, of course, but it ties into a lot of themes we've listened to on the show,

Titus Seilheimer 16:20
yet, and as you know, speaking, as like, an outreach professional out in the community, I think it's about building trust with, you know, people might not share your beliefs. But once you've built that trust, and you know, stakeholders are, you know, feel comfortable coming to you and asking your opinion, and, you know, really accepting it, like, they may, in general doubt, the science that you see on, you know, say, you know, on TV, but, you know, we are people and we, you know, can build that trust. So I think that helps to kind of be out there and talking to people on the coasts and helping to inform them.

Stuart Carlton 16:56
So how do you build that trust? Is that something I think about a lot, I mean, you strike me as somebody who's widely trusted, and I think you work really hard to, I get nervous about using this term, but it seems to be the term does your well, maybe the term several years ago, but those are the jurors that are relevant to me, because I'm old, in my mind is senescing, and whatever. And, but so it feels like you have very strong kind of brand and that trusted brand, to bring up another thing that we're talking about across the cigar network in a different context. But so how do you build that trust with stakeholders, especially with really diverse stakeholders, which we have? In the Midwest? It will everywhere? Really, I guess?

Titus Seilheimer 17:30
Yeah, you know, I think it takes time, you need to be where they're at, you know, so for me, it's, you know, going to their meetings, and, you know, talking to them riding along on the fishing boats, and, you know, seeing what they're doing, you know, we are like I think within, like people do know what Sea Grant is, and then a lot of people have never heard of Sea Grant, even though, you know, it's like, hey, you know, our sea grant office here in Manitoba, has been around for over 20 years, but people are like, Oh, what's that? So, you know, I think I think it's, it's not necessarily that everyone knows who we are. But I think the right people do, and, yeah, it's just, you know, kind of, you know, it takes time, you can't just show up and say, hey, here I am, you know, let me help you or, you know, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help it just, you know, it takes time, you gotta listen, listening is important, you know, hear what they're saying, you know, understanding their perspectives, because if you're, you know, a charter fishing Captain, you're out on the lake every day, you're seeing something, you know, maybe it's about ale wife numbers, which isn't, you know, they may see a lot of them, they are targeting fish that are around it wives, you know, so they do see that, but then to kind of realize that you can't necessarily extrapolate what you see, with your, you know, kind of own eyes to a lake the size of Lake Michigan, or any of the other great lakes. So I think it's, you know, developing those communication pathways and, you know, just trying to pass that information along and not correct them necessarily, but get everyone on the same page.

Stuart Carlton 19:10
Katie, do you have thoughts about so you've worked hard? So building an audience and building trust are related, but maybe not exactly the same thing? Right. So do you have thoughts on that?

Katie O'Reilly 19:18
Yeah, no, I mean, I 100% agree with what Titus has said. And I think for me, one of the biggest things is meeting people where they are both, you know, physically, like if I'm going to a meeting, but also meeting people where they are, considering what their background is, where they're coming from, what their values their beliefs are, and recognizing that, you know, there's something we can agree on, you know, what, what can we agree on? And then let's build from there. There may be things we disagree on, but what what's the thing and I think with the Great Lakes, that's one of the cool opportunities that I think is in this region is that so many people care about the Great Lakes, whether it's four They may care about it for different reasons. But I think there's all this vested interest in ensuring a healthy functioning Great Lakes. And so working from that, it's like, Okay, we have this baseline, where are we gonna go? And you know, maybe our solutions differ but what how can we work together to achieve this goal? So I would just say, you know, in terms of that trust, it's, it's been there and it's being open and honest and honest about your limitations of like, okay, I don't know everything because I clearly don't. But I can help help you figure out an answer.

Stuart Carlton 20:37
All right, we got questions pouring in at hashtag ask Dr. Fisher in the YouTube chat box. So I've got some here that we're gonna we're gonna fire off some questions rapid fire well, so my rapid fire. First one is all right, this one is from the Great, the great Harper. And so she asks, Why do fish have so many different types of fins? And what are they for? Which I think is a great question.

Titus Seilheimer 20:57
Yeah, that is a that's a fun, fun question. Because you know, you looking at a fish, you can see, you know, fish have different shape fins, they have different, the position of where a fin is on a fish can actually tell you a lot about the you know, the biology and the ecology of that species. So, if we were looking at a mosquito lunge or a northern pike, you know, long torpedo shaped body really muscular. They've got their, you know, their caudal fin, their tail plus a dorsal fin and a little fin right in the back. And, you know, basically what that fish is, it's a sit and wait predator, it just kind of hangs out and then shoots out, you know, really propels itself. So it's almost like, you know, all these fins are just to shoot at that prey and catch them anywhere. And if you look at some of those prey fish, you know, what might you see there, you might see a fish with sharp spines on its back, like a yellow perch or a any of the sunfish. So, you know, there's a pattern where you've got spiny fins, because you need to defend from animals eating you. So it is there, you know, just the variety of all the fins of all the body shapes and fish is really kind of fun to learn about.

Katie O'Reilly 22:13
Yeah, and I'll just, I'll just throw in there, too. It's really about like how, how a fish is adapted for its different habitats. So you can think of the fins kind of almost like a boat, like it helps the fins help keep the fish sort of staying up. So it's sort of a stability so you can think about like a boats keel. And then the tail fin is like a boats motor. And so everything is trying to keep that fish you know, up in the water and help it navigate its environment. So some fish need more power and so they have a, like a forked tail fin. And that helps them speed really fast through the water. Whereas some species, you know, need to navigate more around weeds and logs. And they have you know, a little bit more control and like they're what we call the pectoral are kind of like the fins that are right near there near their chest. And they have a little bit more navigability or you know, they can be a little bit more nimble in some of those more complex environments.

Titus Seilheimer 23:13
You know, and speaking let's let's speak a Goby dogs. I want to do a call back to Goby dogs and yes, you know, the Round Goby, those Goby look at those, and they actually have a fuse pelvic fin. So all our North American fish have two pelvic fins. So I like to think you know, you know where your pelvic bones are, think of those. It's like the fish's legs. But on a Goby, they are fused together in like suction cup, kind of fin, which great for fish identification. If you've got, you know, it's like, Oh, hey, this has got to be a Gobi, because these fins are fused. But also, it can act as sort of like a suction cup, because gobies, they are a bunch of fish, they sit on the bottom, and you look at their you know, kind of body structure, they want to be down there, they don't have a swim bladder, they sit on the bottom. And there there is a nice adaptation to the environment, where you can just kind of hang out right there on the bottom.

Stuart Carlton 24:12
So you can tell a lot about a fish just by me it's been a while since I've been a fish you caught biologists or whatever you can do a lot just by looking at these different body structures, right? Both in terms of how they swim, you can tell right, right. There's different swimming modes. And I'm sure that research is man's but just based on that you can tell like what kind of life life may lead. That's fantastic. All right. Well related to swimming styles. And this one is from the Great, the great, Keith, I believe, what is the fastest fish in the Great Lakes non non bull shark edition.

Katie O'Reilly 24:43
So I was thinking about this one and Titus might disagree, but I think there's a couple It depends how we're defining fast. You know, is it the fastest one can keep moving over time? Or is it like a really quick burst of energy

Stuart Carlton 24:57
Usain Bolt or

Katie O'Reilly 24:59
some but he's really good at the marathon Mo Farah like the marathoner. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 25:03
I'll trust you on that one. Yeah.

Katie O'Reilly 25:05
So in terms of like fish that can make really quick, Speedy, they Usain Bolt ones, those are things like Titus was saying earlier northern pike muskies things that are to the sit and wait predators, and they need a really quick burst of energy. And so like those can go, you know, for very short distances, speeds of you know, 1020 miles per hour, but that's for a very tiny distance. In contrast, you have fish such as the salmon, like Pacific salmon and the great lakes that are built more kind of cruising. And so they might be able to have more of that endurance, as they make their migrations around the lake. Maybe not those quite quick bursts of speed, but more of a sustained. But I also, you know, this turns into a controversy with what Titus says,

Stuart Carlton 25:55
Oh, yes, I would hope so.

Titus Seilheimer 25:57
No, sadly, I those are pretty much my the same examples, I would say, you know, with a Pacific salmon, you know, look at their native range. You know, if you're a Chinook salmon, you might, you know, swim out of a river in Oregon, and go all the way up the Alaskan coast, British Columbia coast all the way out the, you know, the Aleutian Islands, and then hook back. And that's like 5000 miles. I mean, that's a huge journey, where they go from, you know, a little fish up to a full grown fish when they get back and, you know, take that area and just lay it down on the Great Lakes. And it's like, it's like a bathtub for them. Oh, interesting. Oh, hey, you know, it, like I could if I'm a salmon, I could swim from, you know, Lake Michigan to Lake Huron. And maybe I could just keep going, because this is nothing, you know, they can, they can cover a lot of miles. So they just keep moving and why they move where they're moving, they are falling the food and, you know, so that's, they kind of think what their stomachs like, just like me, I'm like, a less fit salmon.

Stuart Carlton 27:03
Yeah, but boy, if a grizzly bear gets you, it'll be so happy. It's all

Titus Seilheimer 27:06
I want. You know, I want to give the grizzly that just excellent meal.

Stuart Carlton 27:10
Yeah, that's good. So what about salmon in the Great Lakes? That's actually a good question that somebody had asked. You know, I feel like there's mixed opinions about this, right? There was a huge fishery for for a while. And then there's still a big fishery, but but it's a little different than it used to be. But these are introduced species, right. And, you know, if you talk to people who work in fisheries specifically, I think a lot of them are like, Hey, this is a you know, this is a this is great. We've introduced a fishery, and here we are. But other people say, Well, why are we spending so much time and energy? On you know, something's not native when we're worried about, you know, invasions? Otherwise, you'll have thoughts on kind of salmon in the gray is a thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs sideways? Like, if you have a thumb dipped in microplastics? Which were you turning that?

Titus Seilheimer 27:52
Yeah, you know, I'm, I can leave that off. Because I think about this all the time. I mean, this is, you know, and here again, this is like a stakeholder issue, like I, you know, have, you know, the sport fishing charter fishing side, more salmon, more salmon, commercial fisheries, they can't catch the salmon. It's not that they don't necessarily like them. But, you know, I think it is the reality that these are, this is the lake we have now. I mean, we have, like the Great Lakes are altered, with the exception maybe of Lake Superior, that has sort of the most natural foodweb. But, you know, just kind of considering where we're at in terms of things like OBS and Ale lives and smelt spiny water, fleas, Zebra and quagga mussels, I mean, these are all introduced species, they're part of the foodweb. And so are salmon. And, you know, I think that, you know, there has been a lot of effort on restoring lake trout, I think we are definitely seeing some positive signs in Lake Michigan and Lake Huron now, of getting more kind of natural reproduction. But you know, at the end of the day, I kind of just think, well, you know, we're trying to restore the species that, like 500 years ago was the top predator in the lake. And today's like, Michigan is not that lake. So, you know, I think I think it's just sort of the reality that we need to balance these things, the mixture of kind of the native species that were here versus the species that succeed now, and, you know, really like our discussions like from a management stakeholder discussions over the last few years are trying to balance the or of non native ale lives so that we have enough food for the non native salmon to eat. Because like fish in Lake Michigan, even though some are a little more varied in their diet, like lake trout and brown trout might need a little more around gobies and some other things. It's still mostly an all you can eat buffet on fly if so, you know, that is like these are the kind of complex ecological management decisions ones that need to be made. And I think it's just sort of like we have and for better or worse, we need to make decisions and try to have the most good for the most people I think is what? Who said that that was it was the founder of the Forest Service. What was his name?

Stuart Carlton 30:22
Pin show?

Titus Seilheimer 30:23
No different pin show. That

Stuart Carlton 30:24
was what something the other question I think related to that is is like, what is the appropriate baseline? Even so you said, we're trying to restore this fish and look right, 500 years ago. And I remember like this, this whole idea of shifting baselines is dangerous, right, and that everybody thinks they should go back to how they were maybe when they were a kid, or even before that, and they're using that as our anchor point. But But what is the appropriate anchor point? And I don't have a good answer to that. But that's kind of a question that's hard, especially given what you said, Titus, that, like the foodweb has shifted a lot right? Over time, you know,

Katie O'Reilly 30:55
and it's going to keep changing too, because the climate is changing, and it's changing the different environmental conditions that are gonna be facing the lakes, you know, we may have spots that are heating up a little bit more. So you have warmer water areas that are not good for species in the Great Lakes that have been adapted to really cold, cooler waters, that get they get kind of pushed out new species that can live in the warmer waters may come in. So it's really tough to say like, what's an appropriate baseline? And especially like, you were saying, Stuart, there's people people's perception of what the Great Lakes should be or or could be comes into some of their like, their background, where they where they're coming from, you know, people who grew up doing the smelt runs, you know, along up and Titus, his neck of the woods and Milwaukee, along Lake Superior rainbow smelt, as an introduced species, people who grew up in the heyday of like the salmon frenzy, like the late 60s and 70s. Like that they have those memories associated with just crazy amounts of salmon. They were catching these huge salmon. And so, but if you think about even within those baselines, there was the baseline, about 20 years earlier of invasive sea lamprey just decimating most you know, the top predators, in this case, lake trout in the lake so that the baseline seems to shift, you know, within decades, and that's, I think, part of the reason, we need to have a better understanding of future projections. So maybe we can help plan for that baseline, even though, as we said, The Great Lakes are always changing. Yeah.

Carolyn Foley 32:42
No, I agree with that. That makes them fun. Um, okay. I'm going to ask another question that came in, I'm going to completely derail what Stuart is doing. So at the very beginning, Titus mentioned how you know, people know when you're talking about fish, so I absolutely. I have a background in aquatic ecology and vertebrate biology, entomology. And if you're not willing to kill bugs, then you can't really be a good entomologist. So are sorry, insects, books. And so I have definitely done the like, yeah, I work on fish and books, because it's easier than saying, You're an animal, you do what? So that said, there are many, many times that I'm like, No, invertebrates are important. The fish wouldn't be okay without them. And someone asked a question, using the ash dot ask Dr. Fish hashtag on Twitter, that really intrigued me. And so, Dr. fishes from the great bunny, what do you think about the idea that fish don't exist?

Titus Seilheimer 33:44
I will, I will disagree. And I think fish do exist? Because I've seen them. That's my answer.

Stuart Carlton 33:51
Fair enough. So the idea here is there's so this is captured in a book called Oh, I can't remem the exact name of the book is pretty good book called like the fish. Carolyn, can you get them exactly why fish don't exist, why fish don't exist. And so the idea is that people have done sort of cladistic analysis, which is like they go back and look using genetics or what have you. And so, so much I know about it, it's probably more what have you. And look at me sort of trace fish back and realize that fish what we define as fish come from, like, a bunch of different sort of evolutionary trees, right? And that there's no single evolutionary definition of fish. And that when you look at like a ray or a shark, and like a bass, I don't know, and Goliath Grouper that they're not necessarily that closely related. And very often, very often, they're much more closely related to non fish than they are to actual fish. And I think this is really fascinating. It did not exist or was still in its nascent phase back when I took it theology. Last century, oh God. And so I'm curious about that. How about this what makes a fish in your mind then?

Katie O'Reilly 34:59
That is a real Really good question because there's also another school of thought and argument that everything is a fish either nothing's a fish or everything's a fish that we are all everything has, you know, evolved from from fish. So in the interest of threading the needle on this one and as as someone who is not into the, you know, kind of phylogeny side of things, I just study ecosystems.

Titus Seilheimer 35:23
Actual actual fish. We study actual fish, not these. Yeah,

Katie O'Reilly 35:28
I study actual fish. I don't know what

Titus Seilheimer 35:31
scientifically valid genetic things. Yes, it's valid, but you know, okay, fish, come on, fish exist. Let's be serious. And we're all fish.

Stuart Carlton 35:41
That reminds me of one of my all time favorite quotes. Katie, are tweets rather, from a guy on Twitter, David plots is his name. And it's everything is a fruit and nothing is a nut. It's when you look into it. That is totally true. Everything is a fish or nothing is a fish. Right?

Katie O'Reilly 35:57
I think that's the hard part. So like Stuart, when you asked, you know, what makes a fish a fish, some of the things that might come to mind have very obvious like exception. So like, you know, there's things like oh, you know, fish have fins? Well, it's like, okay, not there are some fish that don't. Fish have jaws? Well, no, some fish don't have Jaws, things like lampreys are fish, but don't have jaws. All fish have, you know, scales. Not all fish have scales. So it's like every time you try and have like a certain characteristic that you're like, Oh, this is definitely what all fish habits like. No, there's exceptions to this rule. So that's why I find I like Titus his answer. I studied real fish. I go out and I catch

Titus Seilheimer 36:41
it. See if you're watching online, I'm putting a fish in front of the camera. So and it's not just anything? Oh, yeah. Yeah, call back to Gobi dogs again. Yeah, and, you know, I read why fish don't exist. And I will tell you, I don't remember. I don't, it did not stick in my brain. And I'm probably I probably thought fish do exist. So we are all fish.

Stuart Carlton 37:07
Well, the book itself is more about this woman's personal journey and things like that. So I recommend the book, it was enjoyable. Titus, I think you gave it three stars, I give for four to five stars. In my unofficial non existent rating system, I really did enjoy it. Three out of

Titus Seilheimer 37:21
five as a solid rating for me. If I liked a book, you know, it was fine. I enjoyed it. Three out of five,

Stuart Carlton 37:28
we work an extension. We're not here for these philosophical debates. We're here at a coffee shop and do that we're gonna go out and do some work. And then we'll be at the bar after having collected a bunch of fish, right?

Titus Seilheimer 37:38
So it'll be in the corner reading candied

Stuart Carlton 37:41
reading, I guess, actually, I probably didn't read it. Let's be honest.

Carolyn Foley 37:44
And Carolyn will be watching WWE Raw live,

Stuart Carlton 37:48
will be preparing your speech for the slideshow for the conference next day

Titus Seilheimer 37:56
where I am the type of fish biologist who has never taken a fish biology class. But I have read candy twice. So I can't say that I get much out of it. But I do read a lot of books.

Stuart Carlton 38:08
There we go. You probably get at least that's how you build this broad base of understanding upon which you can build the bridge of trust that you build. So that is That's right. Excellent. Excellent. All right, great. Um, let's see. So then I'm going to quickly see if there are any more questions that have poured in. Not many. So I think what we can do now is, we're going to trend so I've no idea those who live this will be interesting, no idea how this is gonna work. And there's a chance that it works wonderfully. There's other chances as well. So what we're going to do is we are going to play a double to rounded game of 20 questions. All right. And so Katie and Titus are each going to think of a fish. Okay. And in the first round, we're gonna ask, we are all for going to rotate asking questions. And we're going to try to come in on this fish. And then after that, in the second round, we're going to have like a challenge section, we'll get to the second round in a minute, we're going to declare a winner and the winner gets 30 seconds of soapbox time, so they can stand on their soapbox, and rant about whatever they want, as long as they're not proposing policies because we're federally funded. Actually, one of the four of us can propose all the policies she wants, the rest of us can rant about whatever and of course express opinions. Just a note about that. All right, cool. So all right, we're gonna think or we're gonna go 20 questions. And so do you think it makes sense to do yeah, we'll do all of Tituss fish and then all of Katie's fish and then and then for the second round, this is good. So Carolyn, but this is a real actually. Current would you agree this is kind of like an old west shoot out almost. We got people meeting up in the OK Corral. Would you agree with that?

Carolyn Foley 39:47
Absolutely. 100% steward.

Stuart Carlton 39:51
So here was my weekend.

was always it seemed like such a good idea at the time.

Titus Seilheimer 40:43
With it good? Yeah. Yeah. All right go.

Stuart Carlton 40:55
So 20 questions. Titus? Have you thought of a fish?

Titus Seilheimer 40:58
Yes, I do have a fish. I've written it down

Stuart Carlton 41:02
to avoid cheating.

Titus Seilheimer 41:04
Yeah, right. I don't you know, I'm worried that I won't be able to answer 20 questions about it, but

Stuart Carlton 41:10
I think you said good Katie O'Reilly here. We're not 20 questions. Again, alright, so those first students may or may not know I'm gonna go first because I've got one key question. Oh, and I forgot to mention it. Sorry, when we're talking about fish whether or not they exist. We all know birds aren't real though. Right? Just Well, yeah, clearly good. All right, good. Titus. Is your fish. A Great Lakes native? Yes. There's one question. All right, Carolyn.

Carolyn Foley 41:36
All right. Titus. Is your fish. A fish that people like eating? No.

Katie O'Reilly 41:45
Titus, does your fish live in all the Great Lakes?

Titus Seilheimer 41:50
Probably.

Stuart Carlton 41:52
Okay, that's good enough. Thank you. So simple. So your fish like to live in the benzos on the bottom of the lake? Yes. Okay.

Carolyn Foley 42:03
Does your fish live off shore? Mostly? No.

Katie O'Reilly 42:07
Does your fish also live in like streams and rivers or just the lake?

Titus Seilheimer 42:12
streams and rivers primarily?

Stuart Carlton 42:15
Alright, and if you are listening live feel free to chime in in the chat with a question. Maybe I'll maybe I'll ask it. Alright. Is your fish. Oh, he's really into suckers. So let's let's serve that could be a sucker. Yeah. Alright. So is your fish in the Kennestone? Mid or sucker family?

Titus Seilheimer 42:33
No, it is not. Oh,

Carolyn Foley 42:36
turn. I was going to ask is your fish in the philleo efficient McDonald's anyway? Sorry, if you repeat anyway, I've never said okay. Is your fish larger than a loaf of bread? No.

Katie O'Reilly 42:49
Am I able to make a guess? Or like what's the penalty if I mess

Stuart Carlton 42:52
up? Yeah, that's a question. So it counts is Yeah, there'll be question 10 If I'm counting We're counting on you to make down for you.

Katie O'Reilly 43:00
Titus is your fish a modelled? sculpin? No.

Stuart Carlton 43:04
Oh, oh. Oh, no. I'm nervous. Because I know that was a blow Katie's Katie's feeling that one? Alright, that was 10 questions. We got one guys. Is it amount of smaller than a loaf of bread? All right. Okay. Is your fish smaller than the meat section of a Goby dog?

Titus Seilheimer 43:25
It is longer than that longer than

Stuart Carlton 43:27
that. All right.

Carolyn Foley 43:29
Is your fish one of Katie O'Reilly's favorite fishes that she likes to talk about a lot?

Titus Seilheimer 43:35
I don't think so. Isn't that all Great Lakes fish.

Carolyn Foley 43:41
But she really really likes lamb pray that are the native lamprey. Is your fish one of the native lamprey?

Titus Seilheimer 43:47
Yes.

Stuart Carlton 43:48
Oh, oh. Okay. Oh, two questions down to like

Titus Seilheimer 43:52
five choices for choice. Okay,

Katie O'Reilly 43:54
I'm going to is your is your native lamprey. Parasitic as an adult or not? Parasitic, non parasitic adults. Parasitic adult. Okay.

Titus Seilheimer 44:06
narrowing it down. Till it is next question.

Stuart Carlton 44:10
Katie. If I had another question what

Katie O'Reilly 44:14
I'm gonna go with is it an American Brooklyn free?

Titus Seilheimer 44:20
You got it. You're in Brooklyn. Right. Right here. Proof that I wrote it down American Brooklyn. Look

Stuart Carlton 44:27
at that. That was 15 questions. I need a I really don't have a book. Ah, no. Oh, I know. We should have done Hold on. All right. Hang on. We got to redo that. So Katie, all right. This always goes right. Don't worry, it will go fine. When you say I have a guess. Okay. And then I'm going to do a drumroll. And then Quinn, this stays in if we keep this little show if we obviously Alright. And then after the drum roll, you're going to take your guests and then Titus is going to say not at all you're gonna ask your question. I'm going to do the drumroll Titus is gonna say yes or no. And then and then we're going to do this symbol, if it's right, all right, who knows if it'll be right or not. Alright, so Katie, here we go.

Katie O'Reilly 45:05
Okay, Titus. Is it an American Brooklyn Bri? Yes.

Stuart Carlton 45:16
Perfect. 15 questions? Exactly. Okay. All right. 15 questions. So now Titus to take round one, or round one doesn't actually matter. Well, it matters for the next round. We will have to beat 15 questions, so I'm going to start again. It'll be the same order Stewart, Carolyn. Dr. Fish, just a different doctor fish. Okay. Katie, is your fish a Great Lakes native?

Katie O'Reilly 45:40
Yes.

Carolyn Foley 45:42
Katie, does your fish live in all five of the Great Lakes?

Katie O'Reilly 45:47
It may have? It may have at one point but probably not anymore.

Titus Seilheimer 45:51
Katie is your species a benthic species?

Unknown Speaker 45:55
Yes.

Stuart Carlton 45:57
That was my question. I don't know enough about fish. All right. Um, okay. Oh, I'm gonna tell me to can this one if it's a bad question, or makes no sense. Oh, wait, they're only supposed to be yes. No questions, aren't they? Ideally? Well, nevermind. I don't remember my swimming modality. So I'm not gonna ask you about that. Instead of let's do this. Alright, meat section of the Gobi dog bigger or smaller than the meat section of the Gobi dog. Bigger, bigger. Oh, all right. Hold on. We have a question in from the great Geneva.

Carolyn Foley 46:29
All right. So I will ask that on behalf of Greek Geneva. Katie, does your fish

Katie O'Reilly 46:34
eat other fish? Sometimes, inadvertently, inadvertently, I might be giving it away. But

Stuart Carlton 46:43
you might very well might your turn titles

Titus Seilheimer 46:49
cartilaginous or bony cartilaginous

Stuart Carlton 46:55
title. So if I have another question, what would be a good question? Katie don't listen.

Titus Seilheimer 47:03
I could ask about Marbles.

Stuart Carlton 47:05
Marbles. Oh, yes.

Carolyn Foley 47:06
Oh, yeah. Asked about barbells. All right,

Stuart Carlton 47:11
but I'm doing it for the video. All right. Does your fit I mean, we're like this. Is your fish have barbels? Yes. Oh,

Carolyn Foley 47:21
I defer to Dr. Titus.

Stuart Carlton 47:22
Oh, wait, let me know if you have a guess. I do have a guess. Good. Because I've lost count of the questions. 10 Maybe? Yeah. All right. This is about 10. So hold on. Now you know the deal. You make the guess. Then we officially do the drum roll with no problems. And then like one day, I've got to get up up. Ah, but we don't have that sorghum symbol. Alright, so here we go. Make your guess.

Titus Seilheimer 47:41
All right, Katie. Is it a lake sturgeon? Yes.

You also need the Womp womp. Wow.

Stuart Carlton 47:59
I really gotta up my game. But we've all known that. Yeah. Oh, wonderful. Alright, so that was like searching that was in less than, less than 15 Guesses even though I don't remember how many guesses?

Carolyn Foley 48:08
Realistically, that's our fault, not theirs.

Stuart Carlton 48:12
I'm an administrator fault. Doesn't matter. It's all about results. I'm never at fault. It's never my problem. Right now. We're gonna have a palate cleanser. And we're gonna come back and this is what we're going to do. So now Katie, no, Titus, you get to pick a number of questions. And then that is how many questions are available to ask and the second round of 20 are more or less questions. And then Katie gets to decide. Does she want to be the asker or the ASCII? But first? Let's go with I don't know. How about this one.

All right, Titus, for this most exciting round the championship round. We're calling it you want to be the asker or the ASCII? Or no, you don't know. Oh, my God. I made up the rules that are no rules. Alright, hold on. Alright. That's fine. Keep that into Quinn. I want everybody to know just what we're dealing with here. And that is my incompetence. Titus for the championship round. What number do you pick?

Titus Seilheimer 49:18
1000? Oh, no, not really seven. I would like seven. I think seven.

Stuart Carlton 49:23
Okay. Oh, seven questions. So Katie, do you want to be the fish thinker or the the fish guesser and audience I forgot to say Carolyn and I are sitting this round out. So this is only between the doctors fish. So you'll get to ask all the questions, or Titus will get to ask all the questions.

Katie O'Reilly 49:42
Let me ask all the questions. All right.

Stuart Carlton 49:45
So let me

Titus Seilheimer 49:46
change to 20

Stuart Carlton 49:50
All right, here we go. So now we got if you're there, we got the split screen. We got Titus on the left. Katie on the right. Titus is thinking of the fish and Katie has seven questions that I get the right Okay. Oh, he's looking around looking for inspiration in his office. Oh, he's struggling. This is not a good sign. He's struggling.

Titus Seilheimer 50:07
I don't I don't remember

Katie O'Reilly 50:08
any fish. I've forgotten. Titus, is it a Great Lakes native?

Titus Seilheimer 50:16
Yes. That's one.

Katie O'Reilly 50:20
Is it a benthic species lives on the bottom? Yes. Is it more of a coldwater species? Or no, not specifically. Okay.

Titus Seilheimer 50:32
I'll give you a little extra i It's, it's kind of a cool water.

Katie O'Reilly 50:36
Cool water. Okay. Is it found in all five great lakes?

Titus Seilheimer 50:41
I think Yes, probably.

Stuart Carlton 50:44
All right. We got three questions. It's fairly let's say it's fairly widespread.

Katie O'Reilly 50:48
Fairly okay. I can work with that. Does it generally live offshore nearshore both

Titus Seilheimer 50:58
primarily aid and near shore species.

Stuart Carlton 51:01
Remember your guesses count as questions. So one more narrowing question and then you got to go.

Katie O'Reilly 51:09
Is this species a recreational or commercial fishery in the Great Lakes?

Titus Seilheimer 51:13
It has been harvested historically as a commercial species and there is a seasonal recreational fishing for it.

Katie O'Reilly 51:23
It's gonna I may be wrong but Titus is it a yellow perch

Titus Seilheimer 51:32
no

Stuart Carlton 51:39
matter what the champion tightest What is your fish,

Titus Seilheimer 51:43
be white sucker.

Carolyn Foley 51:48
In a police official McDonald's there he was right there.

Stuart Carlton 52:05
Titus as your victory dance, you can stand up on our virtual soapbox. You have 30 seconds no more, no less other than I will forget to count. The mic is yours. The floor is yours. You're going solo. Boom. Take it away. Titus.

Titus Seilheimer 52:21
All right. I want everyone it is spring. You're looking for a healthier diet this summer. Because, you know, eating eating well is really important. And I want you to think local fish this year, I want you to say, hey, I don't eat enough fish. I need the two meals of fish a week. That's going to be your goal. And to help fill that in, I want you to look for local fish. And that is farm raised. That is wild caught. Great Lakes region fish. Eat Wisconsin fish, check out our website. West fish, fresh fish finder. Take a look.

Stuart Carlton 52:59
And you can find links to all of those websites and more in our show notes. I teach me about the great lakes.com/five Five because this is episode 55. Believe it or not, that's probably too loud. But it doesn't matter. I get fired up when talking about episode numbers. I just can't help myself. That is excellent. Now, this is all been fun. And we like to have a good time here on teach me about the Great Lakes live. And that's good. And we love your expertise. It's good. We love the games. But that's actually not why we invited you here on teach me about the Great Lakes. This week. The reason that we invited you on ask two questions, although one of these we've asked before so we're actually gonna ask a different one. And the first one of these questions is this. Carolyn came up with this one for the record. Rarely do we have such an obvious answer. It's such an obvious question with an obvious answer, but that's okay. Should french fries be dipped in ketchup or covered in vinegar? We'll start with our champion. Dr. Fish, Titus.

Titus Seilheimer 53:57
Incorrect. French fries should be covered in gravy and cheese curds. Oh, there we go.

Stuart Carlton 54:08
Are you a poutine Are you a poutine kind of doctor fish Katie.

Katie O'Reilly 54:13
there for the poutine like in moderation. There's only so much my heart can take

Stuart Carlton 54:18
well I mean, it can only be a moderation. Approximately three bites.

Titus Seilheimer 54:21
311 meal a day is just enough routine.

Katie O'Reilly 54:26
It's a totally healthy amount of routine, though. I'm gonna say it depends on the fries. Like you know some fries are good for dipping but like if you get those thick, like kind of wedge fries, then the vinegar is a good complement.

Stuart Carlton 54:40
So when you dip it fry this is not a thing where I grew up like or maybe it was but I'm wondering like very locally where I grew up in my house. So when you dip of like Newport you You dip it like it were it was catch up, and then it it tastes it's like a regular. What do you

Carolyn Foley 54:54
do? You shake the vinegar all over top of it. And you let the vinegar soak in and then it's

Stuart Carlton 54:59
gone. Right. So you take in your fried French fried meats tower, essentially. Yeah. And that's an improvement somehow. Okay.

Carolyn Foley 55:06
It is. Yeah. Next time we go,

Katie O'Reilly 55:08
I like pain. Yeah.

Stuart Carlton 55:10
Well, you know what? We've got a number of restaurants that we're supposed to visit to get great sandwiches and so I will next time I will try a jasm. If we go to a GA Quantic got to say carefully and pronounce it carefully and spell it out jasm The joint aquatic sciences meeting in Grand Rapids when we go there, maybe I will probably not, but maybe I'll get some vinegar fries. You go,

Titus Seilheimer 55:32
you get a bottle of Heinz malt vinegar, you carry that with you and you put on your

Stuart Carlton 55:38
fries, carry it with you, at all

Katie O'Reilly 55:40
times first want to be prepared?

Stuart Carlton 55:41
That sounds good. All right. And now so the second question is, is the same, it has been COVID restrictions or as the context are starting to relax at least for now. Maybe for who knows? We're not getting there. But but so it's time for many people to start traveling again. And so we'd like to talk about special places within the Great Lakes, you know, to give people ideas where maybe they might want to go so is there a place in the Great Lakes that is special to you that you would like to share with our audience and why is it and for this one we will start with Dr. Katie O'Reilly

Katie O'Reilly 56:12
the first thing that came to mind because it is almost well I was gonna say almost summer it's it snow the other day, so it's not really but it's the Midwest, so but what are their thoughts of summer? I actually was thinking a place that's on the Great Lakes which is Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, and it's kind of cool if you've never been to see your points basically this peninsula into Lake Erie that has a really awesome amusement park but it's always fun to like go in all the little kind of Lakeside towns on your way to Cedar Point to have a fun day out out on the lake and so that was my first thought.

Stuart Carlton 56:48
There we go. Is that where they have the third amusement park?

Katie O'Reilly 56:51
Yeah, so your points at amusement park has got like you know some crazy roller coasters

Carolyn Foley 56:56
awesome crazy awesome.

Katie O'Reilly 56:58
crazy awesome roller coasters. Correct

Stuart Carlton 56:59
Titus? Where can people go that's super special in the Great Lakes.

Titus Seilheimer 57:03
You know I am going to invite people to cross the border and head north along the eastern shores of Lake Superior to the city of Wawa take a left and head over to the match a dash river no match dash Mattawan River and explore that make Matawan Bay amazing place. You can jump at a sea kayak from there and just head towards Thunder Bay.

Stuart Carlton 57:36
There you go. Thunder Bay home to the marine sanctuary as well. I assume it's the same Thunder Bay.

Titus Seilheimer 57:41
No, it's not

Katie O'Reilly 57:42
different Thunder Bay. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 57:43
we thought thunder Bay's Are there lots of Underbase right it's a cool name I guess. All right, fine. We're gonna like go to any Thunder Bay the main point is to go to a Thunder Bay I think or to Cedar Point. You know what go wherever you want. The point is Get outside right? It's an amazing resource. The Great Lakes are and so we would love to see you out there. That is fantastic. All right, we will wrap up with this Katie if people want to go and find out more about the work that you do where should they go?

Katie O'Reilly 58:10
They can check me out on Twitter my handle is at Dr. cat fish with a kitty

Stuart Carlton 58:15
cat fish with the K now with the catfish has a K It's not Dr. Catfish with a K right like the correct yes yes. Obviously that that article from I don't know 20 years ago, like top 10 email addresses will be annoying to give out over the phone Have you seen this?

Katie O'Reilly 58:31
Oh, there Steven with a you know a P Steven

Stuart Carlton 58:35
somebody anyway, my two favorite things from McSweeney's are that the annoying email addresses and then every fall there's an article I read about decorative gourd season which

Katie O'Reilly 58:44
I will oh it is darker. Yeah, decorative cord seasons a very important season. Yep, it

Stuart Carlton 58:48
is and that's also a very important article anyway, Titus, where can people go to find out more about your work?

Titus Seilheimer 58:53
Check check us out at Wisconsin Sea Grant that is Sea Grant that w isc.edu or follow me on Twitter at Dr. Fish SG

Stuart Carlton 59:05
SG for super good,

Titus Seilheimer 59:07
super good

Katie O'Reilly 59:08
super super Kobe.

Stuart Carlton 59:09
Super Kobe. This is me flying like Superman in the in the Christopher Reeve. He's got the 1/5 All right, are ya are anyway. Tensile Heimer fisheries extension specialists. Alright, fisheries outreach specialist, fishery specialist fishery specialist in general for Wisconsin secret. Dr. Katie O'Reilly of the wetland fish Ecology Lab at the University of Notre Dame, freshly minted PhD off to even bigger and better things imaginable. Thanks both of you for coming on. Teaching us all about the Great Lakes

Okay excellent. All right. Well, I guess we should just go ahead and close our calendar. We have any follow up any

Titus Seilheimer 1:00:14
sort? Can I Can I do a surprise? Post credit question? Oh, you can. So I was really excited to answer the why do your toes and fingers wrinkly and not the rest of you?

Stuart Carlton 1:00:27
Yeah. All right. Let me let me introduce it. Let me introduce it. And then we'll Yeah. Oh, yeah. And there's one question on here. And this one comes from a key internal stakeholder. So we want to be sort of get to it. And this is from the great hope, the amazing hope, the one the only hope. Why is it when you go swimming in the Great Lakes store, or the rise or in the bathtub, stick your hand and maybe do some plumbing in the toilet or whatever? Why is it that your fingers and toes get wrinkly? But none of the rest of you

Titus Seilheimer 1:00:52
see, so that? That is a great question. And I'm glad that question was asked, because I had to look this up. And, you know, thank you, WebMD and Scientific American, for giving me the answer here. And so this is it's a physiological response. So what, you know, these are extended extremities and our fingers, and also our feet. So the blood is being kind of drawn away from the ends of our fingers and our feet and our toes. And that constricts those blood vessels in there. And that's what causes the wrinkles. But the interesting part, and this is from a study from a few years ago, what they actually found was that evolutionarily, when you have those wrinkled fingers and wrinkled feet, you actually have better grip. So it is sort of an evolutionary advantage. Because you know, your hands are all wet, they get wrinkly, you actually have better grip them so you can climb out of that river, or you can grab that fish, or probably not grab a fish. But grab that branch with your wrinkly feet, wrinkly hands. And then you're also you've got wrinkly feet, you have a better grip on a wet surface that you're walking on. So there you have it.

Carolyn Foley 1:02:05
That is amazing. I have so many different images for movies right now with like, I'm climbing out and like gills come out and things like that evolutionary advantage anyway. Yeah. Anybody see Kevin in the woods? Well, the

Katie O'Reilly 1:02:16
one thing I'll just add is because I also had to look it up to be prepared. But what I thought was really cool was it's an involuntary response. And so people with certain types of nerve damage don't have their fingers and toes wrinkle, because that that nerve system as you know, signal doesn't get transmitted. So it's something like you know, breathing where it's done involuntarily, but, you know, we don't take it for granted.

Stuart Carlton 1:02:43
That's amazing. You wrote like little salamander appendages temporary. That's pretty badass. Bad but, um, great. All right, Carolyn, do under the thing.

Carolyn Foley 1:02:52
I don't have it in front of me, so I can't.

Stuart Carlton 1:02:56
No, it's all good. It's

Carolyn Foley 1:02:57
me about the Great Lakes brought to you by the fine people.

Stuart Carlton 1:03:01
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant with special guests from Wisconsin Sea Grant and the University of Notre Dame today. It's exciting. We encourage you to check out the great work we do at IAC. grant.org. i Li and secret on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. We've been doing more Insta, to the Insta teach me about the Great Lakes is produced by hope charters, Carolyn Foley Meghan Gunn and Remi miles. Ethan Chiddy is our associate producer and fixer are super fun podcast artwork is by the extraordinary Joel Davenport. Thinking about you, Joel? For no reason I just been thinking about because He's great. He's great. Yes. You don't have to ask a question to be great. You can just be great. But if you're not great, ask a question. The show was edited by the awesome Quinn rose. And I encourage you to check out her work at aspiring robot.com. If you have a question or comment about the show, send us an email teach me about the great [e-mail] which is now actually forwarding school three, three email when it comes in. Or leave a message on our hotline at 765494 I SG for Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. You can also follow us on Twitter at Teach Great Lakes which you should do all kinds of fun polls and other things there. So I'm just gonna do it. Anyway. Thanks for listening, folks. And keep grinding those legs

Carolyn Foley 1:04:24
it's so good. Like, I miss chip trucks in like underneath the bridge where like they got like the sprayer that Oh yeah. Oh, good. You're looking at me like I'm crazy, but it's delicious. It has good fries. Yeah, it

Katie O'Reilly 1:04:41
depends on the fries.

Stuart Carlton 1:04:43
Like totally soaked through what is the beer like like, it's always like just the flesh of the fried

Carolyn Foley 1:04:49
orbs it so it's not super yet it's not super, especially if you don't agree like Titus was saying it's not super like vinegar. It's yeah.

Stuart Carlton 1:04:59
Okay, so you see We're gonna so the trucks have big hoses like how long? How long do you have to how long you have to let it sit for

Katie O'Reilly 1:05:10
like, yeah, like walk past like table. Yeah,

Titus Seilheimer 1:05:13
it's like one of the it's like one of those you know the lab emergency showers and you just stay. There entire body is coated with malt vinegar.