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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
Steps. No, I'm doing the Foley work. You're the talent. Okay, yeah. All right, one, all right. All right. So, um, these are footsteps, okay, boom, boom. Those are car doors.
Carolyn Foley 0:13
It's 106 miles to Chicago. We've got a full tank of gas, half a gig of memory cards. It's dark and we're wearing sunglasses.
Megan Gunn 0:22
Hit it. That's right.
Stuart Carlton 0:39
It was teaching about the Great Lakes. Live from the Chicagoland area. We are in downtown Evanston. We are not at the Union Square pizza because it is gross out. It is Midwest gross right now. And so instead, we are inside at the Hollandaise. No, not is there a loop in there?
Unknown Speaker 0:57
No, that's out of us. No, no
Stuart Carlton 0:58
loop in there. But anywhere at the holiday and then everything said, lovely accommodations, and they let us thank you. We're in the mezzanine, which sounds European, doesn't it? So that is fantastic, and the stuff is cold, the guests are good, and we're gonna let it ride. So, as always, we have a very special live from the Great Lakes Sea Grant network meeting. I think I forgot to mention that, yeah. So for those of you out there who are not members, most of our audience is not Sea Grant so what? So there's a Sea Grant Program in every coastal and Great Lakes state. And so we, every couple of years, pending national pandemic stuff, like to get together all the Great Lakes Sea Grant Program. And we do networking, we do trainings, we do evening events from mezzanines and that sort of thing, and so that is what we're here doing this evening. But I am not by myself. I'm lucky to be joined tonight by our senior producer, Carolyn Foley. Carolyn, what is up?
Carolyn Foley 1:49
Not much. I'm mildly disappointed that we're not eating pizza.
Stuart Carlton 1:52
I am also disappointed that we're not eating pizza, but we're gonna get to that in just a minute. So this is important. We're not eating pizza. We were supposed to be eating pizza. We're actually supposed to be eating Detroit style pizza in Chicago. We're gonna get to that too. That's what they had. That's all we have. We're also joined tonight by Megan Gunn, our aquatic outreach associate. Yes. Megan Gunn, how
Megan Gunn 2:14
are you I'm good. How are you guys doing? Fine.
Stuart Carlton 2:15
Are you also disappointed to not be eating
Megan Gunn 2:17
pizza? I am because now I'm a little bit hungry, and I wasn't hungry before, but we
Stuart Carlton 2:21
always talk about pizza. Well, here's the thing, I made, a tilt your mic down, motion to Megan, and she interpreted that as take a sip of whatever is in her blue costume.
Megan Gunn 2:37
It has the lakes on it,
Stuart Carlton 2:39
if you don't mind tilting your mic down, so you need that primo audio quality.
Megan Gunn 2:45
So we're
Stuart Carlton 2:48
gonna start tonight straight with business. This was something we planned before, and since we have no sound effects, we'll add them in. This will be extra fun, but that's okay. We will wing it like Monty on the beach, because we have a special list prepared for you tonight. This is Carolyn's top five styles of pizza, because Carolyn is opinionated on pizza, apparently, and so she is going to give us her top five. We're going to play a drum roll sound before each one authentic sound effect, and then she's going to list the pizza type, and at the end we will objectively evaluate her choices. Okay, right?
Carolyn Foley 3:18
So this was inspired by the fact that we are in the Chicago area, and we were going to be at a Detroit style pizza. Now, I grew up in Windsor. It's right across the river from Detroit, and everybody talks about Detroit style pizza, which is like, so, so, so being honest, no,
Stuart Carlton 3:35
so you go. So here's the Detroit pizza we like. It's in buddies in the Detroit, Detroit,
Carolyn Foley 3:40
I thought they say Detroit in the but anyway, Detroit style pizza is not that good. But you asked me what my top five styles are. And the truth is, I don't even know if I have five that I would be
Stuart Carlton 3:52
okay. I can fill in all right. But anyway, number five,
Carolyn Foley 3:58
Chicago style deep dish,
Stuart Carlton 4:01
yep. Number five, number five, yeah. So there's only five, right? Yeah. And so that's one, okay, yeah, number four.
Carolyn Foley 4:12
See you get Yeah. The truth is, there are three styles of pizza that matter. Gonna do it that way.
Stuart Carlton 4:19
Hold on, hold on new thing. All right, first of all, this sounds like you're great. Your Great Lakes factoid, so we're gonna go ahead and play the Great Lakes fact, I'm just
Carolyn Foley 4:30
making the space.
Stuart Carlton 4:34
Okay, Carolyn, what are the only three types of pizza that matter? All
Carolyn Foley 4:39
right? Number one, nope, sorry, guys, number three, number three, New York style, the super thin stuff that you can fold over.
Stuart Carlton 4:47
Yeah, the best pizza. Okay, so the best pizza is number three, interesting number two,
Carolyn Foley 4:55
Windsor style pizza, which is a little bit shoot it does it absolutely one. 100% does. And if you haven't tried it, you
Stuart Carlton 5:02
should, all right, so what? It's Windsor style pizza.
Speaker 1 5:04
It's like a little, no, it does not have Canadian bacon, because Canadian bacon is not a thing, all right. So it's like a little bit chewier.
Carolyn Foley 5:13
It's like, no legit thing. Look it up. It wins awards, man. So it's like circular, like New York style. It's a little bit chewy, or crust, they use, like, a really nice thickness of cheese and toppings, great thickness of cheese. But yes, that is Windsor style pizza. Look it up, because it's legit. And the only reason that it's not number one, it's because number one is neapolitan style. Neapolitan style, yeah, I mean, and if anybody wants to argue that that's
Speaker 1 5:46
fine, neapolitan style, the thin, it's
Carolyn Foley 5:50
like, thin. I've been baked. Yeah? That's very New York. Yeah? So, no, that's
Stuart Carlton 5:54
very good. But the one
Carolyn Foley 5:56
you're missing out, the
Stuart Carlton 5:56
one that's really critical, is Chicago actually does have a good kind of pizza, and it's not that casserole. It's a tavern style. Tavern style, thin crust, Chicago pizza. That is the way to go. So you're welcome for that. We are now, it turns out I'm teaching you about the Great Lakes, but that's okay, okay, Caroline's top five styles of pizza slice, the only three styles of matter. That's enough of that we are going to go straight into our interview. Now, this one's really special for a bunch of reasons. Sorry about that. We're really excited about this one, and here's why it was special. X, I'm saying a special reason. Special is so we have different sort of theme song music that we play with different topics. And tonight, we're going to talk about AIS, which means we get to play one of our AIS related theme songs. And when only I recognize that it's AIS related, because most of what I do here is solely doing this myself, or maybe my wife, but she doesn't listen. And so that's fine. So now here is the AIS related theme song, which is one of two versions of an old like, sort of folk or country song called crawdad hole. And so I've recorded a few versions, instrumental versions of that. You get a line anyways, but crawdad because They're an invasive species, yeah. I mean, well, I
El Lower 7:31
Illinois, because I knew I would be on a podcast, not that that's a visual medium, but you know, felt appropriate. Our
Stuart Carlton 7:38
guest is El Lower. El is the glances Communication Specialist at Michigan Sea Grant over in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I suppose El, thank you for coming on the show. Thank
El Lower 7:48
you so much for having me. All right, so
Stuart Carlton 7:50
in doing my research, I read that you often call yourself an invasion biologist, which sounds cool, much cooler than like a environmental social scientist. How does one become an invasion and what is an invasion biologist? How do you become one? Or even more to the point, how do you become interested in Invasion biology?
El Lower 8:09
Well, I have always been interested in bad stuff happening. Long story short, I went in college, I did this kind of bizarre Mixed Media major, whereas, more or less a build your own science communication degree. I really thought for a while that I was going to go into nuclear policy. That was too depressing, so I decided to study environmental toxins and invasive species instead. So long story short, I've you know, I'm a Michigan native. I was born in Metro Detroit, and like a salmon returning to its ancestral stream, I have returned to the Ann Arbor Ypsilanti area. And yeah, I The Great Lakes are a huge part of my life. Water is life. And, you know, issues with water are central to you know,
Stuart Carlton 8:57
so why do you sound so happy with such a gloomy outlook?
El Lower 9:01
Well, no, it's because, well, first, you know, job security. Second,
Stuart Carlton 9:10
there's always one in Doom saying That's true,
El Lower 9:12
yeah, but no, it's, I mean, it's very interesting stuff. There's a huge number of issues facing the Great Lakes, but there's also a lot of really incredible collaborative work going on to solve some of these huge problems. And they're quite International, they're quite interdisciplinary, and it really lets you engage with a lot of folks who have very diverse backgrounds and come together to solve these big problems in a way that you don't really get in a lot of other fields. So I've really been enjoying that aspect of this work. But no invasive species have always been very interested. Interesting to me. I was always the little kid who was out catching bugs and bringing lizards into the front yard and whatnot. But I you know, as wonderful as native species are, I've always been deeply intrigued by the ones that have been introduced. And why are they so good at making life in a place that is completely alien to them? What are their impacts? What can we do about them? And how do we talk about them when we're sort of telling stories about how they impact the environment? So do you have a favorite? Ah, honestly, sea lamprey are really fun organisms. I mean, they're that's one way to describe them.
Unknown Speaker 10:23
Yes, they're fascinating,
El Lower 10:24
and if you look at them, they're actually kind of cute. If you can get past the mouth, they've got, like, those very silly googly eyes. I just think they're very charismatic for an invasive species. I mean, it's a great line into talking with people. Everyone wants to hear about these weird underwater vampires and, I mean, it's a great conversation starter. So I do have a strange bit of affection for them. Had one latch onto my arm at one point some sort of outreach event, and, yeah, it was fun.
Megan Gunn 10:49
Did it suck your blood? No, no, I'm
El Lower 10:51
not a fish. I mean, it's
Stuart Carlton 10:54
like a little nip though, oh, I
El Lower 10:57
mean, it suckers on. It doesn't really bite. It's like, Hey, you're warm blooded, I don't think so.
Megan Gunn 11:02
So a lot of collaborative work is done, and I'm guessing you do this at glances. Yes, indeed. And we learned today that NOAA stands for the National Organization for the advancement of acronyms. It absolutely does what the heck is glances stand for. And what do you guys
Unknown Speaker 11:17
do there? Okay,
El Lower 11:18
so glances is the Great Lakes, aquatic, non indigenous species information system. Long story short, it is a database comprised of multiple tools to help us learn about all of the invasive species that have shown up so far in the Great Lakes, as well as some of the ones that may be on their way. There are, at last count, about 188 give or take a couple, because taxonomy keeps changing, and we keep finding new, weird things, established species in the region, or rather, established as a complicated term. We'll get into that later, and then about 100 more and counting that we've added to our watch list for species that say are in other parts of the region, or species that may be high risk but haven't made it to the basin themselves. So we've got everything from mapping tools to descriptions of, you know, life history identification regulations in the region that help keep these species out, to stop them from spreading further, all kinds of tools, risk assessments, to actually say, you know, what are the impacts of these species and or, what do we anticipate their impacts being when they're actually introduced to the region? So
Carolyn Foley 12:30
188 established species. What do you mean by established like, are those ones that have always been in the Great Lakes, or they've come and made their homes here? Or what do you mean by that? So
El Lower 12:42
these are non indigenous species. Okay, so little bit about terminology here. Established. In our case, we tend not to use that term on glances even. It's useful shorthand for conversations like this, but it gets kind of complicated on the management and, quite frankly, legal front. What we mean by established is it's reproducing in the Great Lakes, and it's able to overwinter. So something that shows up, like, if you dropped a, I don't know, some tropical species in here, and lionfish, yeah, a lionfish, you can't fight it, can't find a mate, can't reproduce. It can't overwinter because, you know, it's a tropical species, and it likes warm water and Great Lakes. Winters are brutal for all of us, including our aquatic invaders. Yeah. So the species that we refer to on the non Indigenous list is more or less the established list. These are things that have come in from other places and been able to function and kind of make a life within the bounds of the basin itself.
Carolyn Foley 13:40
Okay? So then and that can be things that people wanted to introduce, as well as things that were accidentally, absolutely
El Lower 13:48
non Indigenous, does not necessarily mean invasive. So invasive species are those that cause socioeconomic and or ecological harm. Just because a species is introduced doesn't necessarily mean it's really going to do anything. At glances, we talk about and the numbers are changing a little bit as we continue to do our assessments, roughly a third of the species that are introduced qualify as invasive because they have these negative impacts. Uh, roughly a third, you know, they're relatively well studied, they're more or less naturalized, or they just don't really do anything. And roughly a third, we just don't have enough information about them to say one way or another. So I feel like
Stuart Carlton 14:27
we never hear about this second type that are here. And it's kind of like whatever, like a ginkgo tree would be an example, except for the males, when they have the berries, those
Unknown Speaker 14:35
do some damage. Smelly females, with the females,
Stuart Carlton 14:37
yeah, males, I guess, because of the shape, anyway. So the, what is this middle type? What is the ginkgo of Lake Michigan, or whatever? Oh,
El Lower 14:48
gosh. Well, actually, if you want to be controversial about it, a lot of the fish that have been introduced for fisheries purposes, salmon, salmon, Oh, yeah. I mean, we track all of the salmon species that have been introduced. To the Great Lakes that that fishery was constructed. Howard Tanner, yeah, absolutely fascinating story. I don't know if that's the thing that you've covered before. Rochelle
Stuart Carlton 15:10
covered with Brian Roth, an episode. I will put a link in the show notes, rather than make the live audience wait while I desperately Google our past episodes. But look in the show notes what you can find to teach me about the Great lakes.com/eight. Because this is episode 88 the power in front of our they fear our release schedule. But anyway, listen to the first of two episodes with teaching about the Great Lakes. Hall of Famer Brian Roth, so the point is, salmon are an example of the ginkgo of
El Lower 15:37
the Great Lakes. Yes, beautiful, well loved, but not native, and that's okay, nativity doesn't necessarily, is not the end all be. All of you know environmental value, and that's perhaps a bit of a controversial take coming from an invasion biologist, but there you go. It's a more complex story than native thing, good, non native thing, bad. There's a lot of like, social values that are involved in, sort of making those decisions and how we respond to these species.
Carolyn Foley 16:07
Okay, so what's an alien species?
El Lower 16:10
An alien species is not from here. It can be good or bad. It's we try not to use that term these days. I mean, it's sort of confusing. There's a lot of terms that sort of are used synonymously, but perhaps not correctly. The legislature still talks about, you know, alien species and whatnot, but we're trying to move away from that. You know, it's kind of fun because, you know, it conjures sort of sci fi imagery, but it's, it's not, maybe the most accurate. Why
Stuart Carlton 16:43
is it not accurate? I mean, they're from Planet Earth. Maybe that's part of the reason. Well, exactly, okay,
Carolyn Foley 16:51
Megan just mentioned UFOs, but I feel like even UFOs
El Lower 16:55
aren't UFOs anymore, unidentified floating objects.
Carolyn Foley 16:59
There are, like an invasive jellyfish, right? There
El Lower 17:01
certainly are. They're little nadarians and weird little we have great lakes jellyfish. We sure do. She's not the front door. No, it's true. Yeah, they've got a profile in glances, if you want to look them up, freshwater jellyfish, check it out. They don't really do much. They just kind of float around and freak people out. So sorry,
Stuart Carlton 17:19
I'm gonna look more. So I go to glances.com.
El Lower 17:23
What is it? Noah, gosh, I pull up the url.noaa.gov/glances.
Speaker 2 17:29
That is correct. That was my second guess. Good work,
Carolyn Foley 17:33
because you scrolled up.
Stuart Carlton 17:36
So one thing you're interested that I think is interesting, therefore we're going to talk about it is this idea of how social values are wrapped up in this, right? Because this is, like, it's inherently a social construct, because if you think about the idea of, like, ecological succession, or whatever, like, at some point, we were all invasive species, right? Or non native species, and so maybe Illinois species, you know, the meteorite thing, but, and so we inherently are working in so the social thing comes in a couple ways. One is we're inherently working within the framework and the viewpoint of our current lives and societies and philosophies and whatever. But two like that, you can also feel the social values that we attach to species and to the environment rattle and like the language that we use, and even just these conversations. And so I was a lit major, useful, good call. And now I study communication, and like media framing and things like that. So I think a lot about the language that we use, and you hear that sort of wrapped up in the discussion of invasive species, right? And I think you've done some work, or have talked before about, like the use of, is it militaristic language you use? Maybe it's paternalistic, like all the different language we use. Tell us about that?
El Lower 18:43
Sure. So an increasing part of my work in the last couple of years has been on the rhetoric of invasive species. Yeah, better major. My mentor was a rhetorician, so it's kind of funny that I'm looping background to that, although I went the environmental science track. But yeah, so two of the things you brought up here is, one is militaristic metaphors. I mean, invasion itself is a military term. It's this idea of, you know, evil foreign invaders coming to our home and taking our resources away from our precious native species and whatnot. And then the other one is nationalistic, which goes kind of hand in hand with the military metaphors, it's kind of difficult to disentangle them. But again, it's this idea that foreign bad, native good, and how dare something come in from the outside and rob us of our precious resources and take things from, you know, species that deserve it because they belong here. So you can see how this rhetoric can get very politically awkward, given our current situation. And, you know, invokes some uncomfortable parallels with anti immigration messages and yeah, again, this idea of something not being from here being. Inherently bad or suspicious somehow. And
Megan Gunn 20:02
that's that's kind of led to a lot of the name changes, right? So there are things that we could be eating, but because it has this negative first name to it, people don't want it because it's quote, unquote bad.
El Lower 20:14
Oh yeah. I mean, yeah, there's the species naming. That's the other big part. In addition to sort of the metaphors that are used in science communication. We're also talking a lot about species names, and so that's both common and scientific names. The taxonomy is changing all the time, but the common names are really what we're kind of focusing on. Those species
Stuart Carlton 20:31
names are really freaking hard, right to because those are oftentimes listed in like, books. And I bet there's, I bet there's commissions. There could be congresses on this. There's got to be a Congress on it. I remember, I was in, I was at the University of Georgia getting my masters in fish bio, because that's what you do with zero dad or Starbucks. And you don't work at Starbucks anymore. But the point is, this is at the time somebody there, Dr Gary Grossman, was his name, was leading out of his leading but he's very active in the change to there the charge to get the, what is now called the Goliath group, or change that
El Lower 21:06
had a different name. Yes, very unfortunate former name and
Stuart Carlton 21:09
and it was, it was very hard, and I was just the common name. But the species names, those are often really almost impossible, even when they're named after eugenicists or racists or or people who to speak in a value neutral way, people who maybe modern mores would say we shouldn't be naming species after right? So is that why the focus is more on common names, or exactly
El Lower 21:29
I mean, taxonomy is it's complicated. The professional societies are involved with a lot of the taxonomy discussions, but when it comes to common names, there's all kinds of groups that can actually get involved, including community science groups, everything, websites from iNaturalist places where you can, you know, report invasive species, Ed maps. So it's a much more collaborative thing. And you know, when common names are used among a bit of a broader audience, and it's also what science communicators tend to use if you're talking to the public. It helps to have a catchier name and something a little easier to memorize than the Latin binomial, so that can be, really be a way to, you know, push some some positive change and change some of these common names that may not have been thought through so well originally, or that, you know, social mores have changed around a bit,
Carolyn Foley 22:27
or even just things that people like you didn't intend for all this kind of backlash to happen around a name because you're just saying, Oh, this is from a place that we assume it's from there, so we're going to name it that, but then there are different repercussions. So before we get to your question, I did want to ask so, so in Illinois, which is where we are right now, they are marketing a particular fish as Koki, yes. So what happens? I mean, right across the border, in Indiana, are they going to be like, What the heck's a Kopi like? And so are they running into issues like that. That's
El Lower 23:01
a great question. I mean, it's, it's very interesting, because this is not by any stretch of the imagination when we're talking about Kopi, by the way, if you haven't heard about this, that is the name for marketing invasive carp, I believe, specifically big head and silver, not so much grass carp or black carp. Anyway, what we're talking about with invasive carp is also called Asian carp. I'm specifically not using that term because it isn't helpful. And if you talk to a lot of people who are researching these species, it's a bit ridiculous to call you know, anywhere between four or seven different species that happen to be from Asia or Eurasia have totally different life histories, totally different impacts all Asian carp. It's just not a very useful category. But what it does is sort of impose stigma based on their continent of origin, rather than focusing on the actual different kinds of negative impacts they have. It sort of adds an unnecessary degree of confusion. Well, the communication
Stuart Carlton 23:58
about these different impacts like the or is it, I mean, so I might want to lump them together, because it's like all these invasive, invasive carpets, lumping them together, right? You're just lumping them together there. So, so, but are there different impacts where it makes sense to speak on a more sort of individual species level?
El Lower 24:14
Oh, sure. I mean, there's the big headed carp. That's the sort of subcategory within that, and that's, that's silver and big head carp. Those are the ones that jump out of the water and clock boaters upside the head. And so say you have seen this video before.
Stuart Carlton 24:28
Go to the show notes right now. We've done this a nice Doctor fish. So whenever it comes up, I want to be very clear, we cannot and do not endorse this behavior. And so what we were showing, what you were going to look at in the show notes, is, one way of looking at it is, this is a horrible animal rights issue. It is abuse of animals that are just reacting very natural way. And that is true. It's also extremely dangerous. There's another way of looking at this, which is, these videos are kind of funny, and so what it is is, it's like dudes on like skis with like tennis rackets or broad. Horns or maybe spears, and they are whacking at all of these jumping cars, and so we're putting a link to that. We are not endorsing it. We are saying that it is a potentially animal rights issue. I say after eating my turkey sandwich for dinner. But anyway, so your point is this, we have the big head carp. They have one set of threats to people into the ecosystem, but the silver carp, or the other carp,
El Lower 25:24
big head and silver, are the ones that tend to jump, specifically the silver carp. But say grass carp, for instance, the problem with them is that they are just like absolutely bottomless pits for vegetation. They will eat all of the vegetation in your ecosystem. In fact, that is why they were introduced in the first place, intentionally. They were brought into, you know, for aquaculture purposes, like clearing weeds out of waterways and stuff like that. And, I mean, there's a really great crap now, I can't remember the book anyway, got into the story of how grass carp were introduced, and then were sort of let go when they made their way up the Mississippi and, you know, eating all the plants in their path.
Stuart Carlton 26:02
I think you're thinking of Dan Egan's. It's a death
El Lower 26:07
in life. It's a very good book. Highly recommend. It. Very good.
Carolyn Foley 26:11
Okay, so, is there a candidate, we sort of talked about this earlier, that, you know, you have some that you're keeping an eye on, yeah. Is there a candidate for, kind of the next Invader of the Great Lakes.
Stuart Carlton 26:23
Can we set that up first? Is that okay? So managing Great Lakes invasives. Now I'm just nervous to even say, whenever I see you. I get nervous now, elle, because I'm gonna
Megan Gunn 26:32
use the wrong I have an endorsement while you think about your words. What's your endorsement? So my endorsement is, if you are an educator and would like to rent a jumping carp costume to have at your school. We at Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant have a jumping jumping carp
Stuart Carlton 26:48
costume. Father of three in Halloween is coming up, would have to talk to our education lead.
El Lower 26:53
There you go. Halloween outreach special. I love it. Alright. So
Stuart Carlton 26:56
my question or alright. So really managing invasives has been kind of a success story in the last while. Like Sea Grant does a ton of work. So part of the reason we're going out on is Sea Grant throughout the Great Lakes, just does a ton of work on outreach related to, you know, we have a lot of stop aquatic hitchhikers be a hero transporter, all these different work we do, ranging from working with individual anglers to aquarium shops to school groups, and the amount of work we're doing is going up, not down, and it's been a large success. So roughly you since you log on to glances, which tracks all this every day. So in the morning, we check the latest glances Dailys, and you look at the daedales. How many like, how many new species have we tracked in the last, I don't know, 10 or 20 years in the Great Lakes.
El Lower 27:40
Oh, God. Well, glances has been around for close to 20 years at this point, Rochelle Sturtevant is the current program manager, and will be able to give you a few more details on that. The good news is, though, as far as success stories from the last 20 years, ballast water invasion has gone way, way down thanks to the hard work of many of our colleagues at gliral. Actually, we just recently recognized Dave Reid for his hard work. Tom johanngen was also involved with that, with the ballast water exchange systems. And so this is, I'm not sure how much your listeners know about this, but let's
Stuart Carlton 28:18
help me. Okay, cool.
El Lower 28:19
So when goods are shipped internationally, you know, you can bring them across the ocean and up through the St Lawrence Seaway into the Great Lakes. This is all wonderful, but many you know, the thing about these big tanker ships is they're heavy. So to compensate for the weight of the actual goods and supplies that they're carrying and help balance the ship. They have these ballasting so they suck up water to, you know, help balance the weight when they are unloaded, and they release the water when they are loaded. And it's just this whole system of keeping
Unknown Speaker 28:53
your ship from capsizing.
Carolyn Foley 28:55
Good thing, yes.
El Lower 28:57
So problem is, of course, when these big tankers are sucking up water, sometimes they suck up plants and animals along with that. And so it's a really great way for species to unwittingly be transported internationally between these different bodies of water. So with the development of ballast water exchange, basically there were some regulations put in place that said, Okay, you're going from a freshwater body to a freshwater body, and we know that species can hitchhike, and then when you release that ballast water, they can be introduced to this new environment. This causes many problems. So ballast water exchange was implemented. So when these big tanker ships are in the open ocean, they pull in salt water. And a lot of fresh water organisms do not like salt water whatsoever. This kills them quite effectively. But you know what? Even after they implemented this, there were still some issues. There were still species getting in, and everyone was going, how why is this happening? I thought ballast water exchange was working well. It turns out they're not just pull. Up water. They're also pulling up some sediment. At the bottom of these tanks, there's this layer of silty sludge, and things like little mussels, little invertebrates, stuff like that, stuff that can survive in like these low oxygen environments. We're sometimes managing to kind of take refuge in this sludge. And so yeah, basically it was, sorry, I think I got the story a little bit backwards with the ballast water exchange thing. There was a couple of different treatments that they actually implemented to treat the sludge and be sure that the sludge was not harboring these organisms here. So the tanks were actually getting flushed properly. And that actually basically stopped ballast water as a vector of invasion, just in the last 20 years. It's really quite a remarkable success. And a lot of hard work and engineering went into that, and collaboration between both, like, you know, great, like scientists, but also the shipping industry, so and legislation. So it was a real regulatory issue, yes, and so I think that's the No Bob, no ballast on board. So, yeah, really wonderful story, and we're hoping that we can find similar successes for other invasion pathways, though, it's a little more complicated when you're talking about stuff like talking to folks who are involved in aquarium keeping, about maybe not dumping their goldfish into waterways. We all know we shouldn't. That doesn't stop people sometimes, though. So
Megan Gunn 31:21
we know that the Great Lakes are special, and we know about the ballast issues, like they've done the things. But what makes the Great Lakes so susceptible to these aquatic invaders just taking over? Well,
El Lower 31:31
it's well, specifically industry, the shipping, as well as the fact that the Great Lakes have been connected in some unusual, artificial ways. So, you know, we have the Welland Canal. So the connecting the St Lawrence seaway to the kind of rest of the great like getting around Niagara Falls really opened up the invasion pathway to the rest of the lakes. And then, of course, we have, you know, the connection to the Mississippi River. So we've got that other connection. You know, we've got the carp coming up the Mississippi River. We've got here in Chicago, the Chicago sanitary and sewage canal that basically reversed the flow of the river and artificially connected these waterways. So there's just a lot more opportunities for things to get in. Also, a lot of our invaders are from basically Central Europe or Eurasia, and that just happens to be a region that's kind of climactically Similar to the Great Lakes. Same reason that a lot of you know human immigrants came over from Europe and settled here in the Great Lakes. What's that? Oh, I'm
Stuart Carlton 32:35
from the south. So sorry about the climate. Oh, wait, so it's European gross out right now. That sounds much
El Lower 32:44
nicer, sort of northern Germany weather anyway, yeah, but it's, it's in the same way that human immigrants came over and was and we're like, oh, you know, a lot of German folks came over to the Cincinnati area. My family is in Cincinnati, and we happen to be German, and we're like, oh, wow, this landscape looks kind of familiar. We can grow things that we used to grow there. And, you know, make a pretty good life out here. The species that are originally, you know, native to the Ponto Caspian region. And that's, you know, the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea, all the sort of waterways in Europe and Eurasia also kind of adapt similarly. They're like, Oh, you know, here's some nice fresh water that has climactically similar patterns, and, you know, freeze and thaw cycles. And I can make a life here just fine,
Stuart Carlton 33:30
very similar to my story. So multiple choice question for you, actually, this one's important. All
Carolyn Foley 33:34
right, so setting up the multiple choice question. Okay, we are once again on the shores of Lake Michigan, indeed, and Lake Michigan has been drastically, drastically, drastically influenced by an invasive species called jaisinis, a
Stuart Carlton 33:48
much less fun way than just popping the question,
Unknown Speaker 33:52
look, I'm doing it for the audience, all right.
Stuart Carlton 33:53
Well, no, that's fine. And so the point is this, and Lake Superior, I hope you're listening right now. We interviewed Lake Superior several months ago. Lake Michigan the cleanest, great lake. Take that superior. But my question is this, some people think that Lake Michigan is too clean. I've heard this before from highly placed sources, so I have a multiple choice question, is the water in Lake Michigan? A, too clean? B, not too clean, or C, just the right amount of clean. I
El Lower 34:23
would like to go with option D. It depends on what you're measuring.
Stuart Carlton 34:27
D for depends, all right. Well, tell me about option D. It depends on what we're measuring. Okay, so
El Lower 34:33
you sort of set me up to talk about dress scented muscles. D for dressenid, yeah. So that would be the part of all this that was making the water a little too clean, so dressened mussels, of course, that's zebra mussels and quagga mussels, the annoying little guys that are all over the shore, stick to pipes, stick to boats, little
Stuart Carlton 34:51
guys. Okay, fine. That's fine. But I just want to point out the invaders are guys. Are they? Yeah, so
El Lower 34:58
got. Is gender neutral. I have no idea about the gender of a zebra mussel,
Carolyn Foley 35:04
but look at the little foot.
Stuart Carlton 35:05
I don't know. They're funny
El Lower 35:07
anyway. Long story short, these little organisms are out here in the millions and millions, sucking up the nutrients that a lot of our native species actually need. And so in some may argue that they clean the water a bit too much. This is sometimes useful for people who are interested in safe snorkeling, scuba diving, checking out some of the great shipwrecks up in Alpena and whatnot, because the water is crystal clear. It looks tropical. Unfortunately, for our native species, that means that there's just not as much algae, plankton and other nutrients out there for them to consume, and that can really negatively impact them, because the mussels are kind of hogging all of that. Now, when it comes to other kinds of pollution, I think we've actually been trending in a directionally correct way, as far as maybe not dumping raw sewage into the lake so much as we have done historically. I did a little work in grad school on Great Lakes areas of concern, and I have to say that things are looking a lot cleaner, even in the last 10 years since I've gotten out of school, and that's been encouraging to see. So definitely, it depends on what you're measuring.
Stuart Carlton 36:09
Okay, that's a fine and nuanced answer. Here's my other question always with AIS, is it is inherently like a human time scale issue, right? Because in the very long run, all of this stuff is going to be different because ecosystems change. Sure, right? So are we. And on top of that, we have all of these ships coming in, and they are successfully exchanging their ballast water, and most we're doing a survey on this now with our good friend Tim Campbell of Wisconsin Sea Grant, and it looks like many Boaters are reporting that they perform the five steps all the right, clean, jarring, dryer, whatever. And so that's good, but, I mean, it just takes two baby, right? And
El Lower 36:45
so sometimes.
Stuart Carlton 36:50
And so are we just spinning in the wind here? Are we just, like, trying to delay the inevitable with all of this work? This is what I worry about, that, like, like, I mean, in the long run, they're going to be more invaders. Maybe not carp. Maybe all of this will prevent the car but something else. So what is the, tell me the reason for hope with this, I guess, on this particular issue,
El Lower 37:10
you know, I think the ballast water thing is actually one of the best reasons we've got out there. We actually succeeded at a technological intervention that really, really helped multiple invasive species. It's keeping new ones out. It's preventing, you know, ones that have come over. It's basically stopping this exchange. The sea lamprey story and the development of, you know, targeted lampresides is another really great story. You know, it took the, you know, Great Lakes fishery commission a while to develop, you know, basically, a toxin that would affect lampreys without killing a whole bunch of other fish there. And, you know, they did these, these parasitic fish had devastated a lot of our native populations. In fact, some of our native Great Lakes species were completely extirpated and even went extinct due to the invasion of the sea lamprey. With the invention of these lampresides, we actually are managing to keep the populations under control to a manageable degree. Never be able to fully get rid of them. And this is the reason it's important to keep the funding coming, because it takes a lot, a lot of active work, funding, and, you know, international collaboration, quite frankly, to keep lampreys at a manageable level so we can maintain our fisheries. But it's working, and it's been wonderful. So we have these success stories, and it's really important to keep those in mind. Now, there's always going to be an aspect of, you know, as long as human trade and travel exists in the modern world as it does, stuff's going to be coming in, we are always moving species, moving goods, and there's always unintended consequences, but the amount of collaboration that goes on in this region in particular is very inspiring. And who knows what problem we'll face next, but we've got, I think, the right people for the job to think about solutions to these future issues.
Megan Gunn 39:05
So what I'm hearing you say is humans are the problem, but also the solution. Absolutely,
El Lower 39:09
I think we got to take responsibility for how we've changed the environment, you know, and that's that's one of the things that I always talk about with regards to invasive species. They're not malicious. They're just little animals and plants trying to make a life. It's not their fault that they were brought here, and they're certainly not setting out to intentionally harm other organisms, the economy, the environment, anything like that. It's a consequence of human actions, and so because we are responsible for it, let's, you know, make an effort and clean up our mess. You
Unknown Speaker 39:39
Illinois.
Stuart Carlton 39:50
Well, this is fascinating, and we've been wanting to have you on the show for a couple of years, just in general. And then I think was it last year at the carefully enunciated jazz zone conference you had. Great session. So like many people couldn't make it because of travel issues. Half of the conference had covid. And Elle led a session, though, like an impromptu kind of session that was among the best conference sessions I've ever been ready. And I was like, This is really great, Ella's amazing. I fired off an email to the Michigan secret director and said, This is really great. Ella's amazing. So I gotta get Ellen on the show. And then I forgot about it until like, a week ago, and so all that's good, but so I'm really glad you come on and share all of this interesting work you do. You're a font of knowledge about invasive species, and the way that you're thinking about language stuff is really leading the way, and I think it's fascinating and important work and will influence, in the long run, how we communicate about this stuff. So that's fine, but that's not why we invited you here on teach me about the Great Lakes this week. The reason that we invited you on, teach me about the Great Lakes is to ask two questions. And the first one, I have a feeling I'm about to be scooped on. Oh, I thought you were highlighting it. Well, the good I'm asking the first question, it's host privilege. If you could choose to have a great donut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch, which one would you choose? Well, I
El Lower 41:01
would definitely have to pick the sandwich, but I'd also have the sandwich for breakfast. I don't have much of a sweet tooth. Well, I appreciate a good donut. It is much better as a late afternoon pick me up with a, you know, cup of coffee. A sandwich isn't any time. So
Stuart Carlton 41:13
perfect. So you're in Ann Arbor. I'm gonna go to Ann Arbor. I'm gonna wake up early and go to Zimmerman's. I'm gonna wait in line for 42 minutes, make $19 for a cup of coffee, and I'm gonna enjoy that coffee, and then I'm gonna go about my business for a little while. And while I'm doing my business, I'm gonna get hungry, and then I'm gonna want to go to lunch, and I'm not going back to zoom rooms because I already gave them enough money. Okay, who has time? Okay, where should I go? In Ann Arbor to get a really good sandwich?
El Lower 41:38
Oh, man, okay, because Zingerman's was what I was going to recommend. But
Stuart Carlton 41:42
here's the secret, Zinger after Zingerman's, yeah, no, I know it's Zingerman's. It's like, point is this, I've already gone to Zingerman's in Zimmerman's, I've gone everything else in Athens, Georgia, Zimmerman's, they'd really good bagels. Yeah, and you didn't have to wait that long. You just walk in and bought them and you left. It was a reasonable price. The Morning Glory, muffin, rock salad, not in the Great Lakes. No, it's not in the Great Lakes. And so then I'm going to go to Zingerman's, do all that same stuff I mentioned sub in Zingerman's for Zingerman's, yes, fix it. The point is this, where am I going for lunch?
El Lower 42:13
I would recommend Detroit street filling station. Whether you are vegan or not, it is all vegan, but as I am an omnivore, it is a great option for people with dietary restrictions or who just enjoy really good plant based food. They have a Reuben that you know, while the Zingerman's Rubens are unparalleled, highly recommended, the best way to get a zingerman sandwich is to have it catered when you're at a conference at GluR, and so you don't have to wait the 42 minutes in line drinking your $19 coffee, if you would prefer an alternative, they've got a really good tempeh Rubin, so highly recommended.
Stuart Carlton 42:46
I love a solid Tempe Rubin, I'm not even gonna lie. And the Detroit street filling station also recommended on tea tree, about the Great Lakes episode, whatever one I'm looking at right now, 70 by Laura Rubin of the healing our waters Great Lakes coalition, so it comes well recommended. Very good. Tempe Rubin, a tofu, Reuben, all your alternate Rubens, very, very good. I'm on board with that.
Megan Gunn 43:10
So what is a special place in the Great Lakes that you'd like to share with our audience, and what makes it special? I special.
El Lower 43:23
Oh, man. Well, this is kind of a cheesy story. But, you know, I'm cheesy. We want the cheesy story. It's great. Anyway. No, so I have spent quite a bit of time on Lake Huron and but more specifically on the Canadian side, my wife is Canadian, and so we bopped around quite a bit of Ontario, but we actually got engaged on the shores of Lake Huron at point farms. So lovely little campsite. The mosquitoes laid off. It was just nice sunset, and we decided we were going to get married. And like, Huron is our witness. And you know, it's a great place. So the Great Lakes are very close to my heart for many reasons that
Stuart Carlton 44:03
just opening my link here on notebook today, the first thing I'm going to write in is this place to visit.
El Lower 44:08
Yes, no, there's some really good camping on the Canadian side, the Pinery is another good option. Highly recommended, highly recommend. Can actually find camping spots unlike on the US side, that's
Stuart Carlton 44:17
super well. L lower glances, communication specialist, Michigan Sea Grant sage, the AIS the AI sage, thank you so much for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes.
El Lower 44:29
Thank you so much for having me. You
Unknown Speaker 44:40
so yeah, that
Unknown Speaker 44:46
was really
Stuart Carlton 44:50
great, really fascinating stuff. Before we go, we do have a couple of announcements. Number one, and this is the most important one, had I been more organized? Had I been taller? Had I been better looking? I. Um, we would have this ready to go right now. And I make all of you vote, but the Lakey Award nominations are, by the time this episode is up, going to be open. So for those of you who do not know, the lakeies are, the slogan is quite possibly not the least prestigious Great Lakes related Podcast Awards. And we are taking your nominations in categories raining ranging from like Great Lakes outreach of the year, Great Lakes Science of the year. Coolest thing you learned on teaching about the Great Lakes, Great Lakes animal of the year, Great Lakes non animal of the year. And this year we have the return of maybe the best category, which is great lakes Titus of the year. And so we have a returning runner up from Great Lakes Titus of the year. We'll see what happens. And so,
Carolyn Foley 45:39
all right, so just for the record, the lakeys episode from last year. If you want to hear something absolutely ridiculous, recommend listening to that episode, particularly for the Great Lakes Titus of the Yes,
Stuart Carlton 45:50
we love Dr fish. In fact, if you want to hear more from Titus, just go ask Dr fish.com Live every other month, probably more or less. But so please. So look in your show notes, or go to bitly.com/lakey or bit.me they took away the bitly.com B, I T, dash, l, y, slash lakeys 23 Hopefully I haven't actually gotten no and and you can vote on your Lakey award that will be super good. And we have a thank you. Thank you to the Great Lakes Sea Grant network, and thank you to the Holiday Inn for taking us as this North German weather made it challenging for us to host this outside. And with that, teach me about the Great Lakes is brought to you by the fine people Illinois Indiana Sea Grant. And we encourage you to check out the cool stuff we do at i Sea grant.org, and at Illinois Indiana Sea Grant, on Facebook, Twitter and other social media.
Megan Gunn 46:41
Our senior producer is Carolyn Foley and teach me about the Gary lathe is produced by hope charters, Megan Gunn and Renee miles. Ethan Chitty is our associate producer and fixer. Our super fun podcast artist artwork, our super fun podcast artwork,
Carolyn Foley 46:56
which is also on some stickers, if anybody wants to, by
Megan Gunn 47:00
Joel Davenport. The show was reluctantly edited by Stuart Carlton while we find someone to replace the irreplaceable Quinn rose,
Carolyn Foley 47:07
if you have a question or comment about the show, please email it to teach me about the Great lakes@gmail.com or leave a message on our always smoking. Super busy Hotline at 765-496-4474, seriously, how somebody please call?
Stuart Carlton 47:27
I feel like the negative talk is not helping the hotline. I feel like we should be boosting the poor hotline, and you are saying unkind things about it. How does the hotline feel? It feels invaded. That's how the hotline feels.
Carolyn Foley 47:39
Hey, simmer down. Or is it non native? All right, okay, yes, please leave a message on our hotline, the best hotline ever. 474, you can also follow the show on Twitter that we will call Twitter forever at Teach Great Lakes, but like the Great Lakes, that place is feeling pretty invaded these days. Thanks for listening and keep grading those lakes.
Stuart Carlton 48:17
Closing theme, and we're good. You.
Carolyn Foley 48:23
Thank you for bearing with us.
Stuart Carlton 48:26
They're always interesting, each one in their own specific Oh, f rats. What I have a question? Yeah, so we have the coPI Kopi. Oh, we
El Lower 48:35
never followed up with the Kopi. No, that's
Stuart Carlton 48:36
okay. We don't follow up on anything. It's fine. And so we have the Koki. And so they're trying to eat up the Kopi. Yes, even though it tastes deliciously,
Megan Gunn 48:45
like whatever you cook it in,
El Lower 48:47
it's like tilapia, tilapia. You can market Kopi. I'm sure. Does anyone want to give me
Stuart Carlton 48:56
Noah fish fry and so somewhat, I won't say who he is, but he's taller than I even direct our program. He got any and we got that. We did. We got some carp, and we got it smoked, and it was pretty good on whatever. Sure. He kept talking about how he wanted to make it into a moose. And that just sounds gross, right?
El Lower 49:14
A little fine dining, like, you know, Pike, moose. It's all fancy French cuisine, okay, no, kind of moves. I love cooking. I don't know. Here's here's the plug I'm putting in. Are you familiar with freshwater feasts from Michigan Sea Grant? Per chance, yes, I am. Oh, okay, it's a great likes recipe blog. It's great.
Stuart Carlton 49:36
I didn't know the title, yeah, no,
El Lower 49:37
I author some recipes for it from time to time. And so if anyone wants to hook me up with some Kopi, I have, you know, emailed the Kopi people, and they have kind of ghosted me, but I'm like, give me some Kopi. I will develop some recipes I love to cook. I mean, the bear is, like, my favorite thing. Oh, we here
Stuart Carlton 49:53
just drive in the Wabash River with a net. I
El Lower 49:57
am so serious. If you give me copia, i. I will develop your recipes. Let's go
Stuart Carlton 50:03
get someone Kopi, and they'll fish for life. So, so developing recipe, speaking of that. So, so one of the things that many people love to do in Eastern Europe is to eat gobies, right? And no. And so here's just say no, here's the thing. So the thing about gobies, have you've seen a brown Goby before? Yes. And so they're kind of like hot dog shaped, right?
El Lower 50:21
I see you're leading into your shirt. Topic,
Stuart Carlton 50:27
are you looking for an investor? This is my question. So, so they're, they're hot dog shaped. So my idea is that we take them and we put them in a hot dog bun, and we're in Chicago. Why are we not doing this?
El Lower 50:38
I mean, you can you get those sport peppers on around goby. Surely this would improve the situation
Stuart Carlton 50:43
significantly. The Pickle, what else? The celery salt, relish,
El Lower 50:47
the green relish, no. Ketchup, no. And
Stuart Carlton 50:52
then you have a Goby dog, I'd eat it, who does not buy this,
El Lower 50:56
anyone who doesn't like a little bit of crunch, and they claim that
Stuart Carlton 51:00
it's loaded with PCBs and everything.
El Lower 51:03
You know, the people, yeah,
Stuart Carlton 51:05
it's huge in Eastern Europe, is the thing. This is what I'm told from John Jansen, I'm teaching about the Great Lakes episode, whatever.
Speaker 3 51:12
And so, I mean, Illinois, so Goby dogs should be no different. This is kind of what you can say. I
El Lower 51:17
mean, I'd be down to try it. I come from a family who used to keep the Christmas carp in the bathtub. So Christmas carp, Oh, you guys don't know about that? No, oh yeah, no. This is a German, Eastern European thing. That's why you're used to the weather carp soup for Christmas. It's a thing, I promise you. Yeah, it's, you know, these
Stuart Carlton 51:34
are things there.
El Lower 51:35
There's certainly things. But yes, no, the I mean, carp are valuable food fish in many parts of the world. And so I'm absolutely on board with this whole Kopi thing. It runs in the family. So what I worry
Stuart Carlton 51:45
about with this, so why are we doing the show? What I worry about with this is, like, I think it's fun to think about, but has any invasive species ever been eaten out of existence, like extirpated? I just don't think it happens, right? And then, I mean, no matter how many Gopi dogs you sell, or how many mussels, fruits you sell, whatever like, I mean, are you aware of a time where that, I mean, it's a good PR. I'm not saying it shouldn't be done, yeah, but sometimes I wonder if we're like, doing this, all this, you know, dog and pony show for something that is only or we should recognize it as PR. Is that fair? Yeah. But
El Lower 52:19
PR is good actually. I mean, I do a lot of stuff with no no, no, okay, you set me up here. No. This is I am a huge believer in some people will say that eating invasive species is a perverse incentive. I am of the if you can't beat it, eat at school. I also do some I'm a forager. I'm always out here pulling garlic mustard and turning it into pesto when I'm not, you know, out doing Great Lakes,
Stuart Carlton 52:44
Basil exists, right?
El Lower 52:45
What's that basil exists? Oh, certainly, you know. But you know, it's not growing everywhere in your local parks and choking out your native wildflowers. So, you know, big, big believer in, you know, making use of what you've got on hand. And I would much rather see something be eaten then, you know, just buried in a landfill somewhere. I mean, there's still animals and plants, and I would like to respect their lives, and at least, you know, get some nutritional content out of it, so as long as they're not loaded with forever chemicals, bring it on. I.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai