66: There's a Little Bit of Poo

The TMATGL team speaks with Dr. Chris Winslow about Lake Erie, including the long-awaited debut of the Wheel of Erie game! We recorded live from the Masthead Brewery in downtown Cleveland as in informal part of Sea Grant Week, 2022.

Show Notes

Thanks to Masthead Brewing Company for good beer and good hosting. If you want to donate to Ohio Sea Grant and the Stone Lab, please visit their website:

https://ohioseagrant.osu.edu/giving

Show credits:
Host & Executive Producer: Stuart Carlton
Co-Hosts: Hope Charters & 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; we apologize for any errors. 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. Welcome back to teaching about the Great Lakes a twice monthly podcast in which I, A Great Lakes novice as people who are smarter and harder working to teach me all about the Great Lakes. We're here live Carolyn Foley. We are live from Cleveland. Are we? Yes, yes, we are. You know what that means time for our Cleveland theme song.

We are live from Massenburg in beautiful downtown Cleveland. And let's hear for Sea Grant week everybody. I'm joined tonight by a cavalcade of superstars with me as often is Carolyn Foley. Carolyn, how are you?

Carolyn Foley 0:56
I'm doing well. Thanks, Stuart. Good.

Stuart Carlton 0:58
It's good to be well in here. Oh, my goodness. It must be a live podcast because there's hope charters hope.

Hope Charters 1:03
I'm back again. Back in

Stuart Carlton 1:05
she's back. She comes with the ones at the breweries. And we have a special special guest tonight as part of Sea Grant week. 2020. Nope. 2021 want no 2022 Dr. Chris Winslow, Director of Ohio Sea Grant and the stone lab. Chris, how are you?

Chris Winslow 1:25
I'm fantastic. And it's just Chris. Brothers have to call me Doctor

Stuart Carlton 1:29
only? Fair enough? Yeah, no, I was just calling you doctor to be cute. Now we what we do is we establish the authority, and then we undermine it. So you establish and then you undermine so Dr. Chris, what's up? And so the thing is about this podcast is what we do is we try to learn something about the Great Lakes every episode. And then what really happens is I am so focused on trying to make sure that I don't forget to do the recording, right that I learned absolutely nothing. Hey, Stuart, did you actually hit record, for example? No, I did hit record. Alright. Cool. But So Carolyn has come up before. It's a live show. So we got to do something a little bit extra special. And so for the live show, Carolyn has come up, I think is this right?

Carolyn Foley 2:06
Well, do we want to let him introduce himself first?

Stuart Carlton 2:08
Okay, fine. So Chris, you're director of our house Sea Grant and the stone that tell me what is what is we know what Sea Grant is? What is the stone lab? Exactly?

Chris Winslow 2:15
Yeah. Oh, my God. I'm a little intimidated here. This is intense.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Yeah, stone lab.

Stuart Carlton 2:23
It's like a camping trip. It's so intense. Hey,

Hope Charters 2:26
oh, this is where we're going every time Stewart tape makes a stupid joke, man. Take a drink.

Chris Winslow 2:34
Stone lab is an island, owned by Ohio State University, not the Ohio State University. We're just going to call it Ohio.

Stuart Carlton 2:41
That's fine. Yeah. We don't need definitive articles. Just about our grade, like,

Chris Winslow 2:47
looking for hands on opportunities for kids to learn about the lake. And then Sea Grant, we all know what Sea Grant is, right? Sea Grant is the three legged stool, right? So we've got we got to fund some research on the issues. We've got to get that research into the hands of formal education. And then we got to reach all those stakeholders, all those elected officials, all those state agencies, all those Lake Erie residents and let them know what's going on in the lake behind them or in front of them.

Stuart Carlton 3:15
Yeah, so really, with some MCL I'd like school groups out there. So I don't really know salutely I looked at a job sometime like 10 years ago, I didn't apply thank God. But what do you bring out? Like?

Chris Winslow 3:25
I've seen your resume, you wouldn't be allowed to the island are

Stuart Carlton 3:27
enough. But is it like K through 12 type groups or what are your

Chris Winslow 3:32
fifth through 12th graders coming up in the spring and in the fall? And then also, we have college courses during the summer somewhere between 20 and 25 college courses? About 250 students?

Stuart Carlton 3:43
And so it's on an island and what the island is what is it no

Carolyn Foley 3:46
no, no, you're taking the wind out of my sails.

Stuart Carlton 3:49
I'm taking the wind out of Carolyn's sails Carolyn, what's the Chris that's actually not what we're here to talk about? We're here to talk about today. Do

Chris Winslow 3:54
we do sail on the lake?

Stuart Carlton 3:55
Yeah. Oh, you do sail on the lake with wind not the one that I've done. I wanted to go into detail about so never we're not gonna do that. Instead, Kelly's made a game called the wheel of area and what Carolyn does not know is that the wheel of Erie game has a theme song The Wheel of Erie theme song and she might not be able to hear the words tonight but she'll listen to it and she will retro actively hate me for this

It is time for the wheel love your Erie, what it will land on his a big mystery so many issues with Lake Erie, which of them will we discuss on teach me about the Great Lakes.

Carolyn Foley 4:34
I thought you said you weren't gonna have time.

Stuart Carlton 4:37
I wasn't but then my mother in law came in town and yada yada yada. There's a really eerie talk. So tell us how this is gonna work.

Carolyn Foley 4:44
Alright, so here's how it's gonna work today on teach me about the Great Lakes. We are going to learn about the Great Lake Erie, and to help us pick topics. We have this lovely wheel. There are six topics six topics one we're gonna spin and then you'll talk about them.

Chris Winslow 5:03
Alright. I really like Twister. I'm a little worried

Carolyn Foley 5:07
It's possible that there are some hands.

Stuart Carlton 5:09
Carolyn hold it up to the microphone as you spin so everybody can hear the realistic spin sound.

Carolyn Foley 5:14
Okay, well, this is just a sample- there it is. All right. All right. Okay. So go ahead, Chris. Give her a spin.

Chris Winslow 5:25
All right, looking good.

Carolyn Foley 5:29
And the first topic on Lake Erie is the Maumee river. Chris. What can you tell us about the Maumee River?

It's huge. Is that it? We're doing succinct or we're doing long.

Chris Winslow 5:37
It's teach me about the Great Lakes. We're doing long. It's fine.

Yeah, it's huge. I can't do that appropriate or accurate as

Stuart Carlton 5:50
Mark would say it's huge. Probably right, we

Chris Winslow 5:52
go. It's actually the longest tributary and all of the Great Lakes. Sadly, it drains a lot of agricultural land. And it's bringing a lot of nutrients into Lake Erie. So that's one of the things plus it's just a cool word to say. Yeah. Maumee, Mommy, so

Stuart Carlton 6:07
with the nutrients so the nutrients it drains are from farming, is that right? There's a lot of farm route.

Chris Winslow 6:12
So some of the nutrients are coming from farms, some is coming from wastewater treatment plants. Some of it's coming from fertilizer runoff from suburban areas. We also have a home sewage, sewage treatment plants. Do we want to talk about sewage, as we're hanging out at a restaurant?

Stuart Carlton 6:29
If you like to talk about sewage. I'll talk about sewage. That's fine.

Chris Winslow 6:32
So there's a little bit of poo in there a little bit of poo titled thank you for that one. Yeah, so it's a combination. And so when we're addressing the nutrients coming into Lake Erie, that's a lot of stakeholders that we got to engage.

Carolyn Foley 6:45
And so you work with different groups and a variety of people work with groups in the mountains, Maumee, Maumee, River Basin to try to stop and something that happens in the western basin of Lake Erie sometimes when there's too much runoff.

Chris Winslow 7:02
Fantastic. Yes. So we have harmful algal blooms. So what we have is a growth of a cyanobacteria, even though we use the word algae, and it grows in excess. So nutrients in a lake aren't bad, just in general, when you have too much, then you grow blooms. And so what we're working on when we talk about the Maumee river is how do we reduce nutrients. And it's both phosphorus and nitrogen. And so we're trying to bring down those concentrations so that we bring this growth that's natural for the Great Lakes, especially in Lake Erie to an normal population or normal concentration.

Stuart Carlton 7:39
So help me understand just very big picture what it is. So these industries come in, and the algae which we call the bacteria, that sends them an overdrive, right, and they reproduce quickly and really bloom in terms of population, and that causes problems. Why? What's bad about that? Exactly,

Chris Winslow 7:55
yeah. So number one, just excess growth becomes what we would just call nuisance, but these organisms, which again, we call them generically, algae, but they're bacteria have the ability to produce toxins, and those toxins are at risk for whether it's through a water treatment process or through recreational exposure when you're hanging out on the beach or doing your jet skis and dogs.

Stuart Carlton 8:16
And what happens is dogs with HAB's?

Chris Winslow 8:19
Oh no. So dogs when they're in the water and they're hot, they're always lapping up that water. And they're not thinking about Go Dogs. We've got a Georgia fan in the audience as well. And we're Cleveland. Yeah. Yeah, got the dog. A

Stuart Carlton 8:35
lot of dogs. So they drink what happens is it doesn't hurt the dogs or to what extent does it hurt the dogs?

Chris Winslow 8:40
So depends. It's okay, Carolyn, it's okay. No, it depends on the level of exposure. But we have seen a couple dog deaths in Lake Erie, it's really sad.

Stuart Carlton 8:50
Okay, that is so HAB's. Let's spin the wheel. I'm told we need to spin the wheel again.

Hope Charters 8:55
Now before we spin the wheel, so when we see those really cool satellite photos of the Great Lakes and Lake Erie is completely green. Is that just because of the HAB's or is that because it's shallow or both?

Chris Winslow 9:07
Oh, that's a great question. And so we also say that it's not completely green. What we love about Lake Erie is it's a huge lake. It's actually a great lake, one of five. But when the Habs show up, we definitely want to let our stakeholders know where you can go and where you can't go so we don't want to tell people that the whole lake is closed is number one

Hope Charters 9:27
save the docks? Yes.

Stuart Carlton 9:31
So I have a question then. So you talked to some people and they about Lake Michigan and some people argue that Lake Michigan is too clean you'll hear that a lot. No you don't. So would you say the lake Amy's Lake Michigan to clean and be is Lake Erie too dirty are two nutrients you new nutrient rich?

Chris Winslow 9:51
So we try not to use words like good or poor health or dirty or clean? We kind of talked about condition like how do they look relative To the way they looked historically. Yeah, and so Lake Erie has, it's just out of whack. I mean, that's the easiest way to say it is that we know where the nutrients should be and they're not where they're at or a little

Stuart Carlton 10:12
higher than where they're actually I was talking to a good friend of ours, Titus Harlow, Homer Hello, Titus. And what he said that really inspired me once we're talking about the lakes. And he said, you know, we have the lakes that we have now. Right. And so then that that's a certain set of conditions and then we can do what we want with that, but these are the lakes we have. So that's good. Carolyn tells me it's time to spend though, so let's do it. Yep, it's fine. Again, make the topic. I mean, this is the noise. I'm not making a noise. Well Holy mackerel, wow.

Chris Winslow 10:46
I lost the spinner. I had to find it.

Carolyn Foley 10:50
What do we live on yellow perch and walleye,

Stuart Carlton 10:52
yellow perch and walleye. Not one, but two. It's

Chris Winslow 10:54
a tasty that's my answer is tasty.

Carolyn Foley 10:57
In relation to Lake Erie, this is the wheel of URI. Yeah. All right, so

Stuart Carlton 11:01
walleye, and perch. Tasty. Okay, what else about yellow person? Well, I,

Chris Winslow 11:07
we have not had populations in the lake as high as we have them right now.

Stuart Carlton 11:11
Oh, why are they so high now? Is it isn't perhaps, a little, they love algae. And so

Chris Winslow 11:18
we all know that you know, algae that's kind of the base of the food webs. You need the algae to feed the zooplankton. So the little critters in the water that we then feed the bait fish in the bait fish feed the game fish. So for for Lake Erie, we're definitely seeing higher populations and we have on record, we don't fully 100% know why. But we think it has to do with water levels, we do think it has to do with the quality of the water again, the condition again of the water. But yeah, if you're coming out, we've got some of our charter captains a great industry in Lake Erie that they're turning around customers left and right, because they're hitting their their max catch limit very quickly. So it's really good.

Carolyn Foley 11:57
And who sets the max catch limits?

Chris Winslow 12:01
The Great Lakes are an interesting place on how we decide. But basically what I love about Sea Grant and about Great Lakes, it's collaborative. So it's a bunch of state agencies that get together and, and they first very rigorously decide how many fish are in the lake. And then they decide how many that we can harvest to make sure that that population stays around in perpetuity. And so it's a collaborative effort. It's a great effort. But it's and it's also what I'd love to say is it's joint between the US and Canada. We love our neighbors to the north didn't even

Carolyn Foley 12:30
have to prompt you Nice.

Hope Charters 12:34
Oh, while we're talking about fish, can you tell us anything about Blue pike? We had a couple of people say that we should add blue pike to the wheel of URI. Oh, I don't know you're laughing now.

Stuart Carlton 12:46
Let's just spin the wheel of Aries. See where it lands? Hold on. No, it's fine. We're gonna spin it.

Chris Winslow 12:51
Alright. Oh my gosh. So I'm gonna reach the level of my knowledge in this space. So blue Pike is said that it was a different type of walleye in the lake. But when we look at genetics, and again, I'm not a fish squeezer anymore. I heard liar. What do we want to talk about whether Michigan and Missouri is one leg or two? I don't know if we want to get into that

Carolyn Foley 13:22
discussion Michigan in here. It's one got it.

Chris Winslow 13:25
I wake up so I see two in the background. Are we doing I got one I got two I got one.

Stuart Carlton 13:31
You can come on here some other time.

Chris Winslow 13:34
You know so again, I'm this is a little out of my wheelhouse. But it's you know, when you get into that idea of are we lumpers or splitters. So what is a walleye versus what is a blue Pike is it subspecies are the same species.

Stuart Carlton 13:46
So it's very similar. It's a similar fish that may or may not be a different so I was I came up as a fisheries biologist in Florida and so there's a big deal with bone fish. And they'll do a lot of genetic analysis to find out this bone fish is different from that bone fish maybe which was important for reasons that are different podcasts. But so is that the deal here that they're they're like, close,

Chris Winslow 14:02
same thing. So the idea is when do you decide when they're different species versus they just look a little different? And where do you draw the line at at speciation?

Hope Charters 14:10
Do they taste similar? Tasty,

Stuart Carlton 14:12
tasty, tasty?

Carolyn Foley 14:14
My question was, where do people currently draw the line?

Chris Winslow 14:18
Gosh, I don't know. I'm looking on who you're talking to. That would depend on who you're talking to. You'll talk to some anglers that are now in their 60s 70s and say that they missed the blue pike and there's memories of that but do scientifically you know as we describe organisms, is it too is it one it's a fun battle. Fun discussion. Hey, go

Stuart Carlton 14:40
let's make that really good given other speakers.

Carolyn Foley 14:45
South bass Island were supposed

Stuart Carlton 14:47
to really how do you know what it stopped? Jerilyn This is so awkward. Oh, now it stopped as you can see, looking at the wheel.

Carolyn Foley 14:54
So one of South bass Island, which we started talking about earlier. It's possible Carol was like stop

Stuart Carlton 15:00
like Stewart's, the wheel spin. Sounds gonna spin.

Carolyn Foley 15:03
Yeah. Can you tell us anything else about South bass Island? You talked a little bit about stone lab. But can you tell us about South bass Island or the islands and like you're in particular

Chris Winslow 15:12
100%. So there's a lot of islands in the western like Lake Erie Basin. We're very creative. We call one South bass, middle bass. And then now North bass is not great. Yeah. And so South bass is where the village of put in Bay is. It's a tourist destination. If you go there, and you didn't see 12 Bachelor bachelorette parties, you weren't looking. But on that island, there is also a research station that's owned by Ohio State. And that's where stone lab is located. Great location for us to do some critical research that's, that's needed for like your

Stuart Carlton 15:49
what kind of research like what is what is give me two projects that still lab right now that you think are

Chris Winslow 15:53
relevant? Oh, absolutely. So we're looking at microplastics. I can give you more than two. We'll give you two microplastics merging contaminants. We're looking, we talked earlier about Habs harmful algal blooms, and they produce toxins we're looking at, do fish store those toxins in the edible flesh that we buy at our nice deep fried restaurants were to

Stuart Carlton 16:13
fish holder. I mean, they don't have pockets, so they gotta put it somewhere. So what Alright, so I want I want you to break news on teach me about the relates, give me one sort of research result that's coming in. I don't want you to, you know, bust anybody's embargo. But, but maybe it's just out in the journal now or something cool that you'll just report it on that we can share with our audience.

Chris Winslow 16:30
Man, the cutting edge right now.

Stuart Carlton 16:33
I want the bleeding is I want the Advantest of guard.

Chris Winslow 16:36
Oh, man, I'm going to make the six extension agents that work for

Stuart Carlton 16:43
frustrated. What's mine, we tried to get there. There. We tried to get Tori Gabriel

Chris Winslow 16:50
coming in already, um, for us, honestly. And it's sad to say I really do think the harmful algal blooms and the impacts on the economy and the potential impacts on the ecosystem may not stop right now. And I can say it wouldn't be without state support, but federal support, you start answering some of those questions, but that's it. It's when do they show up? When do they go away? Why are they here? How do we get them to go away? All

Carolyn Foley 17:15
right, one more time. One more spin. One

Stuart Carlton 17:17
more spin. Just one more. We got I got a lot more questions. Hold on.

Carolyn Foley 17:22
Sorry, it hasn't. Legitimate reaction.

Stuart Carlton 17:25
Go, Chris. It takes a long time to spin the wheel or your fingers are all No, no,

Carolyn Foley 17:30
that was a legitimate reaction. And those who know me know what's on this. We'll know that it's mayflies that we're talking about now. Guys.

Stuart Carlton 17:37
It's awfully late to be talking.

Chris Winslow 17:39
She's right over there. So the expert is right over that mayflies. Kristin. We're talking mayflies. She's giddy giddy over there. Yeah. So mayflies. They don't come out in May. June. I don't know why that's going on. So an insect that spends a year of its life on the bottom of the lake?

Carolyn Foley 17:58
Do people really like it when it comes out? Do they

Chris Winslow 18:03
tend not to we can actually pick it up on weather satellites when the hatches happen, and they look like

Stuart Carlton 18:10
Well, well, hold on, Chris. Hold on. That's a really interesting factoid. But we have to introduce properly. You're saying you can I want you to repeat that. You can pick it up on Mesa on Saturdays. But I want you to repeat that after this. It's a great lakes factoids, a Great Lakes factoid it's a great factoid about the Great Lakes

Chris Winslow 18:30
it's absolutely hilarious so do not right now the lake is in such a good condition. I don't want to use the word health again. But condition that if you park your car under a streetlamp during June, you will be covered in mayflies. Oh, and it's a good thing. The organisms live at the bottom and at the bottom of the lake is not where it needs to be with oxygen or pollutants. Those organisms we're not live there so the residents that hate these annoying hatches that show up every June it's an indication that we're doing the right thing and protecting and restoring like

Stuart Carlton 19:05
you're so the all communicate about. I'm curious about that, because that is a nuisance, right? Like, like we know they're good, but I mean, it's, uh, you see, Carolyn showed us news reports and they're like, everywhere and it is. Do you all do communication around that? You know that mayflies are good or

Chris Winslow 19:17
have no we do we try and do communication about it. But no matter how much you say, so I actually eat them in front of my students.

Hope Charters 19:24
Oh, yeah. That is disgusting. Like,

Stuart Carlton 19:25
do you cook them? Well, no, no, they

Chris Winslow 19:27
just hatched they're on your shirt. You pick one up a student's looking at you you just kind of pop it in your mouth.

Hope Charters 19:32
They realize that you're a psychopath after Correct. Correct.

Chris Winslow 19:35
They don't have any taste. They pop in your mouth. They've got long tails. Now they sometimes get stuck in your teeth, but you still got to eat them everyone.

Stuart Carlton 19:42
I have a question What shape are made? Are they kind of tubular? What's our mayflies kind of tubular

Chris Winslow 19:46
the body is but then the wings are perpendicular. Hello. I mean an adult is probably an inch and a half. Okay, using inch and a half. We can do it in centimeters if you want no

Stuart Carlton 19:57
Carolyn would but but so so I'm going to toss this out there. All right, all right. You ever go to a cocktail party? Why a cocktail party? Yes.

Chris Winslow 20:06
I love cocktail bar. Isn't this kind of a cocktail party?

Stuart Carlton 20:08
Like one but I had to pay for my beer. No, you paid for anyway. What is this? And you get these little hot like little hotdog. Little mini sized ones, right? Yeah, yeah. So what if we get rid of the hot dog park keep the bone and put a mayfly in their little mayfly dogs.

Chris Winslow 20:23
So like, like stuffed olives, you could do a hot dog stuffed.

Stuart Carlton 20:27
Stuffed Mayfly. Yeah, I think that could be a thing.

Carolyn Foley 20:30
I wish we could record hopes face. Like it could convey

Chris Winslow 20:35
when you sign up for the excursion. We will give you some mayflies. Yeah,

Hope Charters 20:39
I could probably do them dried out. But like, live. That sounds

Stuart Carlton 20:42
disgusting. Our director Thomas who is our director. I think he's here tonight. And he came back from some event all fired up. He had a chocolate bar. And in the chocolate bar was some sort of insect. Maybe crickets maybe mayflies don't want to hear. All right. Well, he's my boss. I guess somebody's gonna try to do or whatever. And so um, it was gross. Like, I'm not gonna lie. Like I figured out why he gave me the chocolate bar and that because it was gross. And so the only insects you should be eating I see Louisiana Florida Sea Grant here. I don't think you should be eating crawfish and maybe shrimp. Those are the insects. They're not insect technically they're not insects. But you know what? They taste a lot better than me.

Chris Winslow 21:20
So Kristen fossil got stopped at the border. She was doing research in Canada tried to come over from Canada and the inspection caught may fly eggs. No, you can't.

Stuart Carlton 21:30
No, no,

Chris Winslow 21:31
no. But they're in the same leg like the main fries on the Canadian side are different than the

Stuart Carlton 21:37
swim. If they swim, it's fine. But if you're carrying them

Hope Charters 21:40
so I think we've established at this point that Lake Erie has two quarters, right? algal blooms and may

Stuart Carlton 21:48
I'm gonna tell you what I thought you said to enunciate. It's like we're a jazz and we have to enunciate very carefully.

Hope Charters 21:54
So what do the main players harm the dogs at all? Because I just really am here to save the dogs.

Chris Winslow 22:00
The dogs are okay. Okay. Yeah,

Carolyn Foley 22:02
dogs might even enjoy going after the Mayfly. So I guess before we close out the wheel, is there anything that was not on the wheel that you would like to share with us about the awesome lake that is Lake Erie?

Chris Winslow 22:12
Man, that's a great question. Um, I would say shallowest warmest, has the most ice cover in the winter,

Stuart Carlton 22:23
like by percentage or by absolute value.

Chris Winslow 22:25
Not so. Let's do this. So 50% of the Great Lakes Water is in Lake Superior roughly. It's actually 53% No,

Stuart Carlton 22:33
you don't need to give Lake Superior Lake Superior has got plenty of ego. It doesn't need you.

Chris Winslow 22:37
Okay. 53% of the water Lake Superior only about 2% of the fish biomass. Lake Erie has 2% of the volume of water for the Great Lakes, but 50% of the fish by No kidding. So we call it the 52 rule 15 It's a rule. And this is why yellow perch, small mouth bass walleye are

Stuart Carlton 22:56
such so prone to fishing in the Great Lakes. I should go to Lake Erie.

Chris Winslow 22:59
So the field trips tomorrow skip them go out on a charter fish.

Stuart Carlton 23:05
We're done with the wheel of area. Well hold on one more time with the deal. Yeah. Well, we're not done with the podcast, Chris, I have more questions. But we have to close the we have to close the wheel of Erie.

It is time for the wheel of theory. What it will land on is a big mystery. So many issues with Lake Erie. Which of them will be discussed on teach me about the Great Lakes. The problem is I'm fundamentally an optimist. So I'm in my basement doing this and I'm like, this is gonna go over good. People are gonna hear this and they're gonna say now that's witty and funny. And and then I hit the button. And I'm like, Oh, this was a mistake. This was a very, very big mistake. That's fine. So I have a question. So people think of Lake Erie. We talked to we haven't talked about Lake Erie a lot. And we've done 66 episodes. This is our 66th episode, three years now. And we talked a lot about superior hay now a lot about Michigan. And because Carolyn we talked about like Huron and Ontario all these Canadian lakes and so but I get the feeling that lake Lake Erie is like the little brother is of Great Lakes. Do you feel like that's the case that people feel that way? Or is it not?

Chris Winslow 24:18
No, I mean, we're the walleye capital of the world. I mean, when you have 2% of the water, but 50% of the fish when I come up in the spring to the lab, all the license plates in the parking lot or North Dakota, South Dakota, Virginia, Tennessee. I mean, that's people are coming to Lake Erie for that reason, I think. I think it's an amazing resource. Absolutely is and we have 40% of charter captains in the Great Lakes are based in Lake Erie alone. No kidding.

Carolyn Foley 24:47
Does that include the Canadian side?

Chris Winslow 24:50
That's Carolyn. I don't have that data.

Stuart Carlton 24:53
Data. All right.

Carolyn Foley 24:55
I do appreciate that. You called it out earlier.

Stuart Carlton 24:58
So One other question we've been asking lately. So I mean, most people know us, like the director of Ohio Sea Grant and stone lab and things like that. But But you were, what is something you want to like geek out about, we want to ask people geek out about what is the thing that you're most passionate, like in a nerdy, geeky way about that? You think? I

Chris Winslow 25:15
mean, how do people not I mean, 20% of the world's surface freshwater is right in our backyard. Like, we mean, how awesome yeah, is that

Stuart Carlton 25:25
I was already going to know that till I got here. Right? I didn't appreciate it. And then you only see the lake. And you're like, Well, this looks like the Gulf because he can't see anything sub Chicago. And, and I agree that the point of this podcast, and the real point is to joke around with my friends twice a month. But But the other point is like it's an amazing resource. And I feel like so many people even in even in this area, don't fully appreciate that, right. And so the more people we can have on, frankly, to passionately talk about how awesome the Great Lakes are, I think the better. And if there's all sorts of cool things. And you know, the secret of this show, like I've mentioned many times before, is I don't actually learn anything, because I'm more worried about producing the show, we need to hire a producer. Hey, Barney, but but that's good. So I think it's really important. And I think the culture and the biology and the ecology is just amazing.

Chris Winslow 26:10
It's amazing. And the lessons we learn in these great lakes, we have folks from China coming over that are going through issues that we went through three decades ago, and they're learning from us. I mean, I think we're ahead of the curve. We're not where we want to be, but the Great Lakes is it's just been a it's amazing.

Stuart Carlton 26:27
So Chris Winslow, director behind Sea Grant Lee's stone lab that's really interesting to hear you come on and talk about Lake Erie and the fishing and the Habs and all of that. But that's actually not why we invited you on teach me about the Great Lakes this week. The reason we invite you on Teespring is really great lakes is to ask two questions. And the first one is this. If you could have a great donut for breakfast, or great sandwich for lunch?

Chris Winslow 26:49
Which one would you have? So great donut for

Stuart Carlton 26:53
breakfast or a great sandwich for

Hope Charters 26:55
lunch? is a very important question.

Carolyn Foley 26:58
I know so we are definitely all judging your

Stuart Carlton 27:02
values. And there's like 60 people here secretly. Here's

Chris Winslow 27:05
the problem. I'm going to complicate the notion Nope. All right. What is it? So I'm going to have a great sandwich for lunch. Okay, but it's going to be a bagel with a egg and bacon on it.

Hope Charters 27:17
That's fine. That does not count as a donut. It's not a

Carolyn Foley 27:20
it's not a donut.

Chris Winslow 27:22
Alright, so. Okay. All right. So I want to club sandwich.

Stuart Carlton 27:26
No, no, no, you're fine. You're fine. So Sam, all right.

Chris Winslow 27:28
They can make bacon maple for breakfast. I don't know what you want from me.

Stuart Carlton 27:32
Listen to me. So I can move the segment forward like a podcast professional. This is not that hard. You have selected a sandwich. That's a wonderful question.

Carolyn Foley 27:41
Did you truly select the sandwich? Or would you rather have a Greek doughnut for breakfast? Because

Stuart Carlton 27:45
I mean, it's an easy question. No, it's

Carolyn Foley 27:47
not an easy question.

Chris Winslow 27:48
And his question. He chose a sandwich. So I would rather have a sandwich. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's donut sets and weird parts of my body.

Stuart Carlton 27:58
Yeah, that's where I hide microplastic and don't call them the same little dark, Nick. Alright, so then here's the question then. So I'm in Cleveland, Ohio. When?

Carolyn Foley 28:06
Okay, we're in Cleveland now. Particularly Chris. It's in Columbus. Which one will we go for?

Stuart Carlton 28:11
We're going for Cleveland. I'm

Carolyn Foley 28:12
sorry. My bed.

Stuart Carlton 28:14
I came all the way to Cleveland for

Chris Winslow 28:16
so I grew up outside of Cleveland. But I live in Columbus now, sir. Okay. Well,

Stuart Carlton 28:20
you grew up in Westlake I just remembered

Chris Winslow 28:22
North Ridgeville. I'll tell you my parents address. She makes a great breakfast sandwich.

Stuart Carlton 28:29
So here's the question. I'm in Cleveland tomorrow. I'm gonna go. We have box lunches, of course. But if I don't pick up my box lunch because I want to spend that sweet, sweet premium on a sandwich. Where should I go to get a really great sandwich?

Chris Winslow 28:42
Oh my god. I have a nine year old and a seven year old. I haven't eaten out in like, nine years.

Stuart Carlton 28:47
I've got a three and a half year old. 11 year old. I'm like, I guess Jimmy John's because they delivered? Um,

Chris Winslow 28:53
gosh, berries. Bagels is

Stuart Carlton 28:55
pretty good berries, bagels, you really are crossing the streams on this. We're mandatory. Okay, so I'm gonna go to Barry's bagels, and I'm gonna get a sandwich for lunch?

Chris Winslow 29:04
I think so. A breakfast sandwich for lunch?

Carolyn Foley 29:07
I would do that. So

Hope Charters 29:11
is there a special place in the Great Lakes that you can tell us about that? It's just really close to your heart.

Chris Winslow 29:17
So I'm going to answer and I'm going to try and make it short. But it's going to be long. It's I mean, it's stone laboratory. And so a lot of folks are going to come visit while we're here in Cleveland. So I was doing my PhD work out there, doing my weird, geeky science stuff. And the director at that time, kept bringing stakeholders down to my experiments and asking me to explain what I was doing to these visitors, whether they were county commissioners, mayor's decision makers. And I realized that I was not very good at explaining science to a lay audience. And so he motivated me to be better at that. And so when I finished my PhD and got my tenure track position at a university Sea Grant had an opening for an assistant director and I applied because I realized that I needed to find a way to connect research to people that could actually take that information and do good things. And so stone lab is that place, not only because it's beautiful, but before because it was an inflection point in my career. And I feel like that's what brought me to Sea Grant.

Stuart Carlton 30:24
Oh, that's wonderful. So Chris, if people want to find out more about so lab and maybe get involved some way, where should they go?

Chris Winslow 30:29
Yeah, so go to the Ohio Sea Grant webpage. We have endowments there where you can actually donate money that goes to scholarships for students buys research equipment for scientists,

Stuart Carlton 30:39
everybody give money to Chris's endowment.

Chris Winslow 30:41
That's right. It's not my endowment. Oh, I got hands back here. If they want to give to I have a tab that's at the bar right over there that we can take care of to

Stuart Carlton 30:53
what name is that time honored? asked me for a friend. No, but so they should go to salt. Where should they go to find so

Chris Winslow 30:59
just do your Google machine and type in Ohio Sea Grant and the stone lab links are there and there are 27 different named endowments and you pick your flavor. If you want to support research, if you want to support education, if you want to support facilities, any way you feel like you want to give it's right there.

Stuart Carlton 31:17
Well, Dr. Chris Winslow, Director of Ohio secret stone lab hosts of secret way 2022 Which thus far has been an excellent conference picked up of course after Christine show up but that's great. Thank you so much for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes.

Carolyn Foley 31:31
And we would like to thank masthead Yes, you blew up my spot. No, I'm blown.

Stuart Carlton 31:41
Thank you. Thank you to Mashhad brewery. Thank you, Ohio, cedar. And thank you to Chris Winslow.

Chris Winslow 31:54
Thank you to the Ohio Sea Grant team this meeting wouldn't have happened without the entire Sea Grant team.

Stuart Carlton 32:04
Well done better. I thank you so much. All of our partners who help with this show. When we lose like things about two times a year it seems like and it's the most fun we have it may or may not be the best episode release but I don't care. But if you want to find out more about what we do going to teach read about the great lakes.com Get yourself a sticker. The other thing we have is Titus is here Titus turned around a wave. Starting in October, we're going to produce our new show live streaming video called Ask Dr. Fish with Titus Sol Heimer. And Katie Oh, rightly. And we're gonna get teachers to ask us questions. And we're gonna stream it live and what could possibly go wrong with live streaming video? Nothing, nothing could go wrong. And so that's why we're super excited. Anyway, Mike when he says Dr. Chris Winslow, thank you so much for coming on and teaching us all about the

Chris Winslow 32:47
wrap of breakfast sandwich at lunch

Stuart Carlton 33:05
thank you everybody, for coming. We've already done the Thank you. So we're just gonna go straight into our very important credits. Teach me about the Great Lakes is brought to you by the fine people in Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant Thank you to our leadership team for putting up with this nonsense. That's why it's the best CRM program to work out except for your secret program. Of course it's equally as good as a recruiting check out the great work that we do and I see grant.org and i l i n Sea Grant on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media

Unknown Speaker 33:39
but not tick tock not tick

Stuart Carlton 33:40
tock with too old too old for I don't drink hazy IPAs and tick tock swings teach me how to relate to this cruise by hope charters hope giveaway. You can give him a verbal wave. That's fine. Carolyn, follow me. Yeah. Amazing. But not here. Randy miles also amazing. Also not here. Ethan Chitty is he's our associate producer and our fixer are super fun podcast artwork, which you can get a copy of In sticker form right there. Something Joel Davenport. The show is edited by the awesome and hopefully patient Quinn Rose and I encourage you to check out her walk, work and aspiring robot.com Hey, do you have a question for the show that you do? Send an email to teach me about the great [e-mail] Or leave us a message on our hotline 765496 I SG that's for Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. You can also follow us on Twitter and teach Great Lakes. Hey, everybody. Thanks so much for listening. You keep grading those lights