- [Presenter] Coming up on "Great Lakes Now."

Teaching Lake Whitefish to thrive like they did in the old days, - They're in-Stream incubators, so we'll put fish eggs in all these little holes and so we'll put roughly about 2,000 whitefish eggs in a plate, - - [Narrator] Taking millions of visitors up close to Niagara Falls.

- The water's really screaming, so the currents are constantly changing.

You really need to be on the ball here.

- [Narrator] And news from around the lakes.

(uplifting music) - [Announcer] This program's brought to you by the Fred A and Barbara M Erb Family Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Richard C Devereaux Foundation for Energy and Environmental Programs at Detroit PBS, Polk Family Fund, DTE Foundation, and contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

(gentle music) (scene change whooshing) - Hi, I'm Anna Sysling.

Welcome to "Great Lakes Now."

In many areas of the Great Lakes, whitefish are struggling to maintain their population, but one experiment aims to help them out by reintroducing them to their historic spawning runs.

- [Narrator] If you're from the Great Lakes, you're probably familiar with whitefish.

They're an important food source for both other fish and humans.

In Great Lakes Commercial Fishing, they generate more income than any other catch.

(bouncy music) - Whitefish are the most important Commercial Fishery in the Great Lakes, going back millennia to Native Americans in the region.

- [Narrator] Matt Herbert is a senior conservation scientist with the Nature Conservancy in Michigan.

He says that for his family and for many tourists, whitefish are an important part of vacationing in the Great Lakes region.

- When we go up North, whitefish are an important part of our tourist experience.

You know, we always go, I smoked whitefish and crackers and eat on that.

People in our region are familiar with going up North and having whitefish at restaurants and buying smoked whitefish.

But Lake Whitefish are in trouble.

It began over 100 years ago, during the logging boom of the 1800s when sediment and sawdust from lumber operations flooded into local rivers, the same rivers where many whitefish would lay their eggs, All the sediment that was delivered to our rivers through that deforestation and all that activity, all of those things kind of to like really kind of destroy the habitat that they used and block their access to other habitats.

Once we lost those runs, we did not have adults that associated spawning with rivers.

- Luckily, Whitefish also spawn in the Great Lakes themselves, using rocky reefs to safely house their eggs.

Pollution, overfishing, and the introduction of invasive sea lampreys caused a major population crash in the 1950s.

But thanks to improving environmental conditions and intervention from fishery managers, populations were booming by the end of the 20th century.

Whitefish, unlike some of those other species were covered in the 1980s, and so in the '80s and '90s and early 2000s, we actually had really good whitefish numbers.

- [Narrator] Today though, Whitefish populations are struggling once again.

In 2023, Lake Michigan's Commercial Whitefish Harvest was less than half of what it was in 2012, and less than a third of what it was in 1990.

- Over the last 15 years or so, we've seen another decline in Whitefish in Lake Michigan and in Lake Huron.

In the lower lakes in Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, Whitefish never really came back from those historic crashes.

We're not seeing young fish that are part of the population, and so the consensus is there's a bottleneck at that really young stage after they hatch from an egg that they're not finding enough food resources.

- [Narrator] There could be a few reasons why whitefish aren't making it to adulthood, but according to Scott Hansen, Fishery's Biologist for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, there's a likely culprit.

- Base of species we believe, particularly the dreissenid mussels are likely responsible for much of what's going on out there.

- [Narrator] Dreissenid mussels are the zebra and quagga mussels you've probably heard about.

They arrived on ships from Europe in the '80s and since then they've carpeted the bottom of the lower lakes, sucking much-needed nutrients out of the water.

- They interrupted the base of the food web.

So, essentially, we've taken out that phytoplankton, zooplankton base of the food chain that those young fish need to have.

(water trickles) (gentle music) - [Narrator] Lake Superior's Whitefish population has been more stable than the other lakes.

The lake's cold water is perfect for whitefish spawning and it doesn't have nearly as many invasive mussels, but as lake temperatures increase and habitats are altered due to climate change, even Lake Superior whitefish might have trouble finding suitable areas to lay eggs.

(water trickles) (bouncy music) - Lake Whitefish spawn on cooling temperatures.

So we need to have clean, cold, well-oxygenated water for those eggs to survive and then to hatch.

If our water continues to warm up, that cold water area that they have to have at certain times of the year is going to get smaller and smaller.

(energetic music) - [Narrator] So if whitefish are losing ground to warmer temperatures and invasive species, where can they go?

Rivers may offer a solution.

(eerie music) (insects chittering) In the mid-'90s, biologists in Wisconsin were surprised to see whitefish spawning in rivers flowing into Green Bay, which hadn't been seen since the late 1800s.

- Whitefish found their way back into the rivers in Wisconsin in the mid-1990s.

The first evidence was, I believe, 1994 in the Menominee River.

We started looking in these other rivers.

First found them in the Fox River, then in the Peshtigo, then in the Oconto rivers.

And that hasn't occurred in over a century.

(ominous music) - [Narrator] Nobody knows why Whitefish returned to Green Bay tributaries, but it's a good sign for the health of the rivers.

- [Scott] And all the work that's been done in these rivers as areas of concern and rehabilitating these rivers, cleaning them up has provided the opportunity and good conditions for whitefish to spawn - [Narrator] That spawning is one reason why Green Bay has a relatively stable whitefish population.

There's an effort to recreate the success throughout the Great Lakes starting in Michigan.

- If we can get whitefish spawning in rivers of the Great Lakes that should provide food resources for them to help them increase survival at that young stage and help the rebuild populations in Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.

(energetic music) - [Narrator] And that's just what the Nature Conservancy, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, the Bay Mills Indian Community, the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians, and the Little Travers Bay Bands of Odawa Indians have all joined forces to do.

Kris Dey manages the Little Travers Bay Bands hatchery in Levering, Michigan, just south of the Mackinac Bridge.

- We'll go up there, we'll put the eggs in the river, we'll let them hatch out naturally, and hopefully, they will imprint to that river.

- [Narrator] In the fall, eggs were collected from wild-caught white fish in Elk Rapids, Michigan.

The eggs were raised in the hatchery until they were eyed up or until their eyes were visible.

In February, they were ready to go into incubators.

- These are in-stream incubators, so we'll put fish eggs in all these little holes, all these little cells, and fill 'em up and we'll put two together and that'll enclose, make a little plate for us.

And so, we'll put roughly about 2,000 whitefish eggs in a plate.

- I'm going back through.

Then, whatever eggs I have left in here, - [Narrator] Dey and the hatchery team loaded more than 100,000 eggs into incubators bound for the bottom of the Jordan River, about 40 miles south of the hatchery.

This is one of the three rivers that's been stocked with whitefish for the project.

The researchers are hopeful that the baby whitefish will spend the first period of their lives in these rivers where there should be enough food to help them mature before venturing out into the lakes.

- We have these anchors that we'll clip 'em onto and they'll kind of hold in the water.

And so that'll give the eggs a chance to be in the river, to imprint, to do their thing, and when they hatch, they should be able to merge, and hopefully, drift downriver like they would naturally.

We are estimating right now the eggs are gonna hatch in about four weeks.

We believe that when they hatch, that's when they have that cue for them to imprint and want to come back.

- [Narrator] After putting them in water, the hatchery staff kept track of the water temperature to predict when the eggs would hatch.

Once the temperature was right, they sampled the river for newly hatched white fish.

- A lot of larvae fish that spawn in rivers, they'll actually wait till the middle of the night and they'll get up in the water column and they'll drift down the river.

(eerie music) Right here.

And if we put a little net out there, we can actually catch and have like a subsample of who's drifting down the river.

And if we set this up below our incubators, we can see how many fish left the incubator and went downstream.

- [Narrator] About a month after putting the incubators in the water, they found something.

- [Kris] Those are what we're finding.

So those are little baby white fish.

- Will these baby whitefish be able to reach adulthood and will they return to this river to spawn?

We'll have to wait to find out.

- This isn't gonna restore all of Lake Michigan, but if we figure out how to do it, we'll be able to scale this up and we'll be able to apply this elsewhere.

So, in five to seven years, they may return and we'll know for sure that it worked.

(energetic music) (scene change whooshing) - For more about the fish of the Great Lakes, visit greatlakesnow.org.

There are lots of places to visit in the Great Lakes region, but perhaps the most world-famous is Niagara Falls.

Maybe the only thing that can match the site and sound of the Falls is their power to attract visitors.

(scene change whooshing) - [Descriptor] For more than 100 years, travelers from around the world have made their way to Niagara to see and experience the world-famous falls.

An average of 15 million people visit Niagara Falls each year, generating billions of dollars of revenue for the region.

The Maid of the Mist, a tour boat that gives passengers an up-close-and-personal view of the Falls, remains one of the most popular attractions in Niagara and one of the longest-running tourist operations in the United States.

Constantly changing conditions on the river present the captains with new challenges on each and every run.

Kevin Keenan has been a spokesperson for the Maid of the Mist since 2013.

- Every time.

This is a microclimate down here and it's different every day.

It depends on what the direction of the wind is.

The currents here are very challenging, and so the captains have to go through extensive training to make sure that they are able to navigate the waters here in the Lower Niagara.

- [Descriptor] Captain Michael Dennis started as a deckhand on the Maid of the Mist in 2014 and has worked his way up to the Captain's Chair.

- One trip we may get to the dock and it's, "Oh, this is not too bad."

And the next trip, you know the water's really screaming, so the currents are constantly changing.

You really need to be on the ball here.

- [Descriptor] The tour boats bring passengers directly into the heart of the Horseshoe so they can experience the full force of the Falls.

- [Captain] We've got a couple landmarks that we use that we base off.

You know how far we can go into the Horseshoe Falls, and we've also got a radar.

There's definitely a point where you need to be on the ball because you get in there at a certain point and you don't want to go too far.

You know, like safety's the biggest thing for us here.

It just takes a lot of trips under your belt to really feel somewhat comfortable up here.

- [Descriptor] With a passenger capacity of 600 per vessel and 1.6 million guests per season, the captains and crew have many lives in their hands.

- [Captain] We're not always gonna get that, but got, you know, four or 500 lives on here.

So, yeah, there's a lot of responsibility.

- [Descriptor] The Maid of the Mist began operating in 1846 as a Steamboat ferry for stage coaches crossing from the American to Canadian landings.

Operations were paused during the Civil War.

But in 1885, the Maid of the Mist relaunched and has been in operation ever since.

In that time, the fleet made the switch from steam to diesel, and then recently, went to electric.

- In 2020, two e-boats all electric zero-emission vessels were launched.

These are the first e-boats of their kind in North America.

- [Descriptor] E-boat benefits include no engine vibrations, no engine noise, and no stinky diesel fumes.

These nearly silent vessels allow guests to experience the River more fully from the calls of shorebirds to the roar of the Falls, and it's a different experience for the captains too.

- Down here, it's kind of specialized.

There's not a wheel, you know, you kind of come in here and it looks a little different.

So the technologies, that's what takes a little bit to learn.

I operated Maid Seven for a while, which has two diesel engines in it and 800 horsepower standard twin-screw boat.

This boat, you know, a 100% electric, no diesel generator backup or anything.

I think it's about half the horsepower of the twin screw, but we were kind of skeptical.

It's a lot of water coming down.

- [Descriptor] The water that flows over the Horseshoe Falls lands with 2,500 tons of force.

Would these new electric vessels be able to handle the extreme conditions here?

- I had to take 1,000 of trips on the deck over the years, you know, and had Maid Seven in here.

But this was all new for me, so I said, "I'll just kind of creep up to the Horseshoe, feel the currents out a little bit, and maybe I won't go all the way in.

Before I knew it, I was all the way in.

Some days, we've operated the diesel boat in very high water.

It's hard to get in, like you're giving it a lot of RPMs, a lot of throttle.

Then you take this boat out on the same day with less horsepower on paper, but you can get right in there.

So it's like an immediate thrust.

It's very powerful.

(energetic music) - [Descriptor] The crew is prepared for all types of emergencies, including rescuing a young boy who got swept over the Falls.

- Roger Woodward went over the Falls in the early 1960s.

He had a life preserver on.

He went over the Falls and he survived and he was fished out of the water by the Maid of the Mist Cruise.

- [Descriptor] Not everyone wants to see the Falls from the water though.

For those visitors who prefer to stay a bit drier, provincial and state parks on each side of the Falls provide a variety of ways to experience the area.

From rustic hiking trails to visitor centers with multimedia exhibits, Robert Nichols founded Over the Falls Tours with one passenger van.

Today, he runs a tour fleet with 32 vehicles and 75 seasonal employees.

- We take roughly around 50,000 people a year.

So people from all over the globe come to Niagara Falls from Buffalo to Bangkok.

A lot of people fly in for the day.

We pick 'em up at the airport, we'd take 'em on a day tour and then drive them back to the airport and catch their flight back to New York.

I love the Cave of the Winds trip.

There're a series of walkways and decks right in front of the Falls, and you can choose to get wet and really wet.

- [Descriptor] The site of 750,000 gallons of water falling into the Niagara Gorge every second has always amazed visitors from the first Native American communities that reside in the area to the European explorers who arrived in 1678.

- The French Explorer LaSalle came here and he had a French priest on board the ship.

Father Louis Hennepin was credited with the first writings of Niagara Falls.

He familiarized Europe with Niagara Falls.

- [Descriptor] More than a century later, one European visitor would make the Falls a famous destination for celebrating new love.

- Napoleon Bonaparte's brother came here on his honeymoon.

So since then, it's been known as the Honeymoon Capital of the world.

They say that the negative ions that's produced from the falling water make people feel happy.

- [Descriptor] The Falls haven't always been in this spot 12,000 years ago, when they first began to flow.

They were located seven miles downstream near the current location of Lewiston, New York.

But over the years, erosion has brought them to their present location.

- They worked their way back, carved out this gorge you see here to where they are today.

- [Descriptor] These days, the erosion is much slower because about half of the Niagara River's natural flow now is diverted to drive huge hydroelectric plants on the US and Canadian sides.

- If they allowed all the water to go over the Falls all the time, the Falls would erode about three to four feet per year.

But because we take so much water out, we're slowing down in the erosion to about one or two inches per year.

- [Descriptor] When night falls, the lights come on.

- There's LED light panels across the River on the Canadian side that shine up the American Falls, the Bridal Veil Falls and the Canadian Falls, and they light up the Falls every evening, 365 nights a year.

During the tourist season, they blow off fireworks at 10 o'clock.

It's a joint effort between the city of Niagara Falls, New York, the City of Niagara Falls, Canada, the Province of Ontario, and also the New York State Parks and the Niagara Parks of Canada.

We're so rich in history.

Not only do we get to educate people about Niagara Falls, we get to entertain them.

The best part of my job is just to see the smiles on people's faces.

- When I was a deckhand, that was one of my biggest things.

I'd walk around and like meet all these people from all over the world.

Places I don't even know where they are.

You hear people laughing out there right now, like it's just a cool feeling.

We're making memories for these people and ourselves.

We have a good time down here.

Like it doesn't feel, I feel like I haven't worked in years.

Not a lot of people can say that they're operating a boat in Niagara Falls, you know, so it's a unique thing.

I'm very happy that I'm able to do it.

(upbeat music) - For more about Great Lakes history and tourism, visit greatlakesnow.org.

And now it's time for the catch where we bring you news, stories, and events from around the Great Lakes.

(scene change whooshing) Public health officials in Michigan have encountered a rare piece of good news when it comes to PFAS.

Kelly House covered the story for Bridge Michigan.

- For some fish species, including smelt from the Great Lakes, PFAS levels are actually lower than public health officials previously thought.

- [Descriptor] PFAS stands for Per and Polyfluorinated Substances.

It's been widely used in non-stick, stain-resistant and waterproof products.

- The bad thing about these chemicals is that they do not readily break down in the environment, so that's earned them this nicknamed Forever Chemicals.

They're linked to things like cancer, immune system breakdowns, hormonal problems, high cholesterol, even reduced vaccine response.

- [Descriptor] Due to the high level of PFAS found in Lake Superior smelt, the State of Michigan had issued an advisory not to eat more than one serving of the fish per month.

- When these really high readings were showing up in Lake Superior smelt, public health officials acknowledged that it was weird.

These smelt weren't swimming in waters with any known PFAS contamination nearby.

So it seemed strange for them to be showing up with these really high levels when no other nearby fish were showing similar problems.

- [Descriptor] After conducting new tests, scientists discovered that a naturally occurring bile in smelt had been interfering with the results.

- That has characteristics that show up on testing as PFAS.

So it was artificially making these test results appear as if PFAS levels were sky high, when in fact they weren't.

State officials are now going through hundreds of past fish samples to retest them using a method that works around this bile issue.

The original testing method we're showing PFAS levels in the hundreds of parts per billion.

Now, it's more like the teens or even the single digits, - [Descriptor] And it's not just smelt affected by the new findings.

- I saw results for sunfish, for rock bass and for smelt, all of which essentially showed the same thing.

Original test results showing really high PFAS levels and the new test results showing dramatically lower levels.

- [Descriptor] Kelly says that despite new information, the State is holding off on changing its advisory until it knows more.

- Just because there's less PFAS in the fish doesn't necessarily mean it's safe to eat more fish.

State officials basically say they need more time to digest this information and they will likely be changing fish consumption recommendations when they release the State's new annual guidance this year.

(scene change whooshing) - [Descriptor] A recent study has explored the impact of water clarity on the survival of loons.

Kirsti Marohn covered the story for Minnesota Public Radio.

- The study was conducted by Walter Piper.

He's a biology professor at Chapman University in Orange, California.

It was published in the "Journal of Ecology," and Piper has spent about three decades studying loons in Northern Wisconsin.

Piper has found over the past 25 years or so, that loons in Northern Wisconsin have declined by as much as 22%.

- [Descriptor] The researchers used satellite imagery to calculate the clarity of 127 Northern Wisconsin Lakes between 1991 and 2021.

They focused on the month of July when baby loons are still relying on their parents for food.

- Water clarity is important for loon's survival because loons are diving predators and they rely on their keen underwater eyesight to catch their prey.

Piper found that there was a positive correlation between the clarity of those lakes and the survivability of those loon chicks to reach adulthood.

- [Descriptor] Adult loons were able to hunt more effectively in clearer water, which meant that they were better able to feed their chicks.

Climate change is a significant factor that can reduce water clarity.

- Climate change is causing heavier rainfalls during the summer, and that's washing sediment and nutrients into lakes, and those nutrients could cause algae blooms, and that all makes lakes less clear.

The National Audubon Society did a study a couple of years ago about birds that are susceptible or vulnerable to climate change.

And they put balloons in the moderate category in terms of vulnerability and they said that loons are likely to lose a lot of their breeding range.

- [Descriptor] There's still a lot that researchers don't know.

They plan to continue studying how loons are affected by water quality.

- Piper's research team does plan to continue their research.

He's actually continuing work in Wisconsin and also in Northern Minnesota.

There's still a lot of work to be done to really understand the impact of climate change.

(scene change whooshing) - [Descriptor] And now an excerpt from our digital series called "Waves of Change," where we look at the environmental justice movement throughout the Great Lakes.

This month we spoke with Monica Lewis-Patrick, Activist President and CEO of "We the People of Detroit," an organization that works to empower Detroiters around key issues in the city, including access to clean water.

- Some of the work that we've done is we created something called the Community Research Collective, where we brought together about 67 experts and scientists and scholars, but also community experts and artists and media makers to be able to form the community research collective that gave face and gave really an explanation to what was happening around water shutoffs, not only in Detroit, but how it was lending itself to water inequities across Michigan.

One of the things we did was we mapped the Detroit Water and Sewage Department System because a lot of people had difficulty wrapping their minds around how massive this system is.

DWSD provides water to 40% of the entire population of Michigan.

So when people were saying, "We don't care that they cut off water in Detroit, those Black people oughta just pay their bills."

They didn't understand that the infrastructure of Detroit is connected to their homes, to their communities as well.

So this is why we must think of water holistically as a human right, as something that we all must invest in.

- Thanks for watching.

For the full interview with Monica Lewis-Patrick, or for more about any of our stories, visit greatlakesnow.org.

When you get there, you can follow us on social media or subscribe to our newsletter to get updates about our work.

See you out on the Lakes.

(lighthearted music) - [Announcer] This program is brought to you by the Fred A and Barbara M Erb Family Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Richard C Devereaux Foundation for Energy and Environmental Programs at Detroit PBS, Polk Family Fund, DTE Foundation, and contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

(gentle music) (bright music)