Disclaimer: This is an automated transcript, we apologize for any errors. If you notice any problems, please email the show at teachmeaboutthegreatlakes@gmail.com. Thank you.

Stuart Carlton 0:00
teach me about the Great Lakes teach me about the Great Lakes John Welcome back to teach me about the Great Lakes and exactly twice monthly podcast in which I A Great Lakes novice ask people who are smarter and harder than working smarter and harder working than I am and sometimes more eloquent to teach me all about the Great Lakes. I'm joined today by Carolyn Foley, Research Coordinator Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant Carolyn, what's up?

Carolyn Foley 0:24
My cat is currently trying to attack my headphones. So that's what's up right now.

Stuart Carlton 0:28
Um, and so do you have like a long cord that is being clogged? Is that the deal?

Carolyn Foley 0:33
Yeah, I keep one out so that I can hear my kids. There you go. Yep.

Stuart Carlton 0:38
Both on so I can't hear my kids. That's maybe a difference in their parenting style. I saw everybody you can look down to your show notes. Carolyn will send me a photo of the cat because the rule of recording is if there's a cat, you have to have a picture. And what is what is the cat's name? Optimus Prime Optimus Prime named after the famous the famous transformer I would imagine, indeed, not just a coincidence. Okay. No, good. Well, speaking of famous things, we're going to be talking today again about a famous invader that maybe Optimus Prime could talk about. We're going to talk today all about invasive species somewhere. It's a huge issue that we work with. And so we've got a bunch of guests lined up. This is actually an action like an episode of transformers. This is an action packed teach about the Great Lakes. So maybe we should just jump right in if that's cool with you. Sure. All right. Great. Transitional music. Oh, since this is invasive related, we have this special inside joke. Transitional music. Here we go.

Our listeners and our guests. Great. Our guests today. We're joined by two people right now versus a old friend of the show, Dr. Brian Roth and associate professor at the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Michigan State University. Brian, how are you today?

Dr. Brian Roth 1:58
I'm doing great. How are you?

Stuart Carlton 2:00
I'm doing good. We're rolling. It's 930 in the morning, the coffee's kicking in. It's good. We're also joined by Illinois-Indiana. Sea Grant Simon Greg Kitzur off. He's our aquatic invasive species outreach specialist, Greg, what's up with you, man?

Greg Hitzroth 2:12
Not many, but here I am. Yeah, Greg.

Stuart Carlton 2:16
poor devil is on Central time. So it's an hour earlier for him. That's okay. We're here to talk about invasive generally. But really, we want to focus in on the crayfish issue. Because it's near and dear to my heart this time of year because we're getting into crawfish season back in my hometown of Louisiana. And I keep checking the vaccine database or whatever every day so I can try to go home and have some but no vaccine yet. So no crawfish for me. Brian, you've done a lot of crawfish research, right? Or crate pay on crayfish research. How'd you get started in that field? Exactly.

Dr. Brian Roth 2:46
Yeah, that's a really good question. And yeah, I appreciate the crawfish, crayfish prod bad mud bug name game there. I used to live in Louisiana. And I always used to have to correct my friends and concrete mesh and they would just call me a Yankee instead. Yeah, I've always had a curiosity about crayfish. I grew up in Seattle and walking along the creeks, we would see them and then as I grew older, I started snorkeling for him. And I knew that they're edible. And so I would take them home, boil them up and eat them. They're delicious. And then that really got me thinking about what are these things doing? Like why is there so many of them in some places, and then and others? And that really started me down the road towards my research focus.

Carolyn Foley 3:42
So do you have a favorite crayfish species that you study, or eat either one?

Dr. Brian Roth 3:49
Well to eat, frankly, like I said, when I lived in Louisiana, we ate a lot of red swamp crayfish, and they were delicious and easy to peel. And so certainly, in terms of consumption, the red swamp is up there. It's it's delicious and easy to eat. In terms of ecologically speaking, one of my favorites actually is the Virol crayfish, which is a native species to the region of the Midwest, and it's one of those, it's a real survivor. And that even in the face of rescue, crayfish invasions. In a lot of cases, it just seems to kind of hang on and hang on and hang on and stay around even though all the dominoes are stacked against it.

Stuart Carlton 4:38
So I heard you say is that the virial? crayfish? That's correct. I have to ask, Why. Why is it called the virail. Crayfish is it got a high fecundity as we like to say or is it just called that for some other reason? Because I think

Dr. Brian Roth 4:53
it's interesting and not particularly it's kind of uncouth, to be honest with you crayfish have reproductive parts that are not so unsimilar from humans. So they have to and that when in terms of the males and virals are substantial, I'll just say that. That is not the reason why they're my

Stuart Carlton 5:23
it's actually my favorite one too. I'd never heard of it till just now. But

Carolyn Foley 5:30
what are some, what are some things about? Like, are crayfish actually better invaders than other species? Or like then fish or something like that? And what are some of the features that make them good invaders?

Dr. Brian Roth 5:43
Yeah, crayfish are nasty, that is for sure. In terms of their potential as invaders, I wouldn't necessarily say they're better or worse than fish, because there are certainly some fish that are unbelievable good invaders think. common carp, which are worldwide, goldfish, are really good invaders, believe it or not. And then beyond that humans are really good at transporting species around the globe. So one species that you might not think of as an invader, per se, but as a really good it's a species that has been distributed widely is something like rainbow trout, right. So rainbow trout have a very small native home range, basically the west slope of the Rockies and cascades. But they've been introduced to well over 100 countries, right. So it really depends on the species that you're talking about. But in terms of crayfish. Certain species in particular, are really good invaders. And the red swamp crayfish is certainly near the top of that list. There are a number of species that have been introduced both within the United States and North America as well as to other shores, including into Europe. And they're good. And one of the things that makes them such good Invaders is that they're oftentimes really tolerant of, of conditions of varying conditions, I should say. So the red swamp, for instance, you know, whatever water body that they have been surviving, it can dry out completely for months at a time. And they're fine. They survive, they reproduce, they, in fact, don't mind it when their ponds dry up.

Stuart Carlton 7:43
So what do they use that when they when they hunker down, like in the little boroughs and boroughs and mud piles on top right?

Dr. Brian Roth 7:51
Sometimes, yeah, sometimes. So that is something that we're finding that's different here in Michigan, where they've invaded oftentimes as compared to what they do in their native home range. And it probably has to do with the soil characteristics. So there's a lot of clay in their native home range. And so they build these chimneys. And so if you drive down any road and Louisiana, where there's any kind of ditch, you'll see these chimneys everywhere. Whereas here in Michigan, they occasionally make chimneys, but oftentimes, it's just a hole. And that's the sign. So you have to look very closely and be able to differentiate between what's a crayfish hole and what's like a chipmunk.

Stuart Carlton 8:35
Greg, how do you how did Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant How did we get involved in crayfish? Like, I mean, so it's a big issue in our so we covered the two state region in addition to the Great Lakes broadly, right. And so, our invasive crazy crayfish, like a big deal for us, too. How did we get started with that?

Greg Hitzroth 8:50
Yeah, so a lot of my work is focused around organisms and trade, and so organisms that get bought and sold, and through my work, I visited plenty of aquarium shops and nurseries or garden centers. And I kept coming across crayfish being sold as crayfish like no species designation, and knowing that there are some known invasive species of crayfish out there, it was a little disconcerting, what was being sold. And so, from my perspective, it was more interested in what was actually being sold, or traded in crayfish. But also, I did a lot of trade shows like aquarium shows and garden shows. And we have a couple specimens mounted and acrylic blocks. And like sometimes I'm not the most approachable person, but crayfish would definitely bring people to our tables. I would see people walk six tables past us make a U turn and come back and talk about gray fish. Oh really? And so it became a large talking point for me at these trade shows, but also seeing these issues and trade and trade is one of the pathways of introduction of invasive crayfish. But also hearing stories from groups like Brian's, and South herps. In Michigan, Reuben Keller and Illinois and Tim Campbell and Wisconsin DNR, talking about new populations of red swamp crayfish popping up. It seems like a like an interesting topic to be involved in and the Irish perspective.

Stuart Carlton 10:27
Yeah. And so So I guess there's a question. So people are like selling them for a quote. So people put crayfish in their aquariums, like for decoration or pets or whatever I don't even though like our aquarium is one fish kind of swimming around. And it isn't doing much. So we know that they were probably introduced that way, you know, people releasing them moon and I think Brian talked last time he was on about, you know how there are some let go through crawfish boils, or whatever. What's the big deal? Like why do we care about this? Generally, invasive species are bad. I agree. But what is the effect when when either rusty or swamp crayfish get introduced? Like, what are the effects of that in the area?

Dr. Brian Roth 11:05
Yeah, so with red swamp crayfish, we're still trying to figure that out. Okay. I can be honest with you. There new invader in the Michigan as late as 2017. That's when we first figured out where they are. And to be quite frank, we're not exactly sure. That's because they are so new in many of the systems in which they've invaded were not particularly well studied before they got in. That's oftentimes one mechanism to be able to determine their impact is you look before they got in and then you look after? Well, if there's no before, then how do you know what happened afterwards, right? With other invasive crayfish species, we have much better information and even with red swamp crayfish and other locations, say in Europe, and we know that they can have some pretty dramatic ecosystem effects as opposed to native crayfish species. And that includes things like aquatic plant destruction, reducing and changing the community of benthic insects and other aquatic invertebrates. They can also affect water quality. So one of the things that they do, either through clipping macrophytes, or just through their normal feeding activities is increased the suspension of essentially money, right. And so they can change the quality of water, they can resuspend nutrients into the water column, which could make them greener. And that is one thing that we're looking out for one of the things that we know and what we've seen with our eyes in Michigan, is their impacts on bank structure. So those burrows that we talked about, you know, they actually are burrowing down to the waterline. And if there's a fairly high density of crayfish in a particular area, they can essentially turn that bank into Swiss cheese. And because of that, you, you might imagine that a storm or intense wave action, or even just the heavy rainfall can increase erosion. And we know that that is occurring in some of our ponds already. We just have to measure it. And that's been established and in many other locations to the point where you could have failures of pretty substantial water control structures. Like there's documentation of entire wetlands being drained by red swamp, crayfish burrows, and other things like earthen dams being damaged beyond any sort of reasonable utility by their burrowing. And so those are primarily the impacts that we're looking for when when, when we're setting red swamp crayfish. Another primary impact is their effect on native crayfish species. And time after time after time, what we see when really any invasive crayfish almost any invasive crayfish species invades is that the native species just go away. And that is something that can occur really dramatically, such as in Europe, when North American Cray fishes were introduced there, those North American Cray fishes carried a disease called crayfish plague, and essentially, nearly wiped out some of the native species in Europe. Here in America and North America in general, they're all that disease is an is endemic. And so it doesn't have as big of an impact, but oftentimes, these invasive coefficients are larger or more aggressive. and or more fecund. And so there's other mechanisms, such as fish preying more heavily on the native species than non native species that leads to the replacement of of native crayfish species by the invasive.

Carolyn Foley 15:17
So would that be basically because the native species are like easier to catch or easier to eat or something like that? Yeah,

Dr. Brian Roth 15:23
yeah, usually, yeah. So it's either behavioral. So the non native species, and this is really well studied for rescue crayfish in particular, where rescue crayfish are more aggressive, and can literally yank the native species out of their hiding holes. Or it's it's physiological. So crayfish, or sorry, more morphological. So crayfish almost all other battles are handled in terms of who has the bigger claws. And so if you have bigger claws, the likelihood is you're going to win. And a lot of these non native species happen to have bigger claws relative to their body size than the native species.

Stuart Carlton 16:14
Yeah, like in Louisiana, when you get the biggest ones you get you actually eat the claw meat sometimes like it's, it's, you know, like, like five per boil, or that big. But those are the ones Yeah,

Dr. Brian Roth 16:24
that's my favorite part. The claws have the sweetest meat for sure.

Stuart Carlton 16:29
You're a title machine.

So So, so are these. So you talked about them in ponds a lot, and maybe on banks and stuff like that these aren't in the lake, though. And Lake Michigan, are they are they a concern for Lake Michigan?

Dr. Brian Roth 16:48
Yes, yes, very much. So. Yeah, it's something that I think still needs to be worked out. So Lake Michigan proper, particularly for red swamp crayfish. So the lake propers is probably not their ideal habitat. However, for rescue crayfish in particular, they have invaded everywhere in Lake Michigan. All the way from the south all the way up pretty much as far north as you can go. With red swamp, we're really concerned about the surrounding wetlands and inland water bodies, river rivers that lead into the lakes. That is where we're most concerned. In fact, they already are established and the Lake Michigan basin. scientist by the name of Reuben Keller, who's at Loyola, Chicago. He has done extensive work in the canals around Chicago on red swamp crayfish invasions. There.

Stuart Carlton 17:51
I will put a link to some of the work that Rubens done. And some of the work you've done in our show notes, which you can find at teach me about the great lakes.com/ 27 Because this is episode 27. So Greg, so this is a regional problem that has a lot of different potential pathways of introduction, like we talked about from the crawfish boil. So the organisms and trade to who knows even when else, it seems to me like a collaborative approach is the way to go. And that's kind of the idea right behind the invasive crayfish collaborative. Do you want to tell us a little bit about what that is and how it was formed?

Greg Hitzroth 18:22
Yeah, so in Great Lakes invasive crayfish collaborative was again born out of his observations about different interactions happening around the Great Lakes. There was some concern about additional species being introduced. Illinois list character destructor, also known as the yabby. As a potential invasive species, which is a Griffiths from Australia. There is a concern about a species called marbled crayfish, which is self cloning or pathogenic. So there's a variety of species of crayfish of concern. Redstone crayfish is a huge concern in the region. But we also wanted to think about, like all the different species that are in trade. All the different pathways of introduction are different species, but also not being a crayfish expert. My background is in botany actually. And so trying to rely on expertise like Brian or Reuben Keller or Eric Larsen at the University of Illinois, or Chris Taylor with looking at Illinois natural history survey, trying to leverage all these other people who do have expertise in crayfish to be able to help address these issues across the Great Lakes and use a outreach perspective. So really, what we wanted to do was bring together a whole bunch of people to talk about crayfish and share information. So essentially, we established a set of meetings associated with other meetings so we can get experts to these meetings. So the Great Lakes panel on aquatic nuisance species we usually try to attack on our meetings around those meetings. Wouldn't you know people actually saw each other in person. And we hosted webinars, we have a website, we have a Gmail group and a monthly newsletter. And so we essentially just tried to create a means of sharing information among experts and people interested in crayfish in the Great Lakes. So everyone down from graduate students, up to professors, and everyone in between, such as land managers, outreach professionals, etc. So, pretty much it was just a excuse to go talk about crayfish in a large group.

Stuart Carlton 20:32
Yep. And so it's really a surveying the coordination type role and communication. Is that kind of where you are, I guess you planted yourself as a botanist. But, but but but I think that's a really valuable role. Right. So what are some of the things that have happened as a result of the ICC?

Greg Hitzroth 20:50
Um, yeah, so as a result, I think we've created a lot of good means of communication. We created some good conversations, we did a needs assessment of our stakeholders. So pretty much what we did is we asked a bunch of questions from ICC members or invasive creditors, collaborative members about what they saw as their need to understand crayfish and crayfish management or crayfish research and the region. So we partnered with Craig Miller at the Illinois natural history survey to do a survey of our stakeholders. And pretty much we asked people open questions about what did they feel they were lacking in these topics, including outreach, and then we asked them to rank those. And so we essentially created a priorities list for the region, based on expert opinion. All right,

Stuart Carlton 21:47
what are what are, give me the top two or three priorities, I guess, just so so that the influential listeners to this show can help to make those happen,

Greg Hitzroth 21:56
I think, better understanding of impacts and the biology of some of the crayfish people found to be important and also understanding the management methodology, I think better and more broadly perspective,

Stuart Carlton 22:08
ask a bunch of scientists what they need, the answer is more science. I agree. But it shows what a dearth or is right it's like to know something like even know the basics, just take some crayfish low to work, right? And, and it's easy to say, oh, we should do this, we should do that, or whatever. But it's just oh, that work.

Greg Hitzroth 22:26
What was interesting, though, in part was that some of the things that people identified as needs other experts like Eric Larsen, Rubin Keller did approach us and say that a lot of this information does exist. And so that essentially pointed out another need of just more communication of crayfish issues.

Carolyn Foley 22:46
So this is a question for both of you. But do you think there's hope in the fight against invasive crayfish? Or are we just trying to minimize damage? Like you're, you know, you're talking about the ones that are here, you're talking about the ones that are on the horizon? Who knows how big these crayfish are gonna get? And they're just gonna keep fighting?

But yeah, so question for both of you, do you think there's like there's hope? Or are you just trying to minimize the damage that occurs?

Dr. Brian Roth 23:16
Yeah. So this is Brian, and I think it's a mosaic. There is no simple one answer, I think, in certain situations, control and even eradication of certain populations, is feasible, we're actually attempting an eradication of red swamp and a couple of ponds this upcoming summer. However, in certain situations, they've kind of gone beyond the control stage. So a good example of that would be like rusty crayfish in northern Wisconsin, right there. And so many lakes, those lakes vary in size, from small to bigger than you want to deal with. And you can't just go in there and, you know, reset that lake. Right? There's there's other management priorities that wouldn't allow that nor was nor should they, right. They shouldn't just, you have to do the kind of the cost benefit of starting over lay in even still, the methodologies for control and eradication of crayfish are still being evaluated. Right. So there's a number of different ways to try to do it. And and there's no one single prescription that that would work for every water body. And so, it is a mosaic I think in certain situations, controller eradication is possible, but in many others, it's not the most important thing I think in all situations we don't want new, more new invaders. So some of the species that Greg mentioned, such as the Marvel crayfish, the white claw crayfish, the yabby, those are ones that we don't want here. And so if we can reduce or eliminate the potential for new invaders, that would be beneficial relative to the situation we have now, some of these species that are already here, we may be stuck with. And that just depends on where they are and what kind of water body they in and what kind of management priorities exist around those water bodies.

Stuart Carlton 25:41
So then, related to that, I guess, you know, thinking about preventing new invasions, do you have like, this could be another view, maybe like, a top couple of tips to give women top tips for listeners on reducing crayfish invasions. And if you want to drum roll first, I've got that ready to go. So we can do. Yeah, we'll do that. We'll do a drum roll. And then, and then we'll have your top tip, Greg. Alright, so do you need a second to prepare top tip?

Greg Hitzroth 26:08
Oh, my gosh, I think I'd have a good one.

Stuart Carlton 26:11
All right, here we go. Drum roll. We've paid a lot of money for this. So

Greg Hitzroth 26:19
I'm gonna say release zero.

Stuart Carlton 26:25
That is the top tip of all. So tell us what does that mean, release zero and be a hero.

Greg Hitzroth 26:30
Essentially, we're trying to get people to think of alternatives to releasing organisms. So when we talk about people releasing crayfish, like usually it's to dispose of them. And what often people think as a as a humane way of disposing of crayfish that they no longer want or cared for or so pretty much we're asking people to find a new home or consider working with that or professional to find a humane way of euthanizing their crayfish.

Stuart Carlton 27:05
So if you have like a pet crayfish don't dump it in the river.

Greg Hitzroth 27:08
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, sometimes you hear crazy things like people wanting to control aquatic weeds on their golf courses and throwing precession there to control them as bio control. And like, I don't know about those people. That's an audience. And so looking into a little,

Stuart Carlton 27:27
no, it's important. But it's one that you have to reach in different ways. Yeah.

Greg Hitzroth 27:32
So we have to think about other ways of talking about we control with some people. But top tip is just don't really some, something has to do with them. All right,

Stuart Carlton 27:43
Brian, do you have to store

Dr. Brian Roth 27:45
it? And yeah, so one of the things that we all learn like crazy.

Stuart Carlton 27:55
Covenant? What is your top tip right now that we wasted your time.

Dr. Brian Roth 28:02
So I'll stack on the grades. And one of the things that you have to know is learn what crayfish you have. So most people are completely unaware of how many species of crayfish are out there and what species that they have in their aquarium, or that they're buying from a store or whatever the case may be. And we've learned that by going into some of those pet shops, etc, that Greg mentioned, and the owners and managers of those pet shops, they don't know what species they have. And so and they don't know how to tell, quite frankly. So learning what crayfish you might have in your possession is is really important. And just as a side note, the most humane way to euthanize crayfish is simply to stick them in the freezer freezer. That is the most humane way because essentially they just get cold and go to sleep. And then they turn around and crayfish crayfish sickles,

Stuart Carlton 29:13
there we go crayfish sickles, it's so is there.

Carolyn Foley 29:18
Is there a resource for crayfish identification that like is there an online resource that we can add to the show notes if people want to try to up their identification game?

Dr. Brian Roth 29:28
Yeah, there's several actually. And I can point you in fact, there is a thread on the ICC about about crayfish identification. And there's field guides for Illinois and field guides for Michigan and I don't know if there's one for Wisconsin but the species that are exist in kind of that quad state area from Minnesota Well, five states from Minnesota To around the bend to Michigan are pretty similar. And so there's a lot of overlap.

Greg Hitzroth 30:06
There's a great one from the Illinois Natural History server and Chris Taylor, it's a book, I think it cost about $10. But it's, it's very good and lots of good photos, really good descriptions and taxonomic keys.

Dr. Brian Roth 30:20
And I can I can pass you the one that, that Michigan produced that's online and

Stuart Carlton 30:26
perfect. Well, we'll put links all those in the show notes, as well, again, teach me about the great lakes.com/ 27 You know, this is really interesting. I'm talking about crayfish, and it's actually kind of hopeful that we can help you know, at least prevent future spreads. But that's actually not why we had you on teach me about the Great Lakes this week. The reason we had you on teach me about the Great Lakes is ask two questions. And the first one is is we have an answer for Brian for this, but maybe it's changed. I'll be interested here. Greg, if you could choose to have a great donut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch, which would you choose? And

Greg Hitzroth 30:56
I had some time to think about this. Yeah, and my answer is actually a combination of both it's the donut hamburger the way instead of a bun you use a donor

Stuart Carlton 31:11
you tried to call me as she married sounds horrible. Yeah. Okay. So have you ever wondered Are you just trolling us here

Greg Hitzroth 31:20
and just trolling you but I think in the the nature of this I would I would try it.

Stuart Carlton 31:27
I was gonna say the next question is where to get one so if I see one in Chicago, I'll try it. No, I won't. I'm not going to try out hamburger I'll be honest, maybe a hamburger with a side of donut. But okay, well, thanks for that Greg. Ryan I reviewed the tape and last time you were here you said a sandwich as long as it was corned beef with mustard from Chicago. Do you want to revise any answer? Are you sticking with it?

Dr. Brian Roth 31:52
I'll revise although that first choice is really hard to beat. I have made some really good philly steak. Billy cheese steak sandwiches, over the Coronavirus pandemic being stuck at home and trying to gain like 50 pounds and that hill Alright,

Stuart Carlton 32:15
so what's good I'm gonna dribble achieve her goals. What's the secret to a good homemade Philly cheesesteak sandwich?

Dr. Brian Roth 32:23
You really need good meat. So the steak is critical. I actually prefer flank steak over ribeye. And it just for me has more flavor and is delicious. And then you really have to get those vegetables just right, just right. Just a little bit of teeth and um, and melt the melt the cheese and it's over go. 50 pounds.

Stuart Carlton 32:53
For nachos do that anyway, that's a different podcast. Alright. So Greg, you are Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, aquatic outreach, aquatic invasive species outreach specialist. What what makes you good at that job? Like what are what are key skills that somebody needs to have in your type of work? Do you think? How good are you act like I didn't send this to you in advance?

Greg Hitzroth 33:15
Yeah, no, I'm thinking about it. There's so many so many answers to this. I think I find being tall and intimidating the best when working in person. So I really command authority. So I think that's my Alright, quality.

Stuart Carlton 33:33
Thank you for that note on Greg. Don't ask him questions. Good. So Brian, you haven't answered this one because we changed up our second question for a year or two. But what do you think makes a really good? I guess you're a researcher and an associate professor and a fish ecologist. What are key skills you think that makes somebody great at that job?

Dr. Brian Roth 33:53
Stupidity? I don't know.

Stuart Carlton 33:56
That's a little known fact. Glasses and resume

Dr. Brian Roth 33:59
a glutton for punishment, I think is is is one of them. No. Almost a pathological stubbornness, quite frankly, I think is is really key to being a faculty member in just about any field, you have to really learn from your mistakes, I should say, and you'll make a lot of them and hopefully, you'll come out the other side.

Stuart Carlton 34:29
Wonderful. Great, well, where this has been really fascinating discussion, we can't thank you enough. Where can people go to learn either to follow you on social media, learn more about your work, etc. We can start with the ICC. Great, where can people go if they're interested in that? Is there a public website or is it mainly just internal stuff?

Greg Hitzroth 34:44
It is, it's invasive crayfish.org. And the you can see our investment crayfish, Google Group RSS feed on that website and you can always join through the website as well to You'd come part of the collaborative

Stuart Carlton 35:02
and that's open. Anybody regarding just anyone who's interested in crayfish. There you go. Great. And Brian, so you have a great twitter follow if you like pictures of fish. And crayfish, really just pictures of aquatic things generally. Where else can people go to find out more about what you do?

Dr. Brian Roth 35:20
Yeah, my website is raw lab MSU. All one word that calm, calm.

Stuart Carlton 35:25
Wonderful. Well, Brian Roth associate professor at Michigan State University and Greg Kitzur off, who is Illinois-Indiana, Sea Grant, aquatic invasive species outreach specialist. Thank you so much for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes.

Dr. Brian Roth 35:38
Thank you for having me. Thanks.

Stuart Carlton 35:54
Man, I always loved talking to Brian. And that was some interesting stuff on the crayfish and the great work that we're doing with the ICC as well.

Carolyn Foley 36:00
Yeah. I mean, everybody I think, who listens to this knows, or they're learning that I'm an invertebrate person. So anytime we can talk in vertebrates is good. Yeah. Yeah, it's really over. Yes.

Stuart Carlton 36:17
cut you off for that stupid joke. Yeah, so it's always nice here about inverts. And, you know, it's a, it's a problem in England like a growing problem. But it's interesting to hear in all the work, we're doing transport zero and things like that. I think that message is something we can't drive home enough. So you should go check out the BIA hero stuff at transport zero.org, where you can learn about the work that we're doing to fight the spread of aquatic and terrestrial invaders in the area.

Carolyn Foley 36:46
Right. And so there's, there's a lot of different iterations of that type of message all across the Great Lakes Basin, right on the Canadian side in the different states, like remove, drain dry, don't move things around. So I think you had a conversation with some people from Wisconsin Sea Grant, right, who are also trying to share our podcast and talk about the aquatic invasive species issue, which a lot of people think is like one of the number one issues facing the Great Lakes is the introduction of aquatic invasive species and how things completely change.

Stuart Carlton 37:19
Yeah, no, you're exactly right. And so our colleagues over Wisconsin Sea Grant, they have a podcast called introduced, and I was lucky enough to get to talk to the people the introduce podcast, and we'll go ahead and play that interview now.

So next, we're gonna, so we moved from talking about the invasive crayfish collaborative and all the great work that they're doing and having Brian back to talk with him about the work that he's doing. But we wanted to go more depth on aquatic invasive species, because it's such an important issue. And the timing of this is perfect, because starting very soon, in March, our friends and colleagues over at Wisconsin Sea Grant are going to introduce or nope, what they're going to do is release the second season of their really great podcasts introduced. If they were introducing, that'd be an awesome power situation, right? allow myself to introduce themselves. Anyway, regardless of that, we'd like to bring on a couple of people, a handful of people from Wisconsin Sea Grant, we're going to talk with Bonnie Willison and Sydney white owl, who are the hosts and producers of the introduced podcasts, Wisconsin Sea Grant. We're also gonna bring on my old friend, Tim Campbell, who's the aquatic invasive species, Outreach Coordinator at Wisconsin, Bonnie and Sidney and Tim, how are y'all doing today?

Bonnie Willison 38:47
Good. Thanks for having us.

Stuart Carlton 38:48
Yeah, we're thrilled to have you. So introduce. So for those who don't know, first of all, let's get this out of the way right away, you should listen to introduce, it's a really great episodic podcast that you can find. We'll put a link in the show notes, but I go to Wisconsin Sea Grant, and you'll see that you'll see it all over there. But it's a very different kind of show from teach me about the Great Lakes. It is. And I'm gonna use some big words here, but it is professional and produced by people who aren't lazy. So that kind of puts it in contrast us. And it's all about aquatic invasive species. They did season one, they wrapped it up season two, it's about to come out. And it's got a Wisconsin focus. Of course it does, because they're Wisconsin Sea Grant, but the story is much bigger than that. And you know, each episode has it feels like 225 interviews with really smart people talking about fascinating stuff. I just love it. You should definitely go check it out. But let's start with that. So how did so introduce how did the idea come about? Why did you want to do a podcast about AI s issues?

Bonnie Willison 39:44
Yeah, so um, I am the videographer for Wisconsin Sea Grant. And I got brought on talent, saying that I would create videos and a podcast. My supervisor Moira then came to me about maybe six months into my job and said Edie, I think here's a topic that would be good for you to do a podcast on aquatic invasive species. And so from there, we hired Sidney as well to be the co host, co producer. And then Tim definitely as the aquatic invasive species outreach specialists gives a lot of ideas, a lot of advice is a recurring guest. So that's how it got started.

Stuart Carlton 40:25
And so it's a really, like I said, a highly produced show. It combines field recording, phone calls, interviews, witty banter. And it's similar, like you might hear from NPR or one of these, you know, professional podcast things. But how much work is that? Like? How do you put together each episode you decide on topics in advance? Maybe we can talk about some of the topics that you've covered? Or what is the process for putting together one of these really well done episodes.

Bonnie Willison 40:49
So I'm introduced, I like to say that it's about Wisconsin's changing waters are changing waters, in general, it's about invasive species, but also humans, you know, human stories, because humans are the ones that are introducing these species, and human, you know, humans all interpret these species differently. So, we, we didn't exactly know what form the podcast would take at first, but we decided to kind of do this, gather interviews, do research and everything and put together multiple interviews into an episode. So we usually start off by researching, getting ideas from Sea Grant staff researching what stories we could follow. And we gather interviews, talk to a lot of people over zoom, or take field trips, even, we then will write the script, and record and edit. So it's a lot of work that goes into each episode. Um, we calculated that in season one, we talk to 30 people season two, we talk to like 31 people, and each interview takes like, about two hours. So it's, and then you have to sit down and review that the interview and cut it and everything. So it's, it's a lot, but it's fun.

Stuart Carlton 42:12
That's a whole lot. I guess it is fun. You spend more time in one season than I think we've spent on this whole deal. So I have a question, though. You say how people are different humans, different people interpret species differently? I don't What do you mean by that? How? How do people interpret species?

Sydney Widell 42:29
at Sydney here? Thanks, Stuart.

Stuart Carlton 42:32
Oh, you're welcome. And yeah, I should have said that in advance. So we know who's who, anyway, I'll figure that out. Alright, Sydney. So how do people interpret species?

Sydney Widell 42:39
Well, first of all, just wanted to say we are big fans of teaching about the Great Lakes? And then, to answer your question, what we've been learning more and more as we try to tell these stories, and we talk to different people from different backgrounds, who then different disciplines who all come at a topic or, or a species, I guess with, like their own set of experiences, everyone is going to have a different relationship with that species, like our own understandings of this has have changed so much since we started recording. And doing all of this research, like the whole way we define invasive species, is if it's capable of causing economic or ecological harm, but like, harm for some people is different than harm for other people. And some people have like long cultural histories with these species. Some people don't regard these as species at all, they think about them as beings. So people, even in like the relatively small space of Wisconsin, and all the watersheds into the Great Lakes, there's so much diversity in the way that people perceive and talk about these things.

Stuart Carlton 43:49
So Tim, do you see that a lot in your work, so you do a lot of work with the DNR and so you, I assume, are really well versed in like the technical legal definition of invasive species. But do you notice that diversity of experiences with him in the work that you do?

Tim Campbell 44:03
Yeah. And I guess what I really like about what Barney and city have done with the podcast is that I feel like a lot of times in my work as an AI s outreach specialist, I'm trying to think about how I can quickly get across some really scientific or technical information to people to try to help them make a better decision. But that's almost never the whole story. And a lot of these invasive species issues can be just complex, there's different sides. And I need, you need more than five minutes to talk about it. You need more than 1000 word article to talk about it. There's a lot of different people at different stakeholders and a lot of different thoughts and feelings about those things. And so what Bonnie and Cindy have done is been able to capture all those and put it together in a nice 45 minute to an hour episode. So you can really immerse yourself in some of these issues and maybe see what I see or see what you know somebody else that does aquatic invasive species work. I guess see and feel what they are when they're doing this kind of work.

Bonnie Willison 45:03
Yeah, it's almost like the phrase one person's trash is another person's treasure that comes up. I think a lot as a theme of what we've kind of learned over the podcast is like, one person's trash species is another person's like really important, treasured species, like, you know, Asian carp, the four species of invasive carp that we have here. They came, they were introduced from China where they're a really culturally important species. And so the way we did a podcast episode, Asian carp episode that the second one after we went to the barriers for a field trip, where we talked to a scientist from China, and got that story and just figured out how the, you know, there are ways that we talk about Asian carp where they're just like this horrible trash species, and we throw them in dumpsters and stuff. But that's not the whole story, you know?

Stuart Carlton 45:59
Yeah, that blew my mind when I moved here and was started looking to invasive crayfish, you know, but I moved here from Louisiana, or that's where I was born and raised. You know, I spent the first 22 years of my life or whatever, in Louisiana. And, and so when I found out that it was the same crawfish, I was like, oh, boy, that's a different story here, isn't it? And so it's the exact same deal. So I think sometimes it's geography that makes a big difference. Sometimes it's just what you're expecting out of the species. So I just finished listening to the really great, I think the eighth episode of season one was all about invasive crayfish, the red swamp crayfish in Wisconsin. Sidney, why don't you give us an overview of that? And I think, you know, I think it has some interesting examples of what we're talking about

Sydney Widell 46:35
how they how the crayfish got into, yeah,

Stuart Carlton 46:38
could you give us like an overview of, you know, basically that episode and how the crayfish were introduced? And what they did, you know, then we can talk about what they did about it and things like that, because I think it's an interesting story in and of itself,

Sydney Widell 46:48
I'll start, you're touching on a huge mystery, because we don't know how the crayfish got introduced. And that was one of the big things that really drew my attention, and Bonnie's attention and like imagination for that story is that the crayfish are in there. And someone out there knows how the crayfish got in. But despite like the tremendous amount of effort, and we can talk about that later, how hard people tried to figure out where the crayfish came from. They couldn't do it. And but someone out there,

Stuart Carlton 47:19
well, I guess, okay, so we don't know their introduce, but I just had this visual image in my head. What so they got reported to the DNR because they were like crawling on people's lawns. Right, is that what was happening outside about a pond and a neighborhood?

Sydney Widell 47:31
Well, actually, we got in touch with, we went back and looked over some of the original reports that came into the DNR. And they had this phone number linked, and so I ended up calling this person and I was really not expecting anything because this happened like a decade ago. And it was just this random phone number, but I called and this person picked up and he Yeah, he like walked me through the whole thing how he'd gotten to this pond. A lot growing up, I think I'm gonna be misquoting that actually, um, let me think

Stuart Carlton 48:04
people can find out for themselves just go to introducing listen episode eight. But so so yeah, so they were in this pond.

Sydney Widell 48:11
And the sun is fishing and doesn't catch any fish and instead start setting nets and he ends up coming out with like, a gigantic cooler full cooler full of crayfish and and the guys looking at this anything so this cannot be right. I'm no biologist, but I'm getting I'm getting vibes that something is terribly wrong with this system. And so he did the right thing. And he called the DNR and the DNR sent someone out to investigate. And they ID this crayfish. There was actually a crayfish identification expert at the Milwaukee Public Museum, which you knew that was a career path. But

Stuart Carlton 48:51
well, there's only one so the career path is filled, however, right.

Sydney Widell 48:57
Yeah. And they were able to, like confirm that this was red swamp crayfish, which was the first kind of the first instance of that happening in Wisconsin.

Stuart Carlton 49:08
Yeah. And so then the DNR had a big plan. This is where it gets good. Because like we need to get rid of these crayfish, right. And so, so help me track the story here. They wanted to use some sort of insecticide, even though they aren't actually insects, right. They wanted to use an insecticide, but they couldn't do that at first. Is that right, Barney?

Bonnie Willison 49:24
Yeah. So they were like, how do we get these crayfish out? Because the crayfish they can walk for miles which is kind of unique, they burrow, they burrow into the ground so they kind of can shield themselves off from anything that you tried to do so they tried to they wanted to use an insecticide but it couldn't get it in time. So they decided to use just bleach so so that's something they tried, they fenced off the ponds. They poured a lot of bleach in there and it seemed like it would work. But then they came back and said Oh,

Stuart Carlton 50:01
yeah. neighs red swamp crayfish, right. You can bleach them and they won't you have to burn them. No. But anyway, so they came back the next year, right? And it turns out why, why? Why did they come back? What did we miss?

Bonnie Willison 50:14
Yeah, they think they can't came back because the crayfish were just burrowing down. And they had kind of a little layer that the chemicals couldn't reach. And so they were going to have to do a lot more to get them out. So they flew in a crayfish expert from Europe to help with that the only person who has really like, use this, this is insecticide on crayfish before. And they, they ended up using the insecticide, but they also just scraped the whole shores of this neighborhood pond in these people's backyards, like 20 feet out, and they constructed a whole new shoreline that crayfish wouldn't be able to burrow into. And they also there was a different pond that was like really close by, and they actually just eradicated that pond. They they filled it in, it's no longer a pond. Because yeah, it was just too big of a risk.

Stuart Carlton 51:11
There's a real lack of knowledge about you know, how the invasion started. And even what its status is, is that is that common with with aquatic invasive species? Is it hard to know?

Tim Campbell 51:20
Yeah, it's hard to know a lot of things. It's hard to know. It's hard to know how things got here in the first place, especially in these instances of like organisms and trade invasions, like we don't know if it was a pet crayfish or if, you know, crayfish, or crawfish boil, you know, we're not quite sure. So that's why just prevention is one of the best things we can do. So we don't have to worry so much about how things got in there, we can really just stop the behavior. So then that way, we're not trying to have to figure these things out. A lot of times, there's a lag time before something is detected, it could be introduced, it could hang out at really low numbers until some environmental condition really allows the population to explode. Or it could just take that long for it to get so big that somebody could notice it anyway, there's a paper that just came out about sleeper cells that I haven't had a chance to. It's like in my, my browser window with like 50 other tabs of papers to read. So someday, I'll read it.

Stuart Carlton 52:26
My browser window is just filled with tabs of your tweets. Yours is probably better off than mine is. That's interesting. And so sleeper cells that may be an aggressive metaphor, but it's kind of right. And we don't know, I guess we don't even know what's out there. Right, in terms of other potential invasions, just waiting to reach some tipping point.

Sydney Widell 52:46
That's another big thing that Bonnie and I've encountered during this, is that like, sometimes something like when it's in low numbers like that, I don't know, Tim, do you even? Can you call it invasive? If it's like a population that's just like, so undetectable? I don't know. But then, like the environmental conditions shift around it, and that can produce like a new context in which that species does become like very problematic for other species or humans who use that, that resource. And so, yeah, it's like the species, but also you have to consider the context. And that can be just as important.

Stuart Carlton 53:35
Producers podcast, you got eight episodes. And, you know, we'd like, like I mentioned, you took a really wide view of aquatic invasive species or invasive species in Wisconsin, right things like goldfish, your plants. In fact, I forgot to mention that your hardened criminals who have purchased illegal plants, or they're like large sort of themes, what big themes? Can you say? ran throughout season one, I suppose I've introduced Bonnie do want to start us there.

Bonnie Willison 54:04
I think for me, I kind of realized this, that there is this sense of urgency around a lot of these species. A lot of our stories are about you know, with the red swamp crayfish in Germantown, just like one person can make a really big deal. And then, you know, introduce a species and then you have to spend a million dollars to get rid of it, you know, so, telling a lot of stories like that, that will kind of tell people um, like don't move invasive species, you know, like crayfish, carp, mussels, they're all like a big, a big deal. And then I think another theme is just realizing that what I said before about one person's trash species is another person's treasure species. And we've talked to people more upcoming in season two, but you know, groups like Native American groups, they believe that all beings deserve respect and some groups aren't even using the term invasive species at all. And, you know, some of the ways that we talk about species. They're not always respectful to those beings. You know, it's not it's not their fault that they're here. So, yeah, it's about humans.

Stuart Carlton 55:14
So season two is coming up, what can we look forward to in season two? It sounds like you're gonna continue to talk about the values of species. What else? What else might we expect?

Bonnie Willison 55:23
Well, we continue on with some of the some of the species that we looked at before, like, we did a few episodes on Asian carp. And in season two, Sydney goes carp hunting on the on the Illinois River with a captain who does aerial carp bow fishing where you like, spear the carp while they're jumping? So trips like that. We talk about salmon, and smelt and Lake Superior. And then yeah, more existential, you know, topics of what it means to belong and what it what it means for species to be native and invasive.

Stuart Carlton 56:02
That's excellent. Well, this is really interesting to hear. And I again, I recommend that everybody go and check out introduce season one, so you can catch up before Season Two drops. But that's actually not why we invited you here and teach me about the Great Lakes. The reason that we invited you here and teach me about the RedLynx has two questions. The first one is this. If you could choose to have a great donut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch, which one would you choose? Sandra's sandwich gotta go sandwich the city. And so if I'm in Madison, which I think is where you are city, where should I go to get a great sandwich?

Sydney Widell 56:37
I'm changing. I answered donut. Choice. Specifically a blueberry old fashion from Greenbush. Bakery.

Stuart Carlton 56:46
Blueberry. Look at that. shortened to the point wrong at first. But blueberry old fashion. The second best old fashion that you can have from Greenbush bakery. Is that right? All right. Well, when I envision taking

Bonnie Willison 57:01
extensive notes, I would agree I'd say donut. I haven't tried that flavor, though.

Stuart Carlton 57:07
Okay, but is it Greenbush? The place to go? Or do you have a different? I think all donuts made anywhere? Good. Yeah, but that doesn't help you travel is the thing. So I'm going to Greenbush and so what I have to do is get a blueberry old fashioned and then all the rest of the doughnuts, which is the Bondi special apparently get all donuts. Okay, great. And Tim, do you want to chip in man? Or if not a little behind the scenes people Tim's gonna be back in a couple of weeks. So you can wait. It's up to you.

Tim Campbell 57:31
I'll give you more information. I'll have time to think about a sandwich to tell you about but I would double down on the Greenbush donuts. they've pretty much ruined doughnuts for me everywhere else. So Tim, what's

Sydney Widell 57:43
your go to?

Tim Campbell 57:46
Just the original, the sour cream one? I haven't expanded much. But it's they don't get any better.

Stuart Carlton 57:53
Oh, great. And the second question is this. So we'll focus on Barney and Sydney for this one. But you're both your podcast host podcast producers. You're Barney. You're a video producer generally or a multimedia content producer. What is it that makes you good at your job? What makes a good podcast or video producer and what what skills? Do you think you have the ringtone?

Bonnie Willison 58:16
I think I'm just a sense of story. And storytelling is a really important thing. I think with with this podcast, it's a challenge to like interview a few people and and then try to piece it all together into like a story that is 45 minutes long. It's almost like a little documentary with just one podcast episode. So I think like yes, storytelling, just knowing how to make things interesting for people like knowing how to make science into an interesting story that'll keep them you know, interested.

Sydney Widell 58:54
One thing Bonnie and I were noticing we've gotten a lot better at serving as both like somewhat introverted people. And that's really like, John, that makes you talk to people. We've gotten a lot more fearless about asking people have really weird questions. And sometimes it's like, oh, I went too far. That was really bizarre.

Stuart Carlton 59:18
But now hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Let's let's hear your an example of a weird question you've asked I

Sydney Widell 59:25
was just listening back through an interview that we've done a little bit ago and I remember like, feeling very awkward for having asked someone this question, but he gave like an incredible answer. So that he was I asked him to imagine that he was a daphnia. And what about being a daphnia would? Or what about like encountering a spiny water flea would be the scariest part about being a daphnia. And then he gives us like, incredibly gruesome and violent description of how any water flea just absolutely dismember daphnia and the watery daphnia. If you're not familiar, they're like tiny little transparent organisms that float around and eat algae and then spiny water fleas are only a tiny bit larger than them, but they have this long spine. And apparently they just like shred these sweet little daphnia really personifying them. Yeah. Yeah, I would never know.

Stuart Carlton 1:00:26
That is weird question. But I like it. And it's interesting that then you get the best answers out of that sometimes. So good lesson there is asked people weird questions. We all are fearless. You talked about you're introverted or whatever you're like calling dudes 10 years later, randomly. You're asking people if they're, you know, what is it like to be a daphnia?

Sydney Widell 1:00:45
What do you think makes podcasts a better podcast? It's

Stuart Carlton 1:00:50
a really good team, because that's what I have. And so that, to me, yes, is the staple of CO hosts we have. And so our goal will teach you about the Great Lakes is to have every episode. Like it's to have every, every episode be as little work as possible, because we all got too much to do. And, and so the way that we do that is by having really smart, interesting people working with us. And so we have all these different topics. And we know we're going to come in on this topic who's interested. And they'll, you know, it spreads the workout and things like that. So extreme laziness is what works best for me. For me, what it really is, is my reason for doing this is I just want to hang out with my work friends, and learn about stuff that we're all interested in, and therefore make my job easier, like not my podcast job, but my actual administration job. And so when this works, which it does, sometimes it doesn't others, it's when you can sort of sense that, that we're just having a good time and learned stuff together. And that it's it's serious, but it's not too serious. And you know, that's where we go for.

Tim Campbell 1:01:50
Can i plus one the good team? Yes. Like when I think about it was like, oh, it'd be cool to have an AI s podcast. And then I'm sure like, you've tried to design something and like Word or whatever, like make a poster and it looks awful. And then your designer does it in like 10 minutes. And it's amazing. I feel like that's what Bonnie and Sydney did with the podcast. Like, I had this idea of what I could do. And then if I tried it, it'd be terrible. And Bonnie and Sydney made it amazing. Like, yeah, that's great.

Stuart Carlton 1:02:18
Yeah, no, that's exactly true. Yeah. And yeah, the workout is gone is, you know, I It's amazing. It really is. I mean, it's a professional level deal. I mean, you're professionals. I'm not trying to say you're not but but you know, it's like you have all these other things you're doing as well. And so it's it's just tremendous. It's just tremendous.

Sydney Widell 1:02:35
And Tim teaches us everything we know, and keeps us honest.

Stuart Carlton 1:02:40
That it's, it's good. Great. Well introduce season two, I wanted to well, you have an ad. Do you have a release date in mind yet? When is this going to come out?

Bonnie Willison 1:02:49
Yeah, we are going to start releasing Season Two on March 10. And then we'll release an episode every Wednesday,

Sydney Widell 1:02:58
March 10. coincides with Wisconsin Water Week. And I don't think it's too late to register for that. If you happen to be interested.

Stuart Carlton 1:03:06
Yeah. So how do we register? That's right. This if everything comes out, right should be or should be March 1, I guess today is March 1. So how do you register for Wisconsin Water Week?

Bonnie Willison 1:03:17
So it's a conference for people in Wisconsin who are interested in water. If you don't mind at all, try to find the website. No, go for it.

Sydney Widell 1:03:26
Well, Bonnie's looking it up. I wanted to mention that, Bonnie and I really want to hear from everyone who might be listening right now and has a story to share about their experiences with places that have changed because of an invasive species or an invasive species. I think we should be talking about more maybe something that's overhyped, or a set of relationships that they think is really interesting. If anyone has anything.

Stuart Carlton 1:03:51
How should they get in touch with you

Bonnie Willison 1:03:52
get in touch with us, you can email barney@aqua.wisc.edu You can find introduced and you should subscribe wherever you get your podcasts on Apple podcasts or Spotify, Google podcast or on the Wisconsin Sea Grant website. We are presenting at Wisconsin Water Week about behind the scenes have introduced. What do you think is the best website to send them to 10? Wisconsin? lakes.org Yep,

Tim Campbell 1:04:19
that's going to be the easiest. Go to Wisconsin lakes.org. And it's only $20 a day, tons of great content for $20 A day

Stuart Carlton 1:04:27
when you could spend that on donuts. So this is easy. Makes sense? Oh, great. And then everybody should follow you all on social media. So let's hear your social media deals, and we'll link to them as well.

Bonnie Willison 1:04:38
Yeah, so you can find me on Twitter at Bonnie Wilson. And you can also follow Wisconsin Sea Grant on social media and then since I'm also a video video producer, go to YouTube and look up Wisconsin Sea Grant to see videos

Sydney Widell 1:04:55
and you can find me on Twitter at Sydney or sorry no said why not? I'll wi D E LL, that's the handle.

Stuart Carlton 1:05:04
And, Tim, you're a TI underscore campy, right, correct. And again, we'll hear more from Tim in a couple of weeks. But for now, the cast and crew have introduced thanks for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Stuart.

So that was a great conversation, I enjoyed talking to the folks with introduced and again, I'm just blown away by the work they do to, you know, actually be professional and produce their podcast. It's a different sort of model. I think, like I said, in there, I think of them as like the kind of produce show model, whereas ours is more of a talk radio. But anyway, so what Carolyn, we've talked with a lot of people about invasive crayfish today and invasive species, generally what some you learned about the Great Lakes.

Carolyn Foley 1:05:55
So I think one of the things that I didn't learn, but I want to say again, is the, you're going to the crayfish, when by the size of their claws, that's, you know, like, so it's like, you know, you could feasibly see where they keep coming in. And then if they are actually food for other organisms, then that can totally screw things up, if all of a sudden your food is biting back a lot more than it was before. I think another thing that strikes me, you know, whenever you're talking because we're focused on the Great Lakes, we're focused on the invasions here. But I think Brian Ross brought up you know, that crayfish from North America have gone to Europe and introduced a plague. So I think, yeah, literal plague. And so I think that, you know, it's important to remember that, like, our stuff can go other places and cause problems too. So it truly is a global issue. To think about,

Stuart Carlton 1:06:53
no, that is a good point. And for me, the number one thing I learned is that Euro crayfish, not just a clever name. So where can people go to find out? Where can people find out more about what we do in Illinois-Indiana? Sea Grant,

Carolyn Foley 1:07:06
they can go to iseagrant.org. Or they can find us on social media at i l i n Sea Grant.

Stuart Carlton 1:07:16
Right? And I encourage you to great, and I encourage you to follow the show on Twitter, we are what do we teach Great Lakes and send us an email or a feedback at teach me about the great lakes@gmail.com

Carolyn Foley 1:07:30
I did want to also say that there's a lot of good invasive species specific content generated by Greg and the other team. And there's a lot of good collaboration across the Great Lakes secret network. So if you follow us on social media or any of them on social media, you'll learn good stuff.

Stuart Carlton 1:07:45
Yeah, you're really well our our AI s work is top notch as it is throughout the region, because it's such a significant issue. And that's one reason we're spending so much time on it. In fact, we're going to have more as content coming up in just a couple of weeks, I think or a couple of episodes anyway. But until then please give us a rating give us a five star rating. Tell a friend if you have a friend tell a friend about us. Write a good review. Don't write a bad review. The world has enough heat in it. If you don't want to write a good review just hit pause go listen to introduced or some other podcasts. That's fine. But in between now and there next episode. Keep grading those legs folks keep creating those legs. Somewhere is the thing. I have too many sounds now I can't even get it

Carolyn Foley 1:08:31
realistically, we want you to say that it needs more xylophone