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. Welcome back to teach me about the Great Lakes a twice monthly podcast in which I A Great Lakes novice, as people are smarter and harder working than I am to teach me all about the Great Lakes. My name is Stuart Carlton and I work with Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. And I know a lot about driving two and a half hours for what ended up being a 20 minute tour. But I don't know a lot about the Great Lakes. I'm joined today by your Carolyn Foley, our awesome, our amazing, our super duper Resource Coordinator. Carolyn, what's up?

Carolyn Foley 0:31
Now let's hoping my audio holds together today.

Stuart Carlton 0:35
I'm hoping everything holds together. It's not just your audio, it's late in the year. You know, it's it's it's that into semester time. So you get the end of the year, like the normal end of the year, you get the end of the semester, there's a lot of in laws, and we're all just trying to keep it together. But you also get That's right. We were thinking of the same segue, which is what happens like 50 episodes in you also get the most wonderful time of the year. And that is Fishman's. That's right. Every December throughout the Great Lakes and throughout really the entire fish world. We all turn our thoughts inward and celebrate the most wonderful time which is fish miss and I cannot even believe this is happening. I mean, I can't believe it. But I'm very excited anyway. And that is we have missed soon to be Dr. Miss fish Miss herself. Katie O'Reilly is joining us today. And so we're excited about that. And we're also going to be joined by Mr. Dr. Fish, Titus Alzheimer, and we're gonna we're gonna do something really cool. We're going to draft Great Lakes fish, it's going to be super fun. But before we

Carolyn Foley 1:38
do before we do before we go to whatever you're going to do, we're going to clarify that Titus is Dr. Fish SG on Twitter, I social media magnate in his own right, so that's what

Stuart Carlton 1:51
I was gonna ask him to. I was gonna ask him to clarify that but yeah, we're gonna we're gonna talk about that. He's number 10 with the completely legit and not at all, sketchy rankings of Great Lakes influencers on social media that have me on there twice, even on my Twitter feed is nothing but dad jokes and complaining about my kids. But we're gonna get to that. But before we get to that, actually, you know what, it's not exactly appropriate, but it's been a bit and they both do research. So we're gonna go with this

"theme song" 2:27
researcher feature,

Stuart Carlton 2:30
a feature rich researcher, teaches about third grade. Gotta bring up the big dogs for the special guests. All right. We're joined today by Katie O'Reilly. Katie is a doctoral candidate at Notre Dame in the Department of Biological Sciences. And we are so pumped everyone. How's it going today? Katie?

Katie O'Reilly 2:49
It is going great. Stuart. I'm so excited to be here in light of fishness season talking to you guys about Great Lakes fish.

Stuart Carlton 2:56
Oh, we are so excited to have you. We're also joined by Dr. Titus Tyrell Heimer. He is the fishery specialist of their colleagues at Wisconsin secret and also home with the introduced podcasts. Titus, how's it going?

Titus Seilheimer 3:05
Doing great. I'm surrounded by fish, living living life to its fullest

Stuart Carlton 3:09
living life to its fullest. I agree with that. Anyway, two of my heroes are on the podcast today. So I'm super fired up. So Katie, let's talk about fisheries before we get drafted. I mean, well, we want to get draft and I got a list of fish. And I'm just gonna just gonna win yet another draft. But before we get there, what tell me about fisheries. What is the deal with this?

Katie O'Reilly 3:26
Yeah. So when he 16 I saw a poster from Wisconsin Sea Grant. Thank you, Titus, that basically had a bunch of different Great Lakes fish species on it. And it reminded me a bit of an advent calendar, you know, the ones where you pop up in a door each day in December, you get a piece of candy, but thought to myself, What if instead of candy each day in December, you got facts about fish. And from that very random, silly idea spawned something that has now come into its sixth year of talking about, you know, the Great Lakes fish, what they are and what they mean to the people in the Great Lakes region.

Titus Seilheimer 4:03
Fish facts, so much better than candy.

Katie O'Reilly 4:07
So much better.

Stuart Carlton 4:09
To clean protein. I'm like, well, not every fish you talk about. It's a clean protein, I suppose. But yeah, no, that's great. And so it really is it's become like this whole thing in and of itself. And it's an amazing piece of outreach, in that it's different. It's fun, it's bite sized, like a little bite of fish, but it's really I learned something every day. So I follow you on Twitter, and people join in the fishes fun. And, you know, it's super fun to read. And it's it's the fun part of social media, generally speaking. I mean, you still get the dudes explaining to things you already know. But but it's really fun. And

Katie O'Reilly 4:42
it really is like the best of you know, communicating with people because it's not just scientists talking among themselves. We reach you know, people who are just interested in the Great Lakes kind of, you know, that live in the region. People who you know, don't even live in the region are just like, Oh, these are cool fish and the fact that it's grown beyond the Great Lakes has just introduced a lot of people to fish species across the world, which is super cool.

Stuart Carlton 5:07
That's a lot of fun. Well, we can't wait to get right into it. And so, Titus real quick, though, so why don't you tell us a little bit about what you do with Wisconsin Sea Grant?

Titus Seilheimer 5:15
Well, I am as a fishery specialist, I do a lot of different stuff, including, you know, spending time on Twitter 25 days a fishness. I really enjoy. You know, Katie, Katie does the work and then I get to like, throw in facts too. So I hope I'm not one of those dudes explaining things. So lots of fun there. But really, I get to I ride on commercial fishing boats, I work with a lot of different fisheries stakeholders up here in Wisconsin, who catch fish out on on the Great Lakes. So whether it's recreational charter commercial, got a lot of fish and a lot of things to work on.

Stuart Carlton 5:55
Yeah, that's cool. One of the great things about working in Sea Grant is you know, we have all these local issues where we're connected to the larger network because there's a secret program in every coastal and grade like state basically. And and like there are treasures within the Sea Grant program like most people we work with, they're awesome, but some people are our treasures and Titus, you're definitely one of those. And the work you do is just just awesome, super fun to follow on social media super fun to be in groups with and stuff like that. So super pumped. But that's enough of that. Because now we must turn to the work at hand, which is we are going to draft fish, Great Lakes fish. So this is this is the end. So let me run down the rules real quick. We're gonna have three rounds. I have used a custom our script that I wrote just for this to pick the draft order a lot of work I hadn't introduced. And anyway and so we're gonna go top to bottom if you're familiar with drafts, we are not going to go snake style. So whoever picks first picks first in every round and what we'll do is we'll pick a fish and once it's taken off the board you can no one else can pick it so if you have anything to chime in you know about that fish. The time to do it will be after somebody picks it and then we will end the podcast and I will call I declare myself the winner. So that's pretty much

Carolyn Foley 7:09
they say you're honest that way. Yeah.

Stuart Carlton 7:11
Let's see. Let me fire up my random our script. Okay, just spit out three names. I always go last as your gracious host. The first name that I spit out Oh, Carolyn Foley. And so when you go So Carolyn, we know Tituss and, and Katie's born a few days. So Carolyn, before you go, let us know your fishbone a few days, if you don't mind.

Carolyn Foley 7:35
So I actually don't think I have Fishbone a few days, the way I got my job in a fish lab was knowing about aquatic invertebrates because people care about aquatic invertebrates because fish eat them. So those are my opponent feet is good enough for teach me about the Great Lakes. I am super excited though, because there is one fish that I absolutely adore. And I figured there was no way I would get to pick it but because I'm first lake sturgeon.

Stuart Carlton 8:01
Yeah, yeah, the obvious. No question coming off the board. First bit sounds about like surge. And Carolyn, why are they so cool. They

Carolyn Foley 8:08
are an amazing, I mean, Titus and Katie will know way more than me. So I will defer to them in a moment. But basically, they're an ancient fish. They've been around for a really long time. They are important to the Great Lakes fisheries, to the ecosystem to the cultures who have surrounded the Great Lakes for long before European settlement. They have these, they just look really cool. And I got to help release some in a tributary a couple of years ago, and they look just as cool when they're little my other cool. Lake Sturgeon kind of story is a couple of years ago, I think Titus was there actually, we were at Lake Superior State University where they have like a hatchery program. And they had students do it. You may have been there too. And we got to see a lake sturgeon that they were rearing and like the grad students are sorry, undergrad students, freshmen. If you're in the US, first year students if you're in Canada, the man who who ran the facilities that yeah, that fish is older than the students who look after that. That was crazy. Cool. Okay. Can you see Kenny hit them with the better effects

Katie O'Reilly 9:17
and just say, Titus, you want to go first? Because I'll just start spitting random stuff out.

Titus Seilheimer 9:22
Well, I will go Wisconsin specific. So Wisconsin is home to the Lake Winnebago system, Lake Sturgeon population, which is the largest population of lake sturgeon in the world. And really, I'd say the best managed, you know, there is a annual every year come on up to Lake Winnebago and Wisconsin when February rolls around for our ice fishing ice spearing season for lake sturgeon. So this is because we have such a large population because it's been valued as this great sport fishery for years. It's really been well managed. So there are a lot of fish The system and it's you know, continues to be well managed. There's, you know, specific numbers of males and females that can be harvested if they hit those quotas. Seasons closed.

Stuart Carlton 10:10
How do you how do you tell? How do you tell when you harvest a surgeon? I mean, are they external? If you know what I'm getting that what's the deal? How

Titus Seilheimer 10:18
do you? Well, in general was sturgeon. The bigger fish are females. So if it's a really big sturgeon, it's probably a female. And once they are harvested, and because it's a spear fishery, you know, you you harvest the fish and that's it. There's no catch and release with the spear fishing fishery. So they then every fish is checked in by a state biologists they check for the gender they collect information on all these fish. So you know, not only is there this fishery, but there's also a lot of a lot of data collected every year too. So always fun to go out there and you get to see the fish when they're checked in so you don't mind dead fish.

Stuart Carlton 10:59
Alright, we're gonna put a link in the show notes. Yeah, no. Well, I mean, as we talked about before, you have to have a comfort level with dead fish. We talked about Rodin on sampling a couple of weeks ago. So we Yeah, anyway, so So are the bigger ones females that just because they grow bigger, or is there are those that a select Snork in the Gulf of Mexico, they are sequential hermaphrodites or surge in that way, or is it just the females grow bigger?

Titus Seilheimer 11:21
Females just grow bigger, you know, eggs are a bigger investment. So they have just the space I think to have that many eggs because, you know, part of the the fishery and harvesting these is that caviar, you know, you've heard a sturgeon caviar beluga caviar. Over in Russia here. It's, you know, it's like sturgeon caviar, and that's something that you can't sell, but you can take it and have it, have it made and then enjoy it. With with your friends, I got to taste it once because one of the DNR wardens that I knew had harvested a fish and he had some caviar with him at a Great Lakes fishery commission meeting. And so why not, you know, it's illegal fish that

Katie O'Reilly 12:05
yeah, I just want to pop in with one lake sturgeon story as it's been said, these guys are large and in charge, particularly the girls. But what was really cool is this past spring 2021, the US Fish and Wildlife Service caught a sturgeon in the Detroit River that weighed I believe, 240 pounds. It was funny because the one fish and wildlife service person took a picture like lying next to it and this was like seven feet long. And I think the interesting fact that was pointed out there is that fish while they didn't age it using odorless because they released it back into the river. It's possible it could have been 100 years old and maybe like the comparison that was made as it could be older than the Ambassador Bridge linking Detroit and in Windsor. And to me that just like blew my mind. Like this is a fish that's that old, so they're super cool, and I'm super jealous that Carolyn picked such an awesome fish.

Stuart Carlton 13:01
Yeah, yeah, I had a feeling I might go first. I was happy for Carlos. You got first that story actually a leaky nominee and you mentioned it. FYI, the huge surgeon Alright, second second up, Katie. Oh Riley Katie What is your first round pick?

Katie O'Reilly 13:15
So I'm gonna steal Titus his thunder I think with this one. But as a wetland ecologist, one of the top predators in Great Lakes coastal wetlands is the illustrious bowfin which is an awesome sort of what we call a primitive fish. And I think it deserves to be near the top of that draft because it can breathe both in the water and in the air. And Titus has an excellent example right there. I mean, these guys are so cool. They even turn like bright green during the males do during spawning season. I just I can't I can't talk about how cool enough they are.

Stuart Carlton 13:49
And for those of you at home since this is an audio medium Titus was holding up it looked like some sort of large decal or maybe a truck magnet of sturgeon, maybe a poster. It's it's very lifelike. It is very green.

Titus Seilheimer 14:01
So actually, if I can plug our our official PDF, which is available from our Wisconsin water library, this is a actually a vinyl, vinyl fish print. That comes as a in a set. It's there's some curriculum in there, and we've got some of our great kind of official stars as well. There you

Stuart Carlton 14:23
go. You can Yeah, in fact, I'll put a link to that in the show notes. Teach me about the great lakes.com/ 46 The number four six because this is episode 46. Yeah, bofit are cool in Louisiana. They call them Shubik kind of in the Cajun country. Ch o UPI Q UE I think not that spelling. There's a lot of nouns. Yeah. Important in Cajun as a language. But yeah, very cool fish. Carolyn, you're from Canada and he should pick facts for you.

Carolyn Foley 14:51
I don't know if I have an issue pick facts. My favorite story about them though, is one time we were fishing with fyke nets. And a beaver had gotten Then and the like. So there was huge hole. The only fish we caught in like a 48 hour set or whatever was this teeny tiny booth. And that was all rainbow colored. It was gorgeous. And it was, you know, we didn't have to empty out a big net there were no turtles. It was bad for data collection. But there were some cool things about it. I think that was in a wetland over on Lake Ontario if I remember right.

Stuart Carlton 15:23
Excellent. Heard up is Titus. Titus. What's up with your fish pick number one.

Titus Seilheimer 15:29
All right, well, I am gonna go with another Great Lakes underdog and that is going to be the burbot No. Oh.

Carolyn Foley 15:38
Oh, nice job. Nice job.

Stuart Carlton 15:40
Okay. We have our first confirmed sniping. All right. You talking about the bourbon? Well, I do some quick research on a different fish.

Titus Seilheimer 15:50
All right, burbot. This is the only freshwater member of the cod family. So if you like cod burbot might be the fish for you. They're also common names, lots of different common names. Eel Poots, if you've heard of eel Paiute Fest in Minnesota, here in Wisconsin. You might see lawyers on the menu and what are those? Those are bourbon. Why are they why are they called lawyers? Well, they are slimy and they can really twist around and I'm not saying that's why but I'm just pointing out some facts about bourbon.

Stuart Carlton 16:28
What do you call 10 bourbon in the bottom of Lake Superior.

Titus Seilheimer 16:32
Not enough lawyers a good start. It's

Stuart Carlton 16:36
like my father and wife are attorneys and I thought I would be an attorney until I met my father and wife I guess. Yes. burbot also known as liver fish, it turns out their liver I just found this out six times the size of like a normal fish. You know, like that six times as big as you would expect it to be. And then the little line I wrote down that I want to make sure I said was that so they can drink like a fish right with that big liver. But let's see what else there's supposed to be good. Have you have you eaten a bourbon? I know there's a lot of way to relate to fish. We focus on eating them because Titus is just a madman. He'll eat anything. Fish wise. But have you had bourbon with the firm white flesh that's supposed to be poor man's lobster, according to the article I read on your website?

Titus Seilheimer 17:15
Oh, yes, it is. It is a delicious fish. You know, I have I've spending time with with the commercial fishermen on Lake Michigan. You know, the guys I was working with, they don't catch a lot of bourbon. There's not really a market. But they tend to keep them and take them home to eat themselves. So you know when when you're catching fish for a living and this is a fish you want to eat. That's a good sign the kind of loins the back muscle on the spine. There's kind of taking those out there boneless cut them into little kind of discs. You can deep fry them there's a on the freshwater feasts of Michigan seed grants website, check out my recipe for deep fried burbot it's good way to eat them. But if you want to go basic, you cut them into little medallions. You boil them. Just like you're cooking a lobster, you got a little dish and melted butter, you got your boiled burbot dip it in there you eat it. It's delicious in that, and that is why a lot of people don't know this, but the lobster is actually referred to as the permit poor man's burbot. So

Stuart Carlton 18:25
there we go. Right. Tulane University where I went was Harvard is known as the Tulane of the North. That's what we used to say they're good. Now there's one more burbot fact that must come out. And maybe you know this, and this is apparently this is some research that came out in the Journal of Great Lakes research in 2014, which definitely would have wanted to Leakey Had there been leaky sin, they sing during spawning, so they gather in the winter, and they spawn on the bottom of the lake or whatever. And they make this drumming sound and it I mean, it sounds like a fish spawning, not gonna lie, and it's got like a certain rhythm to it. I'm not gonna play it because this is a family podcast. And once you've heard it, there's no mistaking what's happening. But the male burbot sing during spawning. So that's something that you know, we share in common, I suppose. And

Titus Seilheimer 19:11
actually that that sound is the they actually vibrate muscles on their swim bladders to create that sound, which is you know, pretty cool. It's like having a having a musical instrument in your body.

Stuart Carlton 19:23
And that brings me to my first first round pick. This was one of my backups. And this is one because, you know the stickiness is I'm from the Gulf South industry when I grew up fishing, you know, several times, once or twice a month, at least with my dad in the Gulf. And we would go fishing for fish in the cyanamide family or science, most notably the sea trout or we call them speckled trout and redfish as well. We call it a red drum. They are drums and in the Great Lakes you can also find a freshwater drum, which is common there and they are you know, this is not a rare fish. It's not even that interesting other than it is the only Cyanamid that is in the Great Lakes. And so it is meaningful to me. He earned freshwater I think for that matter and so it's important to me because those are the fish I grew up for and a big chunk of why I do what I do is because of all those fishing trips and so to know that you know there is a scientist nearby I think is good and important and so it gives me just a little bit of warmth in my heart and a lot of the scientists are the drum family a lot of them will make drumming noises to not gonna lie I don't know a freshwater drum do trout do it rarely read fish some the black drum which and you can get get, you know, feet feet feet long. You can hear them drumming during their spawning time in the in the south and that's notable. So freshwater drum.

Katie O'Reilly 20:38
I'm going to take umbrage, I think they are super interesting. So I want to one of the things that's really interesting about freshwater drum is yes, they do make sounds. And two, they have these like, huge, odorless, odorless or the ear bones of fish and we use them a lot in fishery scientist like age, how will the fishes because it's kind of like a tree rings, you can count the rings, but these guys are most odorless are pretty small, but like freshwater drums have odorless that are no lie the size of quarters and are actually called Lucky stones. And people collect them on Great Lakes beaches. So like they'll go, you know, beach. We don't have a ton of shells under them like paga and muscle or zebra mussel shells, but people go collect Lucky, lucky stones off the beaches.

Stuart Carlton 21:23
Really, I had no idea. Are they easier to cut than so so yeah, I used to do Marine Fisheries biology, we had to cut odorless from fish bones and I sucked at it like they rapidly got moved off that duty and on to answering the phone. But are they easier to cut because they're bigger or not? So you have to like cross section or something? And yeah,

Katie O'Reilly 21:41
yeah. So I I'll be honest, I've not done much aging of their own lists. Usually we take them out and just admire that. I don't know. Titus. Have you done any freshwater drum aging?

Titus Seilheimer 21:50
I have not, but I know they can get pretty old as fish. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Cheap said cheap said is the other common name that we

Stuart Carlton 22:00
really saw. That's a different fish. And I'm thinking of the saltwater fish called a sheep's head. So this is different. Interesting. Interesting. Interesting. And also

Titus Seilheimer 22:06
a card game. Regional card game up here to

Stuart Carlton 22:10
a regional card game. What do this well have, you know what? Actually, what the heck? Hold on one second. No, I won't do it. Yes, I will. It's a great lakes. Great Lakes factoid it's a great factoid about the Great Lakes. Today's Great Lakes factoid is there is a regional card game called sheep's head, which is also one of the many names for the freshwater drum. A fish that is fascinating because of the size of its odorless. Alright, great. That is round one in the books. Let me make sure I write down all the picks. We have sturgeon. We had bowfin we had Titus. Taken burbot before I could but then me coming back with a fascinating fresh water drum round to Carolyn, once you got.

Carolyn Foley 22:56
I'm gonna pick round gobies,

Stuart Carlton 22:58
round gobies, round gobies, okay,

Carolyn Foley 23:01
I know they can be considered a Grinch because they are an invasive species. There is another sticker nice. But they are also becoming an increasing, like increasingly important member of the Great Lakes food webs. They are a source of food for a whole bunch of fish that people care about. And they are not as cool as any of the picks the fish we picked in the first round. But they do have some cool ecology. So yep, that's my favorite

Stuart Carlton 23:32
round gobies. Excellent. And they're nice and tubular shape, too, right?

Carolyn Foley 23:37
Oh, shoot, I shouldn't have picked Rambo because now you're going to talk about Kobe dogs.

Stuart Carlton 23:41
That is true. So here's my thought. I'm sure what you're thinking of your interesting Kobe facts is it's an invasive species. And we want to control these right. And so I'm thinking first of all, let me just lay out let me posit two things one invasive species, right. And the second thing I will stipulate is to this huge the gobies in Eastern Europe which we learned from I Agler Lifetime Achievement Award winner Hank Vander Blue. So here's what I'm thinking with three simply 13 Chicago famous for hotdogs, right? It's just what they have hotdog stands. There's like a special style. You get your pickle, and your celery salt and what have you. So I'm thinking Goby dogs, right, the right shape, you just pluck them, pop them down. I mean, gotta boil them or whatever, and hand them out. What are we thinking?

Carolyn Foley 24:23
For? They don't have a swim bladder, they are obligate Ben savours. So they're really close to a bunch of the contaminants that are at the bottom of the Great Lakes so

Stuart Carlton 24:32
flavorful, is

Katie O'Reilly 24:33
what I'm here to say. Adds a little spice.

Stuart Carlton 24:35
Yeah, so they're bony and flavorful. But anyway, so this is my big idea with round gobies. Maybe this will be the first invasive species that we actually eat out of existence. Once my business takes off, anyway, gobies What do you think

Katie O'Reilly 24:49
one of the first stories that comes to mind for me with gobies kind of builds off Carolyn? In that? round gobies are, in part credited for helping bring back the endangered Lake year. rainwater snake, because it became a major prey item for them. And this was a species that was, you know, really struggling in numbers. But with the advent of, you know, this huge food source, which in some cases is bad because, you know, invasive species, it also helps benefit a native endangered species.

Titus Seilheimer 25:18
You know, one of the things I love about gobies is just that when you are trying to identify fish, you got to look at fins, you got to count things like scales. And when you flip that Goby over, that pelvic fin is fused, and that is not something that we see in our native fish. So for us in the Great Lakes, see the Round Goby or the two notes, Kobe. Nice,

Stuart Carlton 25:43
easy fish, it is always good. Oh rats, I forgot. So the one thing is with the round gobies, if we take those we have your Goby dogs or whatever, we can also take the freshwater drum right and fry those ups are among the side, a little bit of freshwater drumsticks to go with it. So that'll be good. That not that good job. Copyright 2021. Hope charters Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant communication coordinator. Great. Pick number two, we're going to Katy O'Reilly your second pick.

Katie O'Reilly 26:13
Second pick, I'm going to have to go with the silver Lamprey, which despite its name is not the introduced sea lamprey that everybody kind of knows about. And, you know, rightly understands how the bad impacts of tablet the silver lampreys, a native plant species that has kind of evolved in tandem with the native species. So it doesn't have the really bad effects of like killing tons of fish species. And they're just really cute little guys. I mean, they're, like, you know, maybe about anywhere from six inches to a foot depending on the size you get, but they're they're just little little guys just living their lives on the sides of fish.

Stuart Carlton 26:54
So So are these like the same size as the sea lamprey? Are they smaller and so they don't go and latch on to fish.

Katie O'Reilly 27:00
These are definitely smaller than the sea lamprey, the sea lamprey can get I think to about two feet. Don't quote me on that exactly. But they in general, the sea lamprey are a lot larger than our native species.

Titus Seilheimer 27:11
And if you think you know, a sea lamprey is out in the ocean, it's attaching they're like sharks and really big fish. And you know, I've seen silver lamprey attached to surgeon and sturgeon our biggest fish. But you know, that's that's as big as they get

Stuart Carlton 27:25
awesome. So for liberty, excellent. I've never heard of it. So I'm learning along with the listener. Excellent. Titus. Pick number two.

Titus Seilheimer 27:33
All right, second fish. I should have been thinking about this more. Yeah, I you know, I think I'm gonna just go like professionally like what fish I spent the most time with in the last couple of years. And that's the lake whitefish. Princess of the Great Lakes, the deer of the Great Lakes, a fish that you could eat every day and never get never get tired of. So actually, if you look at my pics, so far, it's all stuff that I've eaten. And so like white fish, it is, it's our kind of commercially caught fish species, most commercially caught in the upper Great Lakes, so Huron, Michigan and superior. It is in the trout and salmon family, the white fish are kind of cousins. So if you're trying to identify it, look for that adipose fin, that little nub of a fin between the dorsal fin and the caudal fin. And that's a good indicator that you're looking at a white fish or a trout or salmon.

Carolyn Foley 28:35
They're also pretty important culturally, historically, there's some people are trying to restore some populations now. Right, like doing some research on early life stages to understand kind of where they've they've run into issues. So good pick Titus.

Stuart Carlton 28:52
Oh, what does that what was that? I missed it? He's just Fisher sailing by my screen.

Titus Seilheimer 28:57
That's that is that is my, that is my liquid fish.

Stuart Carlton 29:01
I didn't realize it's such a humpback like that. How about that?

Titus Seilheimer 29:03
Yeah. So you know, historically, they would have you know, this, like, you know, 50 or 100 years ago, they got a lot bigger. And, you know, I could, if you want to hear about, you know, what's happened to liquid fish? We could talk about that for hours. But, you know, generally you don't see that as much anymore. But, you know, there used to be very, very large liquid fish out there.

Stuart Carlton 29:25
Interesting. So for my, my second round pick, I'm going to choose, it's also going to be some another evasive that. And the reason I'm picking it is because I think it tells a really interesting story about the Great Lakes and sort of the trade offs in different management and choices that we can make. And so I'm choosing the ale life, which was introduced sometime in the 19th century, as far as I can tell, they're not exactly sure when hope types is holding up a little tiny ale wife. And they were introduced in Lake Ontario we think and then they invaded in the early part of the 20th century and And just like went went everywhere, you know, because the lake trout had collapsed. And so there were no predators right to predate on the allies. And so the numbers just exploded. The numbers were so big that like they would fill in like, like power plants would have to shut down because they always were like up in their water intake valves or whatever. I don't know the right terminology. And but the thing was, is that our wives, so they were just this huge nuisance, right? Because they're just so many lives. And sometimes they would, they would even like die off in huge amounts and like stink up beaches and what have you. And this is described really nicely and death and life to the Great Lakes. And so this LED maybe directly, maybe indirectly, to the introduction, introduction, some people. Some people say introduce what you can find it Wisconsin Sea Grant. And but anyway, they, they introduced salmon, right? To eat the fly. It's kind of like the old lady who swallowed the fly. And that wasn't I don't think the only reason he introduced the salmon. In fact, if you ask Howard Tanner, who did it, he says he introduced him to create a fishery. But it and then airways went from fish, that was a big problem to fish that was really important because it was supporting this very valuable and very fun fishery. So the ill wife is a fascinating fish when it comes to human in a great like interaction.

Katie O'Reilly 31:15
And I'll just add, I would not have liked to been on the beach during the height of the fly season, because you can see some historical pictures back from the 60s and early 70s, where there's just like piles of dead ale life on Chicago beaches. And I can only imagine how much that must have wreaked. But yeah, the good thing, there's no smellivision in those pictures.

Titus Seilheimer 31:38
Yeah, no, I hear from you know, people who live in Manitowoc. And remember those days like they they knew when the winds shifted in the afternoon to the lake freeze because the reek of rotting ale wives would suddenly be the smell they were getting off Lake Michigan. So yeah, night, you know, peak pkl wife numbers for Lake Michigan, about 90% of all the fish biomass was airwave. So nine out of 10 pounds were ill, and they're

Carolyn Foley 32:05
not a huge fish. Right? Yeah, they're

Titus Seilheimer 32:07
small.

Stuart Carlton 32:08
No, that's the smallest vinyl playing thing you've flown by our screen by far, I think, yeah. Wow, that's a lot of ill life.

Titus Seilheimer 32:16
You know, there was there was also a commercial fishery. So you know, salmon were stocked for those to eat them, and to create a fishery, but also there were, you know, a commercial harvest. And for Lake Michigan, it was 50 million pounds. And some years were harvested, commercially, really low value, like one to two cents a pound mainly go into pet food. But, you know, people found uses for them. And then as numbers have come down, you know, now we actually our discussions are like, hey, we need to protect our wives because they're the food for the salmon and salmon are a fishery value. So it's kind of a very, we've been on both ends of the spectrum here. Yeah. And that's

Stuart Carlton 32:57
why I think it's so interesting. It's just for that reason, and without commenting on what I think is right. It's it's just that the it's trade offs are right there. Right. It is the fulcrum on which the trade offs swing and so I think that's interesting. Okay, great. Two rounds in the books. Whoo. We're getting there. Carolyn Foley. What is your third and final pick?

Carolyn Foley 33:18
I came into this thing I didn't have fish could I know it's a fish draft. But I'm going to draft an extraordinarily important fish food, which are hex, Virginia mayflies from, specifically from the western basin of Lake Erie but from other parts of the Great Lakes too. They are super cool. They are big and like important caloric intake for things. They are also kind of terrifying looking like they have these like long tails and Crazy Legs and like feathery things. They are also relatively easy to identify and they are just plain awesome. That's when they're in the water. And then everybody knows what they do when they come on to shore. They cover everything people have to sweep them into the lakes and everyone else is like those are gross and careless. Like yes. All right.

Stuart Carlton 34:03
There we go. The hexo Genie mayflies and I'm looking at you know what? Email I'll put in the show notes. Sounds good. I'm looking through the rulebook here. And you know, there's

Katie O'Reilly 34:16
a foul on this river with a yellow flag in.

Stuart Carlton 34:19
There's no rule you can't draft mayfly during the first draft I guess

Titus Seilheimer 34:23
I was gonna say what what is your real pick now? Yeah exogenic are great but striped bass

Carolyn Foley 34:29
I'm going to striped bass because I'm going for the climate change angle that if they exchange and things like that they may be a fish that people that the Great Lakes could support in the future

Stuart Carlton 34:41
that we go looking forward with the Carolyn always here for your climate change good news. Thank you for that great I honestly forgotten who second Katie Katie.

Katie O'Reilly 34:51
So second, or third packet I guess if this were a third pick, second pick

Stuart Carlton 34:55
third round third pick. Don't go back and make the same pick. We already got it. Silver lamprey.

Katie O'Reilly 34:59
Yeah, gotta have have to end on a Great Great Lakes fish and that is the lawn gnomes gar. So I already wrapped one wetland predator rep and another one longnose gar are really cool because they one have just like an awesome set of chompers you were talking about, like the fish that's mostly its nose and mouth. But they also can breathe and water and air, which allows them to live in places that are really tough for other fish to live like some of these wetlands. And they're just, they've got like this armor instead of like, their scales are essentially like a suit of armor and so they're just like a ancient looking prehistoric fish that just likes to hang out in the water and you know, every now and then snap and get, you know, a nice nice fish to snack on so long nose guard.

Stuart Carlton 35:50
Anybody factoid on the one factor that I have is I know when I used to try I would try to go fly fishing before it turns out that I have no coordination and cannot fly fish but I read about how to do fly fishing and some people for guard they will use like yarn instead of a and no hook to try to get tangled up. In the end I quote excellent set of jumpers so I can't confirm that that's ever actually happened. But I read about it on the internet in like the early 2000s. So that's probably true. Yeah,

Carolyn Foley 36:14
well, I just wanted to note that we've picked a lot of really cool shaped fish with different evolutionary dynamics like garlic like a torpedo. But now we'll let Titus talk about something more interesting.

Titus Seilheimer 36:25
Well, I'm just gonna this is a childhood memory of growing up in northwestern Wisconsin one summer we had for whatever reason in front of our neighbor's dock the the longnose gar were spawning there and they would just jump out of the water so imagine you know kind of that sailfish porpoise breaching kind of thing and they just did this for like a couple of weeks and it was really you go down to the dock they just be swimming along jumping out of the water it was I've never seen it again. Just one year I think it really happened I don't it was really cool

Stuart Carlton 37:04
and it's excellent All right well tickets to your tickets to your third and final pick your Titus

Titus Seilheimer 37:09
All right, you know I I'm going to go wetland species. I was going to go juvenile yellow perch just because they're kind of a wetland all star but I am going to I'm actually going to go a little different. I'm gonna say central mud minnow, because it's one of my favorites. Actually, it's it's very small, not actually a minnow, so we're not talking like a shiner or a fat head minnow. They're actually more closely related to the northern pike and the muscular plunge than to other fish species. Even though they're just a few inches long. You can look for that distinctive kind of dorsal fin really far back on their body. Which we would actually see with the long nose cars well they've got that dorsal fin Wayne back because they're like little kind of for Central Admin out there. Torpedoes eating plankton, but longnose gar like torpedoes eating fish. So small not not something you'd necessarily see a lot or know about, but I think they're they're pretty cool looking fish and something that I've seen a lot in wetlands over there.

Stuart Carlton 38:23
I don't have a lot on central mud meadow but it sounds really cool. So that's good.

Katie O'Reilly 38:27
I'll just toss in that their scientific name essentially translates to like mud shadow or mud bank phantom which I just find is like super metal that would be a great like, a great

Stuart Carlton 38:39
that would be that would be I was talking about that with the wall I wish nobody picked but their their genius name is kind of lame sand or whatever. But their their their specific name of vitreous. It's like yeah, much cooler, Creek cod of of aquaculture, whatever. Cool. Great. Well, then for my final pick, we're gonna bring it home. So I need to explain this a little bit for extra meat pick. And that it's a lately I've been trying to not pigeonhole myself in like, you know, one way of thinking, right? In that I feel like I've had this tunnel vision. And I hadn't really opened my mind to all of the possibilities out there, just generally speaking, until I was riding through campus about a week or two ago, and I saw dude holding up a flag that said, birds aren't real. And I said, well, and so I saluted him. And then he kept talking, which was weird. I was like, Oh, I thought, like he you know, he had pamphlets, and I just kept writing but and then I went Carolyn said, this is a rabbit hole and I've gone down the rabbit hole and HELP Committee on whether or not birds are real. What it's done is it's really open to my mind to what is real, you know, the matrix right? And or am I being too simple minded? And all of this is to say I'm picking the bull shark. And the reason I'm picking the bull shark is because there are unconfirmed reports that in the 1950s somebody caught a bull shark in Lake Michigan, and I always dismissed This but for a number of reasons, like the bull shark could not really get here. If it were to get here, it probably would not survive. There's not in any way all of this, you know, there have been found as far north as Alton, Illinois. But I am picking the bull shark because I've been too narrow minded and what is possible and I think just because of fish has never been seen here and couldn't make it here and probably wouldn't survive doesn't mean that I should close off the way that my mind works. So the final pick is the bull shark.

Carolyn Foley 40:28
You're sure you don't want to pick walleye.

Stuart Carlton 40:31
While I is also a fish. It's on my list. Oh no, I mean, I'm working. I wrote it down. It's bull shark. Katie how many bull sharks are there in Lake Michigan?

Katie O'Reilly 40:38
To my knowledge? I mean, again, this depends like how we're defining reality. Like it could be Schrodinger is bull shark. It both exists in Lake Michigan and does not I guess I go on that does not.

Stuart Carlton 40:50
So it's not Yeah, yeah. You see, that's kind of the classic rational. Again, maybe my brain hasn't expanded enough. Just read about birds for enough time. You open your mind open maybe you lick a Gobi and, and open your mind tight. If you look disgusted with my pick.

Titus Seilheimer 41:07
I am disgusted. You know, if you wanted to really out there pick that's actually real. You could have gone with flounders. Because there are actually some flounders that have showed up in the Great Lakes. You know, ballast water, they can't reproduce, but they can kind of survive.

Stuart Carlton 41:24
I had no idea. No kidding. So they're ballast water escapees me for the phone or start off real small. So for those normal flounders, they're a flat fish. And they actually swim like upright while they're young and then as an adult, they settle down on the bottom and their eyes migrate to the top of their head, at least the ones that I'm familiar with and so then they're really tasty but creepy because they're all white on the bottom and dark on the top and they can get huge you know in the golf who would catch what we've got doormat size. Flounder just ridiculously big. I had no idea. Alright, you know what, my pick is amended. I pick the flounder, which isn't out there pick. And I encourage you to think about double check yourself though. Great. Well, this has been clearly Carolyn is also just I'm sorry. There's no choice. But I have

Carolyn Foley 42:12
many choices. Let's talk about least other choice.

Stuart Carlton 42:19
All right. Well, in that nature, we will do the the we'll run a lightning round we'll run through named two or three other fish that was on your list. We're gonna order Carolyn. Oh, right. Like you have room to complain, madam, madam Mayfly. What else was on your list?

Carolyn Foley 42:33
So in addition to juvenile yellow perch that Titus mentioned and walleye that you mentioned and then dismissed? I was considering if everyone else had picked salmon, I was gonna pick sea lamprey so that my sea lamprey could take out all of your salmon and I'll credit Zack finer Wisconsin for giving me that. Oh,

Stuart Carlton 42:52
so you brought him in yours too? Yeah, I spoke with I spoke with our AI specialists and with our director who's a fish ecologist. He got me turned on to the burbot Titus What are no kidding was nice. What else is on your list? Katie,

Katie O'Reilly 43:05
Betty. I also had yellow birch. So that seems like that was a common theme. I would say though, my two that I would definitely draft into my team are the American eel, which can make it into like, inland into the Great Lakes. It's definitely in Lake Ontario, but they're just super cool. And I can talk about eels all day. But then also the pirate perch, which is notable for having its essentially its anus or cloaca on its throat instead of you know the normal place that a fish would have one

Stuart Carlton 43:36
Why is it so dangerous? What is like so it eats doesn't eat out of its mouth or doesn't eat out of its? Is it just the nose mouth is in his butt? And so it's just this backward? Like what is what is what is

Katie O'Reilly 43:46
interesting too, because when they're first like hatch, it's similar to the founder that their anus starts in like the normal place but then it migrates up to their throat as they get older. I'm I'm not sure of the evolutionary significance of that. Maybe Titus you are. But yeah, they do have a separate mouth too. So it's not like they're eating out of the same hole. Right right. But it's interesting their species name is actually say anus. It's s Aya en us. That's it's an easy one to remember.

Stuart Carlton 44:17
Say this one more. Sorry. No, no,

Carolyn Foley 44:26
no, it is actually karielyn It's not your Katie. It's okay.

Stuart Carlton 44:31
Do they speak English? Alright, Titus, what else? What else was on your list?

Titus Seilheimer 44:37
My list you I came in thinking there would be like fish to pick from so I didn't. I didn't Oh, I didn't know what we were doing.

Stuart Carlton 44:45
You know, I couldn't I suppose but I just rely on insurance skill. Yeah,

Titus Seilheimer 44:50
I can talk about fish. So that's kind of what I do. I'd say you know, white suckers. Kind of another underrated thing. fish species that are definitely important in the the ecology of the lakes, but also a really fun species because you can, you can actually, you know, see them spawning in the spring, they're one of the first fish species start moving upstream and you can actually, you know, see them they really don't care that you're there when they're busy with their spawning activities. And you know, I think any opportunity just to get people you know, give people the chance to go down to just your local waterway and see fish doing stuff is pretty cool. You know, lots of people, you know, get into fish because they're anglers and you know, that's great, but I prefer to buy my fish usually and just to look at fish so suckers are great. Let's go with a final food fish too. I'm gonna go with the bloater which is a another sort of cousin to the white fish. It's also in the quarter bonus genus and if you've ever had smoke Chubs that is a kind of a popular historically a popular Great Lakes commercially harvested fish. They're small, smoke them up, you know, skin on and you just kind of peel the skin back. And then even like a corncob a smoked oily fish corncob. It's delicious. So keep keep an eye out for those.

Katie O'Reilly 46:24
And I do have to throw in one fact about that though, because in there is a restaurant, I believe in Michigan that serves a chubby Mary, which has a smoke chub in a Bloody Mary. And that's like their claim to fame. So

Titus Seilheimer 46:37
yeah, so if you're if if you're in Leland, Michigan, your vision, you're visiting fish town for their great historical, commercial fishing information. But while you're there, get yourself a chubby Mary. I've never had one, but it looks it looks good. I mean, why wouldn't you have one?

Stuart Carlton 46:56
I mean, for those who don't have their anus in her throat, you can bring the taste of that directly through the chubby Mary. Currently you got a factoid too.

Carolyn Foley 47:04
I didn't have a factoid so much. I was just gonna mention that. We can even make white suckers a food fish because I was talking to someone at a grocery store in Michigan one day, someone who worked behind the fish counter and said they would catch white suckers. They would blend them up can them and use them in place of salmon. So there's a lot of

Titus Seilheimer 47:24
cool stuff available. Yeah, you can people will you drop a net down? It's like a net that sits on the bottom of the creek. You read a bridge crossing? Sucker swim in there, you lift it up. You fill up your buckets with suckers, and then you pick them. They're good pickled, I've had them that way. Well, this

Stuart Carlton 47:42
has actually been a really fascinating conversation. But that's actually not the reason why we invited you on teach me about the Great Lakes this week. The reason that we invited you to Teton to teach me about the Great Lakes as asked two questions, actually one of which I prepped you for. And the first of the two questions is this. We'll start with you, Katie. If you could have a choose to have a great donut for breakfast, or a great sandwich for lunch, but not both, which would you choose?

Katie O'Reilly 48:10
I'm gonna have to go with the sandwich. I just feel like there's so much more variety to get there.

Stuart Carlton 48:16
Variety for All right, so variety, I am going to go and visit the Department of Biological Sciences. And I assume they have a fisheries Museum in your department. If they don't, they will one day and I'm gonna go visit this museum and I will get hungry. And so I will start from my first sandwich at Tom coons his house where he will make me BLT from his garden. But that's not enough. A BLT is not a very filling sandwich. I need a second sandwich. Katie, where shall I go? In South Bend, Indiana, to get a second sandwich. It's been

Katie O'Reilly 48:45
a while since I've been there. But there is a restaurant called the evil check. And they have hamburgers, which I'm going to assume as a sandwich. We're not going to get into that philosophical debate. But it's actually interesting. Put a layer of peanut butter on it. And while that sounds super, super gross, it actually works. I don't know why but it does.

Stuart Carlton 49:05
There we go. That's famous in West Lafayette. They have this triple X diner and they sell a peanut I mean, come on. I'm not stupid. I've never had one but they do so great. Well, I will go get the evil check. Or I will go to evil check and get the peanut butter burger. If they still had. Yeah, all right. No, there it is. Alright, Titus sandwich or donut.

Titus Seilheimer 49:27
You know, I love donuts. But I'm gonna go sandwich to

Stuart Carlton 49:32
All right. And so when I am in, you're in Manitowoc, if I remember correctly, which is home of the Wisconsin Maritime Museum. Yes. So when I go to the visit, and I go to spend the night on the boat, I wake up I have a great donut from the place that the nice woman recommended to us and then I want to go to lunch. Where should I go to get a sandwich? All right,

Titus Seilheimer 49:51
you're gonna walk out of that Maritime Museum. You're gonna go up to York Street and you're gonna take a left and you're gonna go to Ryan's on New York and you're gonna get yourself a Cuban pork sandwich,

Stuart Carlton 50:02
there we go, will be reminiscent of my time in the Tampa Bay area. I will do it and we will put links to both of those in the show notes. It's the second question is this one of our goals with this show is to try to help people realize what a special resources the Great Lakes says, Great Lakes are the Great Lakes. And and so you know, and one way to do that is to share kind of special places I think and so is there a special place in the Great Lakes that you would like to share with our audience it can be like a secretly beauty or a secret place it can be a really beautiful place just a place you've had fun, someplace that's special to you and why and Katie will start with you on that one.

Katie O'Reilly 50:36
Oh, there are several that come to mind. But if I had to pick just one, I would say the lation islands which are on the Upper Peninsula, again, kind of just due east of the Makena Hopper edge and it's just an area that is so so filled with like wetlands and different habitats and so there's just such an amazing diversity in the fact it's almost like you know, all these little islands that are all separated from each other in a really really just cool place to show up for the summer.

Stuart Carlton 51:11
Very cool they should islands on the up headed there the second glove as Carolyn calls it, um, great Titus How about you?

Titus Seilheimer 51:20
All right, I would I would invite people to visit Rock Island, which is at you go to the end of Door County. You take a ferry to Washington Island you drive across Washington Island you get on a second smaller ferry and you go to Rock Island it is a the entire island state park there are no vehicles there. You need to just take all your stuff with you and you know spend a week there you're out at the the right in Lake Michigan. It's amazing spot.

Stuart Carlton 51:49
That is amazing. Anytime you got to take a second ferry that's the key is that second fare like one ferries good two ferries. Excellent. Can you if you want to find out more about fish miss or the work that you do? Where can they go and find that information?

Katie O'Reilly 52:01
Yeah, so they can check out my Twitter page, which is at the handle at Dr. Catfish and that's catfish with a K and the doctors hopefully soon.

Stuart Carlton 52:12
Very soon, very soon, although really, it's just a degree. Like you. You're a doctor in spirit soon to be in name. And Titus people to find out more about the work that you do. Where can they go?

Titus Seilheimer 52:25
Look me up at Wisconsin Sea Grant but on Twitter, I am at Dr. Fish

Stuart Carlton 52:31
SG SG for sea grant I assume are super great. Super great. Excellent. Well, Katie O'Reilly doctoral candidate in the Department of Biological Sciences at Notre Dame University and Titus soil Heimer fisheries specialists at Wisconsin secret thanks so much to both of you for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes.

Well, another draft in the books, Carolyn, and I'll be honest, I'm pretty sure I won't again.

Carolyn Foley 53:11
Well, I don't think that you won, but it doesn't really matter what I think that was a really fun draft though. That was good time. It's a nice way to end the year.

Stuart Carlton 53:19
Yep. Good people. I agree. I agree. And so then a little bit of business like the nominations are closed, but tune in the next episode after this one will be the lake ease and Lord willing and the creek don't rise. That'll happen in December, but sometimes the creek does rise. So we will see. But if not, it'll be in January because we're kicking it during our winter holiday. But you know, stay tuned to the feed and of course, Twitter and what have you. And we'll we'll let you know when it's out there. All right, take it away. Carolyn.

Carolyn Foley 53:49
Teach me about the Great Lakes is brought to you by the fine people at Illinois-Indiana. Sea Grant. We encourage you to check out the great work we do at I see grant.org and i Li N Sea Grant on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. Teach me about the Great Lakes is produced by hope charters. We did not make that joke Ed. Carolyn Foley making gun and reading miles. Ethan Chitty is our associate producer and fixer. Our super fun podcast artwork is by Joel Davenport. This show is edited by the awesome Queen runs and I encourage you to check her workout at aspiring robot.com If you have a question or comment about the show, please email it to teach me about the great lakes@gmail.com or leave a message on our hotline at 765496 I G you can also follow the show on Twitter at Teach Great Lakes. Thanks for listening. Hope you all have a nice holiday season and keep greatin' those lakes!