Opportunities, Challenges of Restoring Native Prey Fishes to the Great Lakes

Sturgeon Bay, Wis. (January 16, 2025) – This week Crossroads at Big Creek will launch the 2025 Fish Tales Lecture Series on Thursday, January 23  at 7:00 PM with the program “Opportunities and Challenges of Restoring Native Prey Fishes to the Great Lakes.”  Then on Tuesday, January 25, at 6:30 PM, the Door County Master Gardener Association and Wild Ones-Door Peninsula will kick off their popular  lecture series with the program “Going Wild in Door County Parks.”

Fish Tales, an educational program of Crossroads at Big Creek offered in collaboration with the Door County Library with support from Healthy Water Door County, is dedicated to “sharing the science of the Great lakes Fisheries.”  

So we are privileged to host Dr. David “Bo” Bunnel,  Director of the Coregonine Science  at the Great Lakes Science Center, U.S, Geological Service in Ann Arbor, who oversees  the science efforts to inform Coregonine restoration across the Great Lakes – which includes the planning and evaluation steps.  Dr. Bunnel provides the science to aid in the restoration of native whitefish and cisco to state and tribal management agencies across the Great Lakes basin.  

Coregonine are a diverse group of fishes (including ciscoes) in the salmon family and as many as 11 species once occurred in the Great Lakes. Locals may know them as lake herring or chubs and remember when they were abundant in Lake Michigan.

But according to the United States Geologic Survey website “ciscoes declined dramatically between the 1920s and 1970s, due to overfishing, invasive species, and habitat loss. At least two species are now extinct and several species no longer occur in several lakes. The whitefishes have been more resilient, but have been undergoing their own declines in the past 20 years.”

Dr. Bunnel will share results of on-going research from a number of collaborating universities, agencies and tribes and will dive into developing the framework to restore native cisco species in the Great Lakes.

The in-person presentation will be held in the Collins Learning Center at Crossroads. To participate via Zoom or Facebook live, go to http://doorcountylibrary.org/event and go to January 23 for the link.

On Tuesday, at 6:30, Door County Parks Manager Tim Kazmierczak will present “Going Wild in Door County Parks,” the first program in the 2025 Door County Master Gardener/Wild Ones Lecture Series. Tim Kazmierczak will discuss a number of environmental-friendly projects: prairie installations, bat research, tree planting, and revamping lights at boat launches to increase dark skies. Refreshments and a Q & A session will be offered.

With all of the media hype about the planets being aligned in January, lots of folks will be frustrated and disappointed to realize that in Wisconsin, only Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn will be visible to the naked eye. But seeing them, or images of them, it is hard to comprehend the differences in their sizes. So, this week’s Saturday Science will be offered in collaboration with the Door Peninsula Astronomical Society. “The Planets in Comparison” will be a hands-on activity to show the amazing scale of our solar System. This program is geared to elementary students, but learners of all ages are welcome.