The Great Lakes attract people all year round with the promise of swimming, fishing in, and hiking along the beautiful shores of the lakes. A much darker undercurrent flows beneath all of this lovely scenery, an environmental catastrophe that has been brewing for nearly 200 years. Due to the effects of retreating glaciers and a failed continental rift, lakes Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior are more like smaller inland seas, holding about 20 percent of Earth’s freshwater. These lakes were generally isolated from larger international waters until a network of canals and seaways let in freighters from around the world. This resulted in new nonnative species now making a home in these lakes; alewives, sea lampreys, and zebra mussels being particularly dangerous to the gentle equilibrium that previously existed in the lakes. The lakes have also been introduced to the new burden of toxic algal blooms and extreme fluctuations in the lakes’ water levels connected to climate change. Despite all the bad news scientists are experimenting in the laboratory with gene drives to stop invasive Asian carp and with new ways to rid ships of stowaways lurking in ballast water.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/invasive-species-climate-change-threaten-great-lakes?mode=topic&context=60
