Lake whitefish, the Great Lakes' most emblematic fish, could disappear from parts of the region within five years, according to biologists who completed an extensive survey in western Lake Erie. The findings, released last year, warn that the species may be consigned to history books as invasive mussels decimate their food supply.
Centuries of tradition at risk
For centuries, lake whitefish was a delicacy and a cornerstone of Indigenous communities' lives and traditions. By the mid-1800s, settler communities like Sandusky, Ohio, built their economies around the fish. The 1888 book Sandusky of To-Day proclaimed the town the "largest fresh water fish market in the world," with an image of lake whitefish as "Sandusky's pride." In the 1880s, about 1,500 of Sandusky's 16,000 inhabitants were employed across 10 fishing companies.
But beginning in the 1990s, the fish started to vanish. Fishers and researchers observed fewer fingerlings and juvenile whitefish in Lake Erie. The population crash has since been attributed to the spread of invasive quagga and zebra mussels, which hitched a ride in transatlantic ship ballast and now carpet entire lakebeds for hundreds of miles.
The mussel chain reaction
The mussels remove phytoplankton, tiny algae, and bacteria that diporeia—an oil-rich, shrimp-like crustacean found in cold water between 100 and 400 feet—feed on. Whitefish fingerlings gorge on diporeia, so the mussels set off a calamitous chain reaction up the food chain. While the mussels have helped clean the lake system of phosphates and pollutants, their huge numbers eliminate whole regions of phytoplankton growth.
In Lake Erie, commercial whitefish harvest has fallen off a cliff. In 2009, about 200,000 pounds were harvested in Ohio; last year, about 185,000 pounds were taken from Lake Erie as a whole, mostly by Ontario-based commercial operations late in the year.
Impact on Indigenous fishers
William Ortiz of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians says the decline has been disastrous. "It's the biggest source of income for the tribe's fishers. We rely on whitefish probably more than anything," he says. Ortiz started commercial fishing for whitefish off Lake Michigan's north-west shores in 2015. "There's been a steady decline even since I started. From 2015 to 2020, there was a noticeable decline. I did it full-time for nine years, but it's hard to make a living when there's not a lot of fish out there."
Ortiz explains that where whitefish spawn along shoals and shallows, zebra mussels have eliminated diporeia, "so they're starving out before they get to a size where they're moving up in the food chain. It's heartbreaking what's happening. It's a treaty right; we used to be able to make a living, make enough money from spring till fall to hold yourself over through the winter. Now, it's hard if not impossible to do that."
Search for solutions
In Lake Superior, the largest and deepest Great Lake, invasive mussels have struggled to become widespread due to colder temperatures. But rising global temperatures could change that in coming decades. Scientists and conservationists are scrambling for solutions. Recent research suggests freshwater drum (sheephead), a fish with powerful molar teeth, can eat mussels and control their numbers locally. A study published in June found that in waters around Sandusky and western Lake Erie, "freshwater drum were estimated to consume between 611 and 2799 tonnes of dried, digestible dreissenid material [quagga and zebra mussels] annually during 2013–2023."
In Ohio, the department of wildlife has deployed large tarps secured to the lake bottom, injecting carbon dioxide to kill mussels, and used high-pressure water jets to destroy colonies. Travis Hartman of the Lake Erie Fisheries Program says, "Both methods were very effective, but as you might imagine the scale and cost of effectively treating extremely large areas is a significant challenge. It's fair to say that we are finding ways to be successful, but we have not found cost-effective large-scale ways to meet the needs at a Great Lakes scale."
Legislation and frustration
Last year, Michigan congressional representatives introduced a bill that would allocate $50 million each year for a decade to find measures to control invasive mussels in the Great Lakes. The bill is currently before Congress. Greg McClinchey of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission says, "Just as was the case with lamprey back 70 years ago, invasive mussels will take a huge amount of research, work and cooperation to find a control solution that can be broadly and efficiently applied throughout the Great Lakes and perhaps in freshwater systems throughout North America. This legislation will help to fund and manage that coordination … and hopefully lead to a second silver bullet solution." More discussions are planned for later this year.
But Ortiz is frustrated: "It's been studied since the 80s but no remedies have come up. We could study [the mussel problem] for another 100 years but when is somebody going to come up with a solution?" He notes that in the 1950s, scientists deployed a lampricide to successfully combat sea lampreys that decimated native fish. "But it seems like that in 2026 they can't come up with a solution for quagga mussels. It kind of just blows my mind."
McClinchey acknowledges the monumental challenge of removing quadrillions of mussels, often hundreds of feet beneath the lake surface. "There is no question that we need to resolve the problem as quickly as possible. The easy part is seeing what the problems are."
Back in Sandusky, preparations for an Ironman competition were in full swing on a recent Saturday evening, but not a single fisher could be spotted along the lakefront. Sandusky's largest boating store, West Marine, is in the midst of a closing down sale. The once-thriving fishing heritage is now largely confined to books stored in local libraries.
