Kathleen's Reviews > The Death and Life of the Great Lakes

Having lived in four of the eight states sharing a coastline with the five Great Lakes, I have a strong kinship to these beautiful, precious bodies of water. So, it was depressing to read Egan’s heavily researched book detailing the many problems that face the lakes today. The beautiful clear, blue waters of Lake Michigan do not demonstrate its health. Instead, its clarity is due to an invasion of zebra and quagga mussels from bilge water originating from the Caspian Sea, sucking up 90 percent of the lake’s phytoplankton.
Unfortunately, these bivalves continue to multiply and invade North American rivers and lakes. Scientists are at a loss as to how to control their damage on the lakes’ ecosystem. They were more successful in combating the lamprey, which devastated the fish population in the 1940s, and then the alewives in the 1950s. The introduction of western salmon fed on the alewives, creating a sport fishing boom as their numbers multiplied. It also triggered interest in the ecological health of the lakes, resulting in the banning of harmful pesticides like DDT. But spectacular salmon fishing fell off as the alewives and phytoplankton populations fell.
More bilge water dumps harboring foreign organisms resulted in infestations of spiny water fleas, fishhook water fleas, and bloody red shrimp. Farm land run-off of phosphates feed Lake Erie’s blue-green algae—and the toxic form called microcystis—threatening the drinking water for 11 million people. Climate change has caused a modest increase in the average temperatures of the lakes. But even this small increase has caused the lakes to lose more water to evaporation—both in summer and winter. Pressure to share the lakes’ water with drier communities and states is sure to increase. Highly recommend this most informative book.