Excerpt
ASH-HAR QURAISHI, WTTW Chicago: It's just after dawn in northern Wisconsin. Commercial fisherman Dennis Hickey is getting ready to take his fishing boat out on Lake Michigan. Hickey's family has fished these waters for more than a century.
The Great Lakes currently support a $7 billion-a-year commercial and recreational fishing industry.
MAN: Our mainstay of our fishery here in Baileys Harbor is whitefish, Lake Michigan whitefish.
ASH-HAR QURAISHI: Today, Hickey's lucky. He won't be battling the elements to bring in a catch. It is unseasonably warm on this late autumn morning. But he does have to deal with a problem that increasingly plagues fishermen throughout the Great Lakes and threatens their livelihoods.
MAN: Looks like the hearts have quite a bit of moss and slime in them again.
ASH-HAR QURAISHI: The slime is a type of alga called Cladophora, and some scientists think its extraordinary increase in the Great Lakes is related to recent and irreparable changes in the Marine ecosystem.
The culprit, they say, is a tiny invasive mollusk called the quagga mussel.
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