Aquatic invasive species are a problem worldwide and the single biggest threat facing the Great Lakes, according to ecologist Hugh MacIsaac.
“I believe that it’s the leading issue in the Great Lakes today,” said Dr. MacIsaac, a professor in the university’s Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research and director of the Canadian Aquatic Invasive Species Network.
“It’s a global issue though,” said recently on a Detroit television show. “If we look at aquatic ecosystems throughout the world, San Francisco Bay, the North Sea, the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, all of them are being inundated with species that don’t belong there, so it truly is a global problem.”
MacIsaac made his comments on Great Lakes Now Connect, a program created by Detroit Public Television and The Nature Conservancy to focus on issues facing the lakes and the impact they have on the people living around them. He was part of a panel of experts focused on how they arrived and what’s being done to eradicate the problem and control their spread.