Lake Doctor | A Lilly Center for Lakes & Streams Podcast
Welcome to Lake Doctor: A Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams Podcast, your go-to source for understanding and preserving the health of our local lakes. Join hosts Dr. Nate Bosch, an expert in limnology, and Suzie Light, a lifelong resident and passionate advocate for our aquatic environments, as they dive deep into the challenges facing Kosciusko County's lakes.
Dr. Nate Bosch grew up in Michigan and received his doctorate in 2007 from the University of Michigan in limnology. With 18 peer-reviewed publications spanning research from the Great Lakes to smaller inland lakes and streams, Nate has been awarded the prestigious Chandler Misner Award twice by the International Association of Great Lakes Research. At Grace College, Nate is a professor in the environmental science program, dean of the School of Science and Engineering, and leads the Lilly Center team, serving the local community with dedication and expertise.
Each episode tackles these critical issues head-on, featuring insightful interviews with our partners, engaging Q&A sessions, and fun segments for the science enthusiasts among us. You'll get a behind-the-scenes look at the impactful research and education efforts spearheaded by the Lilly Center and discover how we can all contribute to safeguarding our precious freshwater ecosystems.
Tune in bi-monthly starting June 2024, and join the conversation by leaving comments or emailing us at lakes@grace.eduwith your questions and ideas. Supported by the K21 Health Foundation, Rick and April Sasso, and DreamOn Studios, this podcast aims to inspire and inform the next generation of water-literate citizens and environmental stewards. Learn more about our work and how to support us at lakes.grace.edu.
Lake Doctor | A Lilly Center for Lakes & Streams Podcast
Preserving Diversity: The Importance of Fish Populations in Freshwater Lakes
Curious about what makes Indiana's lakes tick? Join us as we chat with Tyler Delauder, the District Fisheries Biologist from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. Tyler shares his fascinating journey from aspiring teacher to passionate steward of Indiana’s aquatic ecosystems. Learn how a summer internship transformed his career path and fuelled his personal love for fishing and outdoor adventures, a passion he now shares with his family. Dive into the DNR's essential work in maintaining our lakes, particularly through the Status and Trends project, a key initiative that ensures the health and quality of lakes across Indiana.
Ever wondered what's really happening beneath the surface of your favorite fishing spot? Tyler breaks down the intricate food chains within lake ecosystems, from the top predators like bass and northern pike to the vital roles of zooplankton and phytoplankton. He gives practical advice for local anglers, highlighting the best fishing spots in Kosciusko County and stressing the importance of adhering to fish consumption advisories for safety. You'll also gain insights into Indiana’s fishing regulations and where to find critical information on mercury advisories, especially for lakes like Winona Lake.
But it's not all smooth sailing in Indiana's lakes. Tyler delves into the battle against invasive aquatic species, focusing on a troublemaker known as "starry." Discover the pros and cons of different management strategies, from herbicide treatments to mechanical removal, and learn why timely fish kill reporting is crucial. We also explore ongoing research on the impact of public sewer systems on lake health and efforts to clear log jams from the Tippecanoe River. Finally, find out how you can take actionable steps to contribute to healthier lakes by visiting lakes.grace.edu. This episode is packed with valuable insights and practical tips for anyone passionate about preserving the natural beauty of Indiana’s lakes.
Thanks for listening to the Lake Doctor podcast. I'm your host, Suzy Light. I get to share some stories and talk about our beautiful lakes with my friend, Dr Nate Bosch. Nate, you received your degree in limnology from the University of Michigan. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, Suzy. Unlike oceanography, though, my PhD in limnology is the study of freshwater aquatic systems. On this podcast, we're going to dive into some lake science. We're going to meet folks who are passionate about our lakes, just like Susie and I are, and we're going to have some fun together as well.
Speaker 1:Visit lakesgraceedu, where you can learn more about the topics in this episode and support the Lilly Center's work.
Speaker 2:In today's episode we have Tyler DeLauder. He's the District Fisheries Biologist with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. We're going to talk about how lake food chains work and, specifically, we're going to talk a lot about fish.
Speaker 1:We are so excited about today's episode. The doctor is in. Welcome to this episode, Tyler DeLauder. We are so excited to have you here today for our Lake Doctor podcast. You are with the DNR.
Speaker 3:That stands for Department of Natural Resources.
Speaker 1:Good, we want to make sure everybody understands. Tyler, you're a biologist.
Speaker 3:Yes, I'm a fisheries biologist. I'm a district fisheries biologist, so there's six of them across the state, each working on different areas. I have about 15 counties that I watch over.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, and all the lakes, rivers and streams.
Speaker 3:I kind of work with. We do as what we can with it's myself and I have an assistant.
Speaker 1:Okay, so Kosciuszko County has over 101 lakes. Are we the county with the most lakes in your district?
Speaker 3:Kosciuszko and Noble are both my top two so I go all the way down to, like Kokomo Gas City area. So once you kind of get past the core reservoirs there, kind of in the Wabash Huntington area, there's not a lot down there, especially any natural lakes, but some rivers and streams that we work on, but a lot of my work is in Kosciuszko, noble, whitley counties.
Speaker 1:So how does one become a fishery biologist?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it was one of those things. I was going to school to be a teacher and I was playing basketball and one of my teammates had done an internship with the DNR and he was telling our coach in the front of the bus that he did this summer job where he was out on the lakes and he was netting fish and I was like I need to talk to you later. So I talked to him science and had my advisor at the time call in and got me a shot at an internship and I ended up doing that for four years in a row, four summers, when I was not in school. So where'd you go to school? Manchester?
Speaker 1:Ah, Manchester, right down the road from us. Yep, right down the road. Tell us a bit more about you personally.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so grew up you know fishing and camping and being outdoors and playing all sorts of sports. I'll say I'm one of the rare ones that actually I'm still close to home. I grew up in DeKalb County and the St Joe Butler area and again, a lot of our people that work for us are from other states or California, I mean. So again it's kind of rare to get find a job local. So I feel lucky every day for that that I got to stay close to family and again around the lakes that I grew up in fishing and camping and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:So does your wife and do your children share your love of fishing.
Speaker 3:My kids love to fish. My wife fishes a little bit. I think she does love it. She has to. We are engulfed in fish, as we talked about. I, you know I work with fish and then at home I have fish tanks, so we're kind of surrounded by fish. My kids do love to fish. We go, we have a pond on our, at our property that we live on, and so we do a lot of fishing out there.
Speaker 1:So tell us what is the DNR's role in helping keep our lakes healthy and clean.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we do a few different things and there's lots of departments within DNR. So there's Fish and Wildlife, there's Division of Wildlife, there's just a lot of different sections. So my role is within the Fish and Wildlife, specifically fisheries. So I don't deal with wildlife, deer, anything like that. So I'm specifically within fish and our role is, you know, we are out monitoring situations, monitoring the lakes. That may include surveys Again.
Speaker 3:Maybe that's the fish survey, maybe that's an aquatic vegetation survey, maybe that's us looking at the water quality as far as dissolved oxygen, temperature profiles. So again we have some different programs, projects. One of our big projects is called Status and Trends. So it's a standardized way of sampling. The lakes are randomly chosen for us so we're not biasing. Hey, we're not going to this lake because we know it's got good bluegill, or we're not going to this lake because we know there's a problem. So that project is designed for us to go across the landscape and kind of get a landscape.
Speaker 3:Look at how, you know, how are all of our lakes doing as a whole? And that's something that across the state we actually do. So all the other districts are doing that same thing. So it's a good way to kind of see. You know we always hear like, oh, the bluegill were bigger back. You know I can remember the bluegill and the fishing being better back then. By this way of sampling we can actually look back at those and say like well, actually we're seeing larger fish now than we did back then. And again, depending on what species and stuff, there's obviously some changes and and it's hard for some folks individual lakes can be having a problem, you know, or be better than they were once were. But yeah, as a whole we are kind of where you know we're seeing, especially with bass and bluegill. You know we are seeing more and some bigger fish.
Speaker 1:So what kind of help or what kind of management would a DNR do for a lake?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so there's a few options and again, the first thing you do is diagnose the problem right. So we go out, we're on the water, we do a survey. Again, it usually includes a fish survey, a water quality survey. How do you do a fish survey? Yeah, no great question.
Speaker 3:You can't like take a clipboard out and say, okay fish, are you good? Yeah, nope, I wish you could. That'd be quicker. So no, what we do is we have some different gear that we use. So we use an electro fishing boat.
Speaker 3:Most people have heard of that. A lot of people may have not seen it working or not, but it's a way for us to stun the fish. They float up to the top and we were able to net those fish, put them in a tub and then we go back and we, in 1520 minutes segments, we'll go back and we'll measure those fish, identify the fish. Sometimes we take aging structures off of them so we can take a scale. That way we can tell how they're growing. So again, you might be able to find a lake that has a lot of small bass in it, for an example, and you may take an aging structure and look at that and be like, wow, they're not growing like they're supposed to be, they're stunted out. So again, that's where the DNR can potentially look to change regulations, or we can come in and try to make some management decisions. That would maybe improve that.
Speaker 1:So I imagine there are a lot of different varieties of fish in a lake For sure, and that probably is better for a lake to have different varieties.
Speaker 3:For sure. Yeah, we always want to see diversity. You always want to see diversity, you always want to see lots of different species. Again, if you've got a body of water where you only find a couple, again we want to figure out maybe why that is. Again, we always like diversity and that's with not only the fish, but that's aquatic plants, that's just the habitat around. Again, we don't want it all to be one solid, all one type of plant.
Speaker 1:One species. So our lakes are all different. In Kosciuszko County We've got some shallower lakes, like Palestine, deeper lakes like Tippie. Do fish, do different fish live in different kinds of lake environments?
Speaker 3:For sure. Yeah, there's. We have what we kind of call cool, cold water species and then warm water species. So some cool water examples would be like Northern Pike walleye, so they prefer a little bit colder water. So a species like that may not do well in a Palestine lake where again the water's really warm and shallow. And again the warm water species are your bass, bluegill. Those are the ones people are probably most familiar with. Most of the time they're pretty adaptable. They do well in Tippie and some of the deeper lakes, but also can again live in the Palestinians and some of those smaller, warmer lakes.
Speaker 1:Nate, I know fish are important to the lakes. They're part of the food web.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Talk to us a bit about the food chain for fish.
Speaker 2:In nature. When we look at ecological systems, diversity is always going to be better. It's better in our human communities, it's better in our plant and animal communities as well, because each has a different role to play and they all bring different values. And so when you have a great diversity in plants, each of them are serving in a different niche. Same thing with all of those different animals, the different types of fish, and so we're always going to have a better functioning aquatic ecosystem when we have better diversity in that ecosystem. And that feeds right into the food chain. So the food chain is think of it as different links and who eats who in the lake right. Think of it as different links, and who eats who in the lake right. And so, as Tyler's been talking about, he's thrown out a couple fish names already Bass would be one, and so let's start there Good eating fish.
Speaker 2:So a bass is the top of the food chain. I guess there could be an eagle or an osprey which would eat the bass, or a person, or a person, yes, but in the lake the top would be a fish like a bass. We call those piscivores, pisces, meaning fish, and then vor eating, so fish that eat other fish, piscivore, piscivorous fish. Those would be northern pike and bass, those sort of top muskie, those top predator fish. And then we move to the next layer of fish down, a little bit smaller. Those would be like the bluegill that Tylerler was mentioning, yellow perch would be an example, a lot of the different sunfish and those are called planktivorous fish because they eat plankton, plankton.
Speaker 2:So that's now the next link down right, and so now we've got the zooplankton. Those are our tiniest animals in the lake, little little things that some people call daphnia water fleas, for example cyclops, little rotifers.
Speaker 1:Do you need a microscope to see those you do?
Speaker 2:You need a microscope to see those. You can. If you hold up a glass of water in the sunshine out on a lake and it's literally glass or clear plastic that you can see through it, and you hold it up to the sun, you can see little specks that are kind of moving and kind of jerky movements. Those are zooplankton. So you can see the little specks without a microscope, but to see any detail you need a microscope. All right, so we have piscivores, planktivores, zooplankton, and then they eat phytoplankton that's our algae and the lakes, and so the zooplankton are filter feeders. They're eating the algae, herbivores eating the algae, and then the algae need nutrients in order to grow, and so as you have more nutrients, you have more algae, and if you have an overabundance it can actually start to mess up the food chain in those upper levels.
Speaker 1:Or if you have toxic blue-green algae.
Speaker 2:Yes, the toxic blue-green algae is not so good for those upper layers, because they don't really want to eat that algae with the toxins in it.
Speaker 1:So we talked about people eating fish. Tyler, where are good places to fish in our community?
Speaker 3:Yeah, again, there's a lot of good lakes in Kosciuszko County, like you mentioned. So, again, people again, while the sea is popular again. If you want to be out there with a lot of people and some of the bigger lakes and also some of the smaller properties as well Again, right now I think all of Kosciuszko County you can go out and find bluegill and some other species crappie perch are some of the more common and popular ones. Walleye is another one that's pretty popular to eat. Again, the walleye would be one that we stock mostly. They're not going to be found there, naturally, so that's probably a part of a stocking program that that lake's a part of.
Speaker 1:If I wanted to know what fish were safe to eat as a fisherman, fisherwoman where would I go for that information?
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, that's a great question, um, and that's a question that we get all the time and again. It's there's, there's places on our website, um, as well as the health department's website, and I believe even you mentioned it's on the grace's website or the lily center's website.
Speaker 2:The lily center website has fish consumption advisories for each of our, each of our lakes there and each lake is um.
Speaker 3:Our role in that um idem and the Department of Health are the ones that actually set those rulings. We'll actually help them when we're doing our surveys. We'll help them collect fish and so that they can take different species, different sizes of fish and they actually take those back to a lab and determine those guidelines.
Speaker 2:And just for example, winona Lake, which is close by to Grace College's campus, has a fish consumption advisory for mercury, and what the advisory reads is that it's fine to catch fish and to eat fish out of Winona Lake, but not more than one meal per week. So it wouldn't be advisable to go out there and fish every day and eat the fish and have that be your primary protein and your diet is fish from that lake. And then for pregnant or nursing mothers it suggests no eating of fish from that particular lake. And those are updated. How often Tyler?
Speaker 3:It's every few years, I think. It's a three-year cycle. They try to get to everyone and again, obviously there's lots of bodies of water. So they have a plan and kind of schedule that they work through.
Speaker 1:My husband is of an age that he has a lifelong fishing license. Are there other regulations that we need to be paying attention to?
Speaker 3:So generally for Indiana we have a pretty simple regulations as far as you know what size of fish you can keep. I always tell folks that we have them on our website and it's also in a fishing regulation book. A lot of times you can find those anywhere a license would be sold. They're in, you know, walmart and sporting goods stores and bait shops and it's always available on our website. I always encourage folks to go on and make sure, if you're going to fish a new body of water, that you look up that regulation. There could be special regulations but for the most part, if you know the regulations statewide, there's obviously exceptions to that, but generally they're all in there and they're all the same.
Speaker 2:Give an example of why an exception might be helpful to keep a certain lake healthy, correct, yeah.
Speaker 3:So let's say, statewide, largemouth bass have to be 14 inches or larger to keep, and you can only keep five of them. Now we have some lakes that have too many largemouth bass they're stunted. There's lots of small. Now we have some lakes that have too many largemouth bass they're stunted. There's lots of small ones. We may implement a regulation that we call it a slot limit. So basically that would allow harvest of those smaller fish. A to let the anglers or whoever's out there fishing for them, utilize those fish, take them home, eat them and also it helps remove those fish where it may actually help improve the size of the fish that are that are left out there in the lake are there other things you do to help improve the fish fish population in a lake?
Speaker 3:uh, so regulation is probably the is one of the main ones we try to use. Um, so we actually I was mentioned earlier, we are to you guys off off camera, but we had. We actually have a project ongoing right now where we actually have stepped in with as the dnr and are trying to take some of this bass out. We actually did again, there's a lot of small bass. We did a survey the prior year and found that we had bass that were 13 inches long, that were over 10 years old. A bass at 30, a bass at 10 years old, should be 19 to 20 inches, not 13.
Speaker 1:So overpopulation stunted the growth.
Speaker 3:Correct yep, and most of the time when that happens it's a lack of the food chain. There's not enough forage in there for those fish to continue to grow, so they kind of get stuck, and a lot of times it's in that 8 to 12 1⁄2 inch range, which is where this lake that we are out there working on currently is at. So we went out there and actually removed some of those fish and actually placed a tag in them and actually relocated them to another body of water that has a low density of bass. So hopeful that A priority one is we're going to improve the fishing at the tri-lakes and then B the secondary part of that is we're hoping to increase the number of bass at the um huntington reservoir.
Speaker 1:So kind of two for one, hopefully so how do the native native fish in the lake and the new fish that you transplanted do they get along? Okay?
Speaker 3:we hope so. We I think so. So roush reservoir, uh je, roush reservoir there in huntington has a very low density of bass. So just for so, for sampling, just kind of a comparison. So when we were out doing the Tri-Lakes project we were out there with our electrofishing boat and we usually base things on an hour. So we were out there catching 220 bass per hour with our electrofishing boat. For comparison, when we surveyed Roush before we moved or relocated any of the fish there, we were only getting about 12 fish to 15 fish per hour. So a vastly different bass community density out there.
Speaker 2:So kind of like a Robin Hood mentality steal from the rich, give to the poor A little bit yeah.
Speaker 3:Again, there's definitely an abundance and again, it's not something that we do unless there's an issue. And again, when you've got fish that are 13 inches long and they're 10 years old, there's an obvious issue out there. And that was actually something that anglers and lake residents approached us with. Again, people that had lived out there lake residents that have lived out there for years, you know were tired of catching these small bass and contacted us, you know, a few years ago, on what could we do, what could be the potential. Again, us removing them is kind of a controlled we'll call it a research project. We're trying to see if we can make a difference. We also will probably pursue a regulation change that would allow anglers and lake residents themselves to remove those fish as well in those smaller size ranges. So a couple of different ways that we might step in and try to help manage.
Speaker 1:You know, I hear something really in common between what the DNR does and what the Lilly Center does, and that is research. So, nate, what kind of stuff do you do about fish habitat?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we've been tracking fish habitat. One of the ways that we do that is looking at dissolved oxygen in the water. Right, because those top three layers of the food chain we talked about, those animals, all need to breathe oxygen out of the water, and so oxygen is going to be important for where those fish are found in the water column and the way our, our lakes are working. With an overabundance of the, the plants, both the algae and the aquatic macrophytes, the weeds, they die, decompose. The decomposition uses up oxygen, and so that bottom cold water layer in a lot of our lakes doesn't have enough oxygen to support fish nowadays.
Speaker 2:And so we track what, what, what, uh, what depth of water can the fish survive in? And it's often right at what we call the thermocline, which is the, the transition between the warm, lighter water at the top and the cold, denser water down at the bottom. So that thermocline is often where fish will kind of hang out because they want to stay a little cool, but yet they've got to be able to breathe still, so they can't go too deep in the water. And so as we track that depth of fish habitat, over time we hope that that will grow, and as we have less nutrients going into our lakes and we have less um less of that overproduction problem, we'll start to have oxygen that goes deeper into the water and that'll help some of those cool water fish. Right, what? What are some examples, maybe, of some of the cool or colder water fish?
Speaker 3:yeah, so the cold water, one of the main cold water ones and we're only down to six lakes right now is the cisco um. So that's one of our cold water species and again it's that's that loss of cold water with high oxygenated water that we're losing. And so I think 20, 30 years ago we had like 17 lakes or so, 20, around 20 lakes, and we're down to six lakes right now. So again it's and it's nothing we did they've been recently, I think within the last few years, been listed as endangered. They're pretty common as you go into north, you know Michigan and kind of further North into Canada. But because we're just kind of on their edge, and again, as you mentioned, we're, some of our lakes are, again we're warming and we're kind of losing that cold water again, that cold water habitat. So again we're down to six lakes. We're doing what we can to try to. Again it's a lot of watershed work, it's testing, it's trying to limit the nutrients that are coming in and trying to basically hold on to that level of high-oxygenated water.
Speaker 1:So both of your organizations do research. Tell me, how do you partner together?
Speaker 2:Yeah well, we do a lot of projects together and Tyler can chip in here as well. But I think about on the research side of things. We did some work on starry stonewort a few years back.
Speaker 1:What is starry stonewort?
Speaker 2:So starry stonewort is a plant, an invasive exotic plant that's moved into some of our lakes. It's actually an algae but it looks like a weed. So it's a phytoplankton with the technical term, but it looks like an aquatic macrophyte. It looks like a rooted plant, but it's actually an algae all little cells working together do fish eat it no oh, so it is not a good thing to have in a lake.
Speaker 3:No, it is not no, and right now there's no effective way to. Lots of money across the nation they're putting in, trying to. Universities are studying it, trying to figure out how can we get rid of it, how can we eradicate it, how can we again, what chemicals can be used to get rid of it, and right now no one's. They've got some. There's a way. They call it kind of burning it down, mowing it. Basically, you can kind of it will top out in shallow water.
Speaker 2:You can kind of get it down back down to the bottom, but it continues to grow back up and we found that in the research study that we did together already back a few years, when it was first moving into the area, we tried to look at what different timings of herbicide treatment and combinations. But that's exactly what we found is that you can kind of burn it, almost like mowing your lawn. You're kind of just getting it down a little bit so that boats can pass through. But if I mow it, do I need to take it out of the lake? Well, that would be best if you could actually rake it up out of the lake. So now not only are you moving, removing that exotic species out of that area of the lake, but you're also pulling with it all the nutrients out of the lake as well. Alternatively, if you just spray it with an herbicide, you're going to just top, kill that top part of it.
Speaker 2:Those parts are going to decompose, give off nutrients again and you're going to probably have regrowth of that plant or maybe some algae in the area are going to start to pull up those nutrients and maybe you'll have an algae pool.
Speaker 3:It can spread via that fragmentation too. So that's kind of the tricky part with any mechanical removal of it. So if you break off a piece of it or if a boat goes through it and it breaks off and it starts floating away, if it lands somewhere on the shore where it's the habitat's right, that can, the bottom is correct, then now all of a sudden starry can start developing there and one of the big issues again it's it's. It can be impairment, it can be issues with that actually, but it chokes out native vegetation. So where you have a spot where again we mentioned, diversity is key, we have a spot where you know we've got five or six different species mixed up.
Speaker 3:If starry comes in it can slowly kind of take that out. Now we've got just that monoculture of just starry now. So we've lost all that and again it's it kind of does pillow a little bit, but for the most part it's it's a blanket like it just grows across the bottom, so where we might have had vertical plants coming up and some good structure, and we now get this kind of this monoculture and again it can turn a good spot for fishing again in a certain lake where it's like everyone knows this or I get this phone call all the time. Well, I used to catch fish right here, and now I can't, and it's you kind of have a deeper conversation and it's like oh, I think they found starry in that area and it's kind of changed that. So again the fish we get this too Like oh, the fish are still there, right, they've just relocated now. They've found a better area, better habitat.
Speaker 1:So if I live on a lake and I identify that I have some of that near my home, what do I do? Who do I call?
Speaker 2:Usually your lake association is the best start.
Speaker 3:You can get a hold of the DNR. We have aquatic invasive biologists, that that. We have one biologist that pretty much is at his maze, his main focus. We do have a layer program which is the Lake and river enhancement program, which is kind of another branch of DNR. They have some funding available and depending on what watershed and where you're at, they can do help fund that.
Speaker 3:But again, anything like that. Again, we'll say that for all aquatic plants, if you ever have questions on what you have, you can always send a picture to your district biologist. Or again, we have different aquatic biologists that will usually help identify. That's something we get calls a lot because again, a lake resident can, there's a, you can do a little bit of treatment out in front of your house without a permit. So if they do, they'll send us a picture of what vegetation they have and then we can give recommendations of like hey, this is the right chemical.
Speaker 3:And again, so they're not dumping the wrong chemical. And well, I you know it didn't kill it, so I added more. It's like nope, like make sure you are using the right stuff for the right plant. So, yeah, any identification, and that goes for fish as well, if you ever catch a fish and you don't know what it is. We have a spot on our website that actually you can submit a photo and it'll go right to a fisheries biologist and they can let you know exactly what species you have and what it is.
Speaker 1:So often we hear that there is a fish kill on a lake. Tell us about. What should somebody do if they observe a fish kill?
Speaker 3:Is it always a bad thing that there's a fish kill? So, again, probably I think most would agree, obviously we don't ever want to see fish dying for reasons like that. But one thing is I always tell people is if you see fish, if you see dead fish on the water, let somebody know there's a, there's a, usually it's. I honestly get a call and it's usually five days. Well, I saw fish dying, you know, last weekend or something, and at that time it's hard to really like if it was something, a spill or something got in there. It's probably too late to you know, to get in there and actually go get a water test and actually determine what it is.
Speaker 3:Now, again, there's always a scale to everything, right, sometimes I get a phone call for you know five fish. It's like that's not, that doesn't concern me. I understand why it may concern a lake resident Cause. Again, you're still seeing, you know, typically in my mind, when you get to around a hundred fish, that's when it starts, okay, in my mind, when you get to around 100 fish, that's when it starts, okay, what, what could be going on here. Um, now we've had some fish kills. A few years ago we had a fish kill that we were talking like 15 to 20 000 fish um. So that's that's a big one and again, that's an extreme case um. But we do have a fish health team now that's within dnr um. So again, I encourage you it's on our website to contact them so they can they're, you can reach out to them.
Speaker 1:So if there's a fish co on a lake and you go in to investigate? You said you mentioned testing the water, but do you do fish autopsies?
Speaker 3:So, yep, that's a great question. So a lot of times, if we get that call a fish, co comes in. So IDEMS actually the Indiana Department of Environmental Management is actually the ones that are going to go out and actually do the water sampling and everything. Our role in that is we have a contract with Purdue University and we actually, if we can collect fish in relatively, if they're either currently still dying or they have to be really fresh we actually have a contract with them and we will collect fish and send out to Purdue to have an autopsy basically done. They'll test them for different things and kind of see if they can figure out, determine what the cause was. Sometimes it just comes back as it was a bacterial infection and you don't really get an answer. I always tell folks that it's nice to know if we can do determine that, but it's also it's not like we can. A lot of times it's again it's nice to know, but we can't go to the pharmacy and get medicine.
Speaker 1:I mean again.
Speaker 3:It's one of those no antibiotics for those Good to know you want to know why, but yeah, it's not something that we can prevent.
Speaker 1:A lot of times, so if our listeners observe a fish kill, the answer their action should be to contact DNR right away.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure. And again, like I said, if again, if it's five fish, maybe not, if you're seeing fish, fresh fish, over a couple of days, and it's five fish here, five fish here, like for sure, again it's better to let us know and like we will kind of keep an eye on it. We have, you know, connections around that we can say, hey, you know, if you guys see any more, let us know. But always encourage people to let us know that again what's going on. We kind of keep notes and kind of make a file. Our health team keeps a log of every report that comes in.
Speaker 2:We've worked on a number of fish kills over the years in Kosciuszko County with the DNR, where either we'll get a call or they'll get a call and we'll kind of compare notes. Maybe we'll head out and do some sampling. Oftentimes if it's early in the spring as ice is just coming out, it's due to a low oxygen event happening in the lake, where the ice sort of sealed off the lake from oxygen being able to get down to the fish. Sometimes it's a particular severe winter, like gizzard shad is is a type of fish that were right at the northern extent of their range and so if we have a really rough winter, that's a fish that often will be susceptible to a kill. Then that we'll notice as the ice starts to melt off of some of our lakes.
Speaker 2:So a few other research projects. You're getting back to your question, suzy. So we also did some work with the dnr on public sewer systems and so we did some research on the barbie lake chain. It was slated to have a public sewer system put in and we had a lot of folks suggested, hey, you can do kind of a pre and post study, and so we linked up with the dnr, because that's another question you guys get a lot around. The state is, hey, should we add a public sewer system? And so we worked with the lake and river enhancement program, specifically at the dnr, some funding and and uh pooled our expertise together and did an extensive year-long study before the Barbie uh chain got sewers. And then again we waited three years after the project was done to let everything kind of settle back, get to a new steady state and then did a re, a retest then of that to get a sense of how how sewers worked in that system. Um, we've done before you go on to the next one.
Speaker 1:If I wanted to see the results of those, um that research, where would I look?
Speaker 2:yeah, so lakesgraceedu, our lily center website. We put all of our data, all of our research reports are always there, free and open to the public, and so both of those studies on Starry Stonewort, as well as the public sewer system study, are both put on there. Another project not research, but an important project for Kosciuszko County that we worked also with the DNR on, is removing log jams from the Tippecanoe River. Oh, good.
Speaker 2:So that we worked on a few years back and again we had some partners come to us lake associations in the county and so we linked up with the DNR on removing unnatural log jams. A big stretch of the Tippie River, about 30 mile stretch of the Tippie River, removed over 300 log jams, worked with paddlers for conservation, that kind of extended the efforts with some volunteer work to remove some of those jams. Then we had contractors do some of them as well. Lots of local partners helped give funding towards that and really helped open up the river for paddling and more natural flow of the river through our county.
Speaker 1:And is that important to fish in the river?
Speaker 3:Obviously some part of habitat, some log jams, and that's why, again, it was to strategically go through. And you're not removing everything right. You don't want clear rivers, you want it to be accessible and you go through there and strategically remove the ones that are causing issues we were with another dnr biologist first um to actually pinpoint with gps log jams and some of them we decided to leave alone.
Speaker 2:they're good habitat. Others we only removed certain sections of the log jam to still leave some of the that we call it woody debris, some of those, those logs and branches up against the banks to help with erosion with fish habitat. We've got a lot of aquariums at the Lilly Center as well and that would be another partnership connection with the DNR that I'll mention. And so if you want to come into the Lilly Center and see bass and grass, pickerel and bluegill and mud puppies yeah, we have Mabel the mud puppy there which was helped from the DNR to get her and frogs and turtles and snake and crappie in the tank perch. Lots of the different local native fish and those display aquariums are available for people to take a look at as well.
Speaker 1:Tyler, before we went on air, you mentioned something that really surprised me was that if somebody picks up a turtle to do something with, they need a fishing license to do that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and we typically again for turtles and stuff like that, we typically recommend that they leave them be and kind of leave them in their natural habitat. But in theory, yeah. To do that you would have to have a fishing license.
Speaker 2:If somebody wants to have fish in an aquarium in their home or like at the Lilly Center, we have a special DNR license which allows us to catch fish in different ways. But normally someone has to follow the the regular fishing rules in order to capture a fish if they want to put in an aquarium, right?
Speaker 3:correct? Yep, so they have to fall all state regulations. So example if someone wanted a little bass to put in their in a home tank or something, again our state regulations are 14 inches so they could not keep us a little bass and take it from a lake and put it in now that's a big bass in your aquarium.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that would be a big. Oh yeah, hopefully you have a big aquarium for sure.
Speaker 3:So again, now again private waters, again we don't have jurisdiction. So if you knew someone that had a pond or something, that you could take that fish and put it, but yeah, from any removal of any fish for that reason or two, for consumption, again we'd have to follow our state regs and have to follow our state regs.
Speaker 1:And those are available on your website, Right yep in our regulation book. Tyler, thank you so very much for joining us today. This has really been exciting. As a person who likes to fish. I so appreciate your good work.
Speaker 3:Yes, no, thank you for having me. I appreciate it and love getting to talk to you, and I'm sure we could probably do another one.
Speaker 1:We've got all kinds of topics and stuff we could cover so good. Thank you so much for joining us for today's podcast hi, I'm anna.
Speaker 4:I work at the lily center for lakes and streams, I'm team lead for our algae team and I'm here with dr nate bch, the director of the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams. Awesome, today we are going to be doing. What is that, zooplankton? But before we get into that, dr Bosch, can you explain to us our lake ecosystem, our food chains?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so food chains. So when we talk about a lake, one of the basic things we need to understand is how does the food chain work? Who eats who in one of our lakes? So, as Anna said, we're going to focus on zooplankton, which is the middle link of the food chain. But we need to understand what eats the zooplankton and what did the zooplankton eat for us to understand a lake. So let me quiz Anna a little bit here. So if we have zooplankton as the middle, what's going to eat our zooplankton?
Speaker 4:Our planktivores.
Speaker 2:Planktivores, so our planktivorous fish, these are our small fish. Bluegill, yellow perch are going to eat the zooplankton and then, if we go up one more link, what's going to eat our small fish?
Speaker 4:Our piscivores.
Speaker 2:Our piscivorous fish. Yes, those are big fish like largemouth, bass, northern pike, even muskie, here in Kosciuszko County in Indiana. So we've got big fish eating little fish eating zooplankton. And what are the zooplankton eating? Phytoplankton yes phytoplankton, which are also known as algae. And then what are they using to live?
Speaker 4:All of the nutrients in our lake, all the nutrients from the lakes.
Speaker 2:Yes, so that's our lake food chain.
Speaker 4:All right, thank you so much for explaining our lake food chain to us. Now we're going to get into name that zooplankton. Are you ready?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 4:So can you name the zooplankton for us?
Speaker 2:All right. So this first one that we're doing this is Bosmina. It's one of the cladocerans. It's got Daphnia also in that same group. We can tell this one's Bosmina because it's got a long snout off the front of it. You can see its eye spot. You actually see some algae through its digestive system. So this one is known as Bosmina.
Speaker 4:Perfect, Thank you. What about can you name this soap plankton?
Speaker 2:All right. So this next one it's got a single eye spot and so it's named cyclops those of you comic book fans out there will catch that reference. And this one has got its tail coming off the back, which we can use to help identify what particular type this is also the length of its antenna are also helpful in identification to distinguish the cyclopoids from the colonoids a couple different classes of things like this.
Speaker 4:Very cool. Can you name this zooplankton?
Speaker 2:All right. So this one, the cover slip on the slide squished it a little bit, but we can still tell that it's a rotifer.
Speaker 2:We probably can't tell which genus or species here because of how it's preserved. But rotifers are really cool because rotifers create a vortex of water within their body and so if you think of like a little tornado of water with little algal cells in it going through and that's how these rotifers are going to eat, how they do their filter feeding in our lakes. So we've looked at a few examples of zooplankton here. Remember, zooplankton are the middle link of the food chain in our lakes and so we have the top link is our piscivorous fish. So our big predatory fish. They're eating our planktivorous fish, those smaller fish, those are eating our zooplankton, which we've talked about here. Zooplankton are eating our phytoplankton, also known as algae, and then the algae, those phytoplankton, they are feeding off nutrients in our lakes and that's what makes the food chain in our lakes thanks for listening to this episode of the lake doctor podcast.
Speaker 1:Join us next time.
Speaker 2:It's bound to be fun listening to this podcast is just the first step to making your lake cleaner and healthier. Visit lakesgraceedu for more information about our applied research and discover some tangible ways you can make a difference on your lake.
Speaker 1:We'll see you next time. The Doctor is In.