Award-Winning Documentaries Highlight the Great Lakes

The Great Lakes are the focus of two compelling new documentaries, The Fish Thief and All Too Clear, each highlighting pressing environmental challenges:

THE FISH THIEF, narrated by Oscar-winner J.K. Simmons, is a film that tells the remarkable true story of the fight to save the Great Lakes fishery from one of the most destructive species: sea lampreys. The sea lamprey’s incursion into the Great Lakes in the mid-1900s decimated populations of lake trout, whitefish, and other species that were integral to the region’s economy and way of life. The crash destroyed jobs and businesses, devastating towns, and Indigenous communities in Canada and the United States. In the face of the catastrophe, a tenacious group of scientists fought back and worked for years, tirelessly searching for a way to control the destructive species. What they discovered continues to influence the Great Lakes region’s economic fortunes and sounds a warning about the future of natural resources and the prosperity of millions around the world today.

The Fish Thief will be available for viewing on a streaming service in the near future.

ALL TOO CLEAR uses cutting-edge underwater drones to explore how quadrillions of tiny invasive mussels are re-engineering the ecosystem of North America's Great Lakes at a scale not seen since the glaciers. The mussels are trapping nutrients, the building blocks of life, on the lake bottom. Without nutrients, organisms of all kinds - from the tiniest plankton to the largest fish - are vanishing, creating vast biological deserts. While the consequences for nature and people are severe, the loss of life has had an extraordinary side effect: it’s made the lakes far clearer than they’ve ever been before. We've harnessed this newfound clarity to capture animal behaviours and freshwater environments that have never been filmed before.

All Too Clear is currently streaming its three episodes on Youtube. Interviews with the directors, Yvonne Drebert and Zach Melnick, can be seen on CP24.