• Two Michigan representatives seek a dramatic increase in funding to study ways to eradicate invasive mussels
• The shellfish blanket the floor of Lakes Michigan and Huron, pushing whitefish to the brink of collapse
• The proposal follows Bridge Michigan reporting about the issue

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Michigan lawmakers hope to unveil legislation in Washington this week that would dramatically increase funding to prevent invasive mussels from wiping out whitefish in the lower Great Lakes.

Following extensive reporting from Bridge Michigan on the issue, US Reps. Debbie Dingell, D-Ann Arbor, and Tim Walberg, R-Tipton, want to increase funding for mussel control research more than fiftyfold to $500 million over the next 10 years. 

Otherwise, the “fish that we take for granted are going to just disappear,” Dingell told Bridge Michigan.

In a statement shared with Bridge, Walberg called the bill a “bipartisan effort to combat the spread of invasive mussels, protect the health of our fisheries and ensure that future generations of Michiganders can enjoy this national treasure.”

The proposal follows months of reporting by Bridge that exposed how a lack of funding threatens efforts to save the fish in Lakes Michigan and Huron.

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The damage wrought by invasive mussels is among the biggest threats to the Great Lakes in history. Yet Bridge found that while the US government has spent mightily to combat other threats, the fight against mussels has received a comparative pittance. 

The main funding program for Great Lakes science has devoted an average of less than $1 million annually to the cause since 2010, according to spending records analyzed by Bridge. The federal government spends about 20 times that amount to keep sea lamprey out of the Great Lakes and has promised 90 times as much to build a barrier against invasive carp.

Dingell cited those stats as part of the inspiration for her bill.

“They’re all serious issues, but this is 90% of the fresh water in this country and 20% of the world’s (surface) fresh water,” Dingell said. “We need to be protecting it.”

Great Lakes advocates cheered the funding push, calling it a long overdue recognition of the existential threat mussels pose to the lakes’ native fish.

“We definitely don’t have a lot of time,” said Doug Craven, natural resources director with the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians. “So this is very timely.”

Saving whitefish depends upon quelling the mussels, a European species that arrived on the ballast water of oceangoing freighters in the late 1980s. The mussels have since colonized nearly every inch of the lakebed in lakes Michigan and Huron. 

The shellfish have become the dominant life form in the lakes, where they hog the food that other species need to survive. Scientists fear whitefish are the first casualties in a cascading biodiversity crisis.

Beyond their importance to the ecosystem, whitefish are a revered symbol of the Great Lakes, a central character in Anishinaabe creation stories and the No. 1 commercial catch in the Great Lakes. But harvests have plummeted in recent years, forcing fishing families to ponder hanging up their nets for good. 

For years, a small community of researchers has been racing to develop weapons against the mussels that are causing the collapse. While some study pesticides, parasites or even genetic weapons that could kill off the shellfish, others scrape mussels off the lakebottom by hand, hoping to carve out small patches of habitat where whitefish can survive.

But at current funding levels, that research will take years if not decades to achieve a breakthrough. The lower lakes’ whitefish may not have that long to wait.

Insufficient investment in science puts “whitefish and other fisheries at significant risk,” said Samantha Tank, who oversees aquatic invasive species control efforts within the Great Lakes Commission, an organization created by the eight Great Lakes states to protect the waterways.

Fearing that the fish could disappear before science catches up to the mussel invasion, Craven said the Little Traverse Bay Band is advocating for up to $100 million to start a federal whitefish hatchery program, much like the hatchery program that brought Great Lakes lake trout back from the brink of extinction.

Dingell and Walberg’s bill comes as President Donald Trump’s administration is cutting spending for scientific research and the environment. Still, Dingell said she’s confident the mussel funding proposal can garner bipartisan support.

“I believe, in my heart of hearts, that people understand the importance of protecting the Great Lakes,” she said.

The bill, called the Save Great Lakes Fish Act of 2025, would amend the 1956 law that mobilized resources to combat sea lamprey that at the time were decimating Great Lakes fish populations. The Great Lakes Fishery Commission, an international organization that coordinates lamprey control efforts, would expand its mission to fight off invasive mussels and then act as a steward for the $500 million in new research funding.

“Mussels are this generation’s sea lamprey,” said Greg McClinchey, the commission’s policy director.

And like lamprey before them, to defeat mussels “we need a coordinated national and even multinational or binational response … and we need money.”

This article first appeared on Bridge Michigan and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.