Well, I guess when it starts with kind of explaining what it is that why this lake was
a good choice as a not one that's generally accessible to the public for the experiment
that you guys are running.
Yeah.
For the experiment that we're running here which is overall the objective is does adding
trees or of course would be habitat to a lake increase fish community productivity or the
carrying capacity of the lake.
And there's not even though there's thousands of lakes up here, there's not a lot of lakes
where we can do a manipulation or experiment at that sort of scale.
Also in the absence, as we look around the lake today, there's no development.
This is the minor footprint of any development on the lake in its entirety so we can truly
understand how the fish community responds to that manipulation and the absence of things
like high fishing pressure invasive species, lake shore residential development, excess
nutrient loading, all those things.
So it's really ideal.
It was ideal because it's a manageable lake size, it's about 90 acres this lake here.
In addition to that, we've really only studied kind of woody habitat dynamics in relatively
simple fish communities, largemouth bass and yellow perch or largemouth bass and blue
gill.
This lake has a pretty species diverse fish community for a small lake so we've got natural
reproducing musculone, smallmouth bass, walleye, largemouth bass, as far as the pan
fish, yellow perch, rock bass, blue gill, pumpkin seed, green sunfish and hybrids of
those species.
There's some white sucker in here, there's very few crappy.
So it's a very diverse fish community and we can understand a little bit more than just
bass and blue gill and bass and yellow perch about how the fish community or more diverse
fish community might respond to these sorts of manipulations.
So why don't you take us around and show us some good examples of what you've been doing.
Sure.
So we started the experiment out here in 2015 and often we do, or generally always with
whole lake experiments, what we should be doing is we should have a treatment and a reference
system.
So our reference system for this lake is Escanaba Lake and in 2015 to 2018 we essentially came
out here every spring and sampled the fish community and got to understand the limnological
conditions, the riparian zone conditions.
So for three years we just wanted to get a baseline.
What was, how was this lake behaving, so to speak, is it's fish community, is it's water
quality and other aspects that we were interested in that might be influenced by a whole lake
edition of Woody Habitat.
And in 2018, in the summer of 2018, these are some of the trees that were dropped at
that point.
So you can see the needles are no longer on the trees anymore, but they're still maintaining
a pretty high branching complexity, even after seven years of being in this lake, ice conditions.
But the bark is starting to be gone now.
But again, those very smallest branches seem to be holding on, the needles are gone.
It's early in the season yet, if this was about a month from now, you'd see a parafight
or algae growth on these trees that we dropped in 2018.
If we get up close, maybe not right now, but in the summertime, you'll see small bluegills
and other fish that are all inside that refuge area.
You might see some of the larger predatory or piscivorous fish eating fish, musky bass
using the outside edges of them in a couple of weeks here.
We might see like smallmouth bass and largemouth bass nesting in association with that wood.
So this was the initial phase of the experiment, or phase one, where we dropped 140 trees
all along the north shore of the lake here.
And we did it in kind of bundles and complexes.
As you can see, we got a couple there, and we're just kind of opportunistic with the sizes.
And we dropped trees commensurate with what the forest is.
It was about 87% conifers, 13% deciduous trees, mostly maples.
So that was the first phase of the project, and then we monitor it, what happened to the
fish community, what happened to the limnology of the lake in that first five, six, seven
years, actually we monitored for six years what it ended up being, because we missed
a year with COVID, with field sections.
So both.
So when you sample the fish community, we do surveys out here just like we do on a lot
of our other lakes.
We'll fight net it for usually out here for about a month to get through all the species.
We get mark recapture population estimates on all the major species in here.
And then through the collection of aging material from those fish and the population estimates,
we can measure production, so fish production of the fish community.
And production is a rate, so it's for scientific terms, it's kilograms per hectare per year.
English units would be pounds per acre per year.
And so it's a rate of the productive capacity of an individual species.
And what we found, we've just submitted this paper for publication to Fisheries Magazine,
which is an American Fisheries Society publication, is that in, you know, six years
post close woody habitat addition of those 140 trees, we've doubled the fish community
production of Sanford Lake here.
What mostly happened is what we hypothesize what happened is every one of these trees
is setting up a micro ecosystem within this larger ecosystem.
So that tree drops in, it slowly starts to degrade, that parafite grows on it, that
algae, that healthy algae, that attracts benthic macaron vertebrates, that attracts
the small fishes that eat those, and eventually that's to translate up into the upper trophic
levels into the musky, into the bass, and into the walleye.
So in this phase of the experiment right now, most of that production is all locked up in
those lower trophic level forage fishes, so major increases in production in yellow
perch, bluegill, and rock bass as a response to the experiment.
And we'll continue to monitor it as we get farther down the lake here.
Phase two of the project was to drop trees on the entire western shoreline of the lake.
And so we really loaded it up this last time and added, and we'll see this when we get
down the shore, we added 240 more trees to this lake in early November this past fall.
And the reason we're doing this and staggering it is we want to find out, or we want to test
whether there's a point where fish production basically caps out and saturates.
So is there a point where you don't get the benefit of adding the wood anymore for fish
production?
You see some of the parafite in there, that's also freshwater sponge, which is kind of neat.
The other reason that we are staggering these tree drops in the lake, because eventually
we'll have a third phase where we do the rest of the lake the entire southern shore.
We're staggering it because most of the lakes in northern Wisconsin are almost anywhere.
There's not going to be this amount of area to put trees into, so it'd be good to know
if there is a saturating point and we get the question of how many trees should we add
to get this sort of response, or what type of tree should we add to get a response.
We should be able to answer some of those questions.
So again, everything we're trying to do here is applied so that what we learn here can
be taken on the landscape for the greater good of lakes based on what we observe here.
Yeah, so if you determine if there's a difference between dropping a carnivore versus a deciduous
tree?
Not a difference per se.
It's only going to be, or what we do know is it's going to be in longevity of how long
that wood's going to last.
And so everything we've dropped in here is either a hardwood or a conifer, and they
last a long time compared to something like a birch or an aspen in our softer woods.
They also have to maintain their branching complexity a bit better, but like the conifers,
you know, if we were to take a chance out of that one right there, and we cut into that
sap that smells fresh is cutting that tree down in the wood.
It doesn't degrade very rapidly at all, especially those that are under water.
So it's a long process.
They've done some dendrology on woody habitat and lakes and some Ontario lakes, and some
of those pieces of wood were, had been in the lake for 500, 550 years.
It's very long lived.
Another reason for doing the experiment out here though is that there was a lot of woody
habitat in this lake, but it was all highly degraded and not contributing to the system
so to speak anymore.
So this was kind of a pulse of new course woody habitat, new carbon that's going to
slowly enter this system.
And then as we've shown so far, it's made its way into the food web and increased fish
production.
So is there a difference between someone who will like foot logs out on the ice in the
middle of the lake versus dropping a tree on the edge?
Yeah.
So we've had a lot of conversations about that and some research.
So formerly within Wisconsin DNR, you know, we'd fill out permits for cribs, fish cribs,
which is more of what you're talking about, Zach, where we're going to go on to some
deeper water.
It's not going to be a navigational hazard.
We're going to kind of sink a lot of cabin or a complex of trees.
We've gotten away from that as an agency.
We still have that permit and we still allow it, but we've gone more towards fish sticks
and tree drops, which this is because that simulates the natural environment of what
happened.
That pine tree right there, you know, when that dies, it has 360 degrees to fall and
about 180 of them would be associated with the lake.
That's the natural process we're trying to simulate with this.
What we did here was by request of the group that we're working with.
They wanted us to specifically do tree drops.
Another thing that we promote that's probably even better than tree drops is if possible,
go cut wood in an upland forest that's away from the lakes.
You leave all the riparian habitat to fall in, bring that on to the ice in the winter
and distribute it like this, and that's what we call our fish sticks program that
Scott Toshner started at least 10 years ago now in Northwestern, Wisconsin, based out
of the Hayward and Broul area.
So I guess that's, I mean, obviously there's an advantage to having a private lake that
you can do this on where it is more of a controlled experiment, but if we're going
to expand this to public lakes that are developed, they don't have trees left, but they can
still possibly get there by fish sticks.
And that's exactly what we're doing.
So as an agency, we prefer to have the riparian zone intact.
There's all kinds of benefits to having that riparian forest from preventing nutrients
from getting in the lake, some water purification, clarification sorts of purposes, so those
runoff effects, but then also having that leaf litter that actually falls in the lake breaks
down and gets incorporated into the food web, as well as just the woody habitat that might
naturally fall in through a storm event or senescence or a beaver dropping it into
the lake.
So that's exactly what we'd, you know, promote in those sorts of situations is that we want,
we've, we'd sign that permit, but we want you to bring it from upland sources, drag
it onto the lake and winter and distribute it.
And we were on Lake Namacocket, Mike D'Andrea, at least they've dropped a number on a one
undeveloped section of shoreline.
So when, when, how fast do they see results?
So I'd say relatively quickly depending on what the response is.
And so in general, as soon as you drop these trees, they'll become fish attracting structure
really rapidly, especially for the small fishes.
And then the larger fishes off would set up ambush points on the edges of it.
Then within a couple of years, you're going to start to see the degradation of the tree
bark, the pine needles falling off and things like that.
The trees start to get your parafight and through that degradation and those release
and nutrients.
The background vertebrates quickly respond to that.
And then like I said, the micro ecosystem now, the fish progression starts.
So it happens pretty rapidly, you know, once, once these are implemented.
Another question we get about this, you know, I talk about parafight and it's kind of a
healthy, naturally algae.
One of the other questions that we answered in this experiment is we've heard a number
of times like, well, if we add trees to our lake, that's going to make the water less
clear.
It's going to, because of the nutrients that are in the system now, it's going to lead
to harmful algal blooms and it's just going to change our water quality in general.
So we're not in favor of it.
We just published a paper recently, said that basically what we did out here changed none
of those variables.
It didn't change anything, meaning for chlorophyll, A went up a tiny bit, but it didn't make
any difference with like second distransparency or water clarity in this lake.
And so that was, I think, a good, again, one of those demonstration experiments like I
talked about until you do it and you measure it and you get it out there and are able to
talk about it, people may be reluctant to do something that's quite beneficial for a lake.
There's a lot of conventional wisdom that you have to overcome in a lot of these places
where people, this is why we've always done it, this is what we've always assumed.
How hard is it to, I mean, can one study penetrate some of that or does it have to be a study
that then shows it, like they have to feel it themselves?
I think a little bit of both, I mean, I guess I think the demonstration science helps a
lot, but it is also the outreach then, right?
And so as an agency, we spend a lot of time working with lake associations and anglers
and fishing clubs to take the science that's out here that we're looking at right now
and the research we're looking at right now and the results and taking it out into the
public and having those conversations and showing those things and talking about it.
And so I think that's one of our greatest tools that we have for some of those transformative
changes or policy changes.
And then like I said, I think oftentimes there's a lot of, can be very contagious.
And so you get a lake association or someone that sees the results, they understand the
results and then it becomes, they're promoting it and it propagates from there.
So I think a lot of that is where, you know, big progress comes from these sorts of things.
You see all the fresh water sponge that's growing, so that's been a really, yep, yep.
So there's kind of green, wavy sort of stocks there, that's fresh water sponge.
And that was a pretty big response, a lot of parafyting, but a lot of fresh water sponge
on most of these trees.
Are we able to kind of go into them and Ethan's got the GoPro, we can kind of put that down
the water.
I'm going to take you to one of our biggest ones down here.
We got a huge hemlock that we dropped and maybe that'll be a neat one.
That one was so loud when I hit the water, it like cut out the audio on my video camera.
It just like went blank for a second when I hit the water.
And we've left a couple areas in here by the club's request, like this one not to drop
trees here.
There is some walleye spawning that goes on in here.
For the most part, you know, we added a lot of trees and we're going to go along the western
shoreline here, which we did last fall.
Take a look.
Other work that we're doing out here, we're doing a lot of behavioral work with fish to
see how they respond to this.
We have muskeys, small mouth, large mouth and walleye that have radio transmitters in
them.
So we find where they are in the lake every two weeks.
We've had what are called pit tag receivers out here.
So your pit tag is the same as like a microchip that you might put into a pet that gets lost
and you can find it.
We put a lot of those into fish and we had receivers out here that were tracking fish
movements in relation to the new habitat constantly basically.
Anytime they passed over those antenna, they would get picked up and we get that information
from a master's student who might have worked on that aspect of the project out here.
It's been very interesting.
So there was definitely some early attraction to the structure, but then we started to see
more offshore movement and just movement in general.
And we think based on the literature and those results, what we're seeing is that we probably
created so much good refuge habitat in here that it did become good foraging habitat anymore.
You can hit that point and it's another reason of doing the experiment of how much is too
much where you start to imbalance things in the other way because we know this with aquatic
weeds and with some woody habitat studies.
This went up.
In other studies, we found that their activity cost for the predators went down because it
would just stay in association with the habitat.
It's been seven years and we can see, oops, if we look into the water, all the branching
complexity that's still remaining in habitat that that's creating for small fish.
And I'll also note these woody habitat logicians are not just for fish, this is basking habitat
for turtles.
In the right situation, a loom may build its nest on a floating log in the right situation.
You see blue herons perched on them and fishing.
And I'll also note that these woody habitat logicians are not just for fish, this is basking
habitat for turtles.
In the right situation, a loom may build its nest on a floating log in the right situation.
You see blue herons perched on them and fishing.
So there's a lot of different benefits.
The yellow perch lay their eggs.
Their egg ribbons will be draped across this course, woody habitat.
Same thing for frogs and toads and our amphibians.
They use this habitat too.
And that's not even many.
In some years out here, we're dip netting out five gallon buckets full of tadpoles.
And what I've understood over the years here, I'm pretty sure the green frogs and what
happens is that they get these banner tadpole years where everything's right.
And there's so many of them that they actually, it becomes a rhinovirus diaph.
So we've seen it on Escanaba for sure.
I think it's seen it here.
So as they start to emerge from tadpoles to become frogs, right at that stage that rhinovirus
kind of hits and knocks those densities down and so you'll see a lot of dead tadpoles
and our tadpoles that are going through metamorphosis.
Yeah, the tadpoles.
I think it's pretty good size.
These tadpoles are in the water for at least two years and so a lot of the ones in here
and Escanaba, they're getting their legs right now.
So we're just ending the first phase of the woody habitat edition right now.
Again, that was in June of 2018 that we dropped those trees along the north shoreline.
And then we started phase two this past fall in early November of 2024 where now we're on
the western shoreline of the lake and I came out here with a forester and took a look
at opportunistically at what trees would make sense species-wise to drop in.
And now we're seeing trees that have been dropped in wherever we're at six months ago now
and have just gone through their first winter.
You can see there's a little discoloration on some of the pine needles there but we still
have some green underneath and again we're pretty opportunistic at trying to put the trees
in bundles creating a lot of habitat to continue to see how it influences the fish community
production of the lake and other aspects of the aquatic ecosystem out here.
We worked with some amazing loggers that did this.
How long do you think it took to drop 240 trees into the shoreline of the lake with two guys?
Walking?
Yep.
With the chainsaw?
Yep.
Three hours.
We started about 9.30 and we were eating lunch at 1 and they took a couple breaks.
It was a little bit warmer that day and I started to understand it.
I was like guys by all means I'm like take your time.
And they didn't want to go back to the shop degrees equipment and stuff like that.
And so, and it was, I mean it was just amazing to watch a professional work in that aspect.
I wish I had the same level of confidence.
Yeah.
Just guys like guys, this is absolutely incredible what you're doing.
This is amazing.
You can see the beaver.
Mm-hmm.
They're like this is the cherry of cherry jobs we get.
We're not trying to lift a huge tree that's sitting over somebody's garage.
You know with this lift, this pulley system, he's like we're just dropping trees.
He's like this is great.
You figure it would take longer than just to walk.
He said three hours.
Wow.
And they probably took at least, they took two, they took like a 10 minute break.
And they took like a 20 minute break.
And as little as just zip, zip, booms, zip, zip, boom.
So is the bike net in here deliberately trying to see what comes into these shorelines?
It's more opportunistically.
We typically set them in slightly different areas.
But now that there's so much wood on this side of the lake, it's harder to get to some of the place they wanted to.
So Taylor, she's the one Taylor and Dylan said it this year.
So they just said it more opportunistically to get good coverage of the lake where we know there's decent walleye spawning habitat.
Because our nets out here, they've got good coverage throughout the lake and we're getting all species.
But at least early on we're targeting walleye spawning habitat.
So what is the walleye per acre?
Out here, it started at about three adults per acre in 2015.
Like many of the lakes up here, especially the smaller ones, we've seen that slightly decline over time.
We've written about this.
We can't say that it's because of the tree drops causing it because it's been a system, like a systemic pattern up here at that same time.
Where small lakes and walleye recruitment seem to go down.
We've seen an uptick of largemouth bass out here afterwards, but that's often what happens in other places.
So our note to those interested in this practice for fish habitat purposes is probably to be precautionary in walleye lakes.
And certainly not unknown walleye spawning locations within a lake.
This lake probably did not originally have walleye. It was stocked by the club in the 70s. It was naturally reproducing.
But again, as we talked about this morning, some of that fades away over time where this lake has got very limited walleye spawning habitat, very limited.
In fact, I can't even tell you exactly where they spawn in here.
I could go out and ask an album, point out 10 different areas where I know walleyes are going to be spawning.
If we went out there at night and electrified it, we're probably even more.
In here, we've been out here electrified fishing and what we think is peak spawn.
You get a couple here, you get a couple there, but you don't see the concentrations of fish like we do in other lakes.
So what are the types of habitat that are ideal for walleye spawning?
So for walleye spawning, their ideal habitat is to have gravel and cobble.
And so oftentimes, they can wind swept shorelines so that it's constantly cleaning that silt and it's nice and oxygenated.
So when walleye spawn, they're broadcast spawners, which means that they spawn and then there's no parental guarding or anything.
They just leave those eggs to the mercy of environmental conditions.
But with that spawning habitat, those eggs are sticky.
They fall down into the interstices of that gravel and cobble where they're kind of protected.
They've got enough oxygen. They're not getting suffocated by silt.
And so that's what walleyes are really looking for.
So then why did they use the marshes on the wool?
There's unique circumstances where walleye can do some different things.
There's I think Lake Pepin in the Mississippi River is a similar situation.
And so somehow they're making it work and found a way to adapt to those marsh conditions in spawning in them.
But in general, with walleyes of river fish, that's what they're seeking is gravel and cobble.
And there's gravel and cobble in here, but it's a smaller lake.
It doesn't get wind swept just by the general nature of it being small.
It's got the wind pushing us in a little bit.
Did you want to put the GoPro in the water?
Especially if there's some of these green ones?
And if you need it, we've got a lot of b-roll of that stuff.
Of GoPro of underwater photography from our comms gals.
They came out here and got in the water for a couple days and did a bunch of it.
Yeah, let's get that.
And if you need anything specifically for me, then just let me know.
Yeah, sure.
Are you waiting on those regulations?
That feels like another one that's going to have science and then the politics or the implications for the people that fish those so most heavily.
Not wanting to have to change what they've always done.
Yeah, I think it's a little bit half and half.
I understand why we're doing it.
I'm glad we've done a very nice experiment testing it out over a hundred waters for a period of time that let us know how panfish are going to respond.
I do worry a little bit because of some panfish and negative interactions with walleyes and other species because that should serve to increase abundances to a few lower exploitation.
But I guess that becomes part of the next experiment to see what happens.
Well, that's croppy, right?
Yeah, croppy.
His perch abundance is good for walleyes.
Right.
Do they predate on walleyes or exclusively?
The croppy?
Yeah.
We think, and it's really difficult with diet studies like that because it can happen really, really quickly.
We've got a whole bunch of croppies and then the walleyes are all this big and they're interacting the same habitat.
They can disappear almost before you can even track it.
But my inclination is that when walleye are, you know, being born, they're interacting with adult croppy that are feeding heavily at that time.
And croppies are, they're pysivores.
They will eat plankton and things like that.
But if they can get minnows, that's going to be a main forage for them.
And I think it's just one of those things where they could probably wipe out a year class when they're at higher abundance is pretty quick.
Am I doing okay for you, Ethan?
Okay.
So there really aren't going to be any good walleye croppy lakes.
In general, what we see is that they cycle.
There's rehabilitation.
So kentuck lake is a great example up here in Violas County where kentuck lakes, walleye population, has collapsed a number of times.
Whenever it collapses, it usually turns into a world-class croppy fishery for a while.
I don't think it mentioned it in Paul Romski's Walla beautiful creature of the nightbook, but he's talking about the upper red lakes.
When that population collapsed in upper red, the walleye population, that was a world-class destination for croppies.
And so they seem to go that way where if croppy get the upper edge, walleye go down, or if walleye go down for some reason, it releases the croppies.
Even if we're fishing kentuck when I was a kid, that was just a crazy panfish lake and then all of a sudden it shifted again.
Yep.
So we have several examples of that where a walleye population collapses or declines and the croppy fishery just takes off.
So why are large-melt baths different than small-melt baths when it comes to interacting with walleye?
Yeah.
Small-melt habitat preferences are much more specialized than large-melt baths.
And large-melt baths tend to be a bit more of a generalist feeder.
So small-melt baths, you know, they're spawning habitat.
They're going to need to exclusively find some gravel and cobble.
There might be sand over those areas, but they'll fan out a nest to get to that habitat,
whereas some of the large-melt baths work I've done, they can spawn on just about anything.
You'll see them spawn on a mark.
You'll see them spawning on top of that lard right there.
You'll see them spawning on top of a rock, especially when they're at higher densities.
So they kind of make it work.
And I think what the large-melt and croppy, they're very similar species as far as a bit more generalist in their spawning habitats,
how much fish they eat.
Like small-melt, they eat a lot of crayfish if it's available.
They'll also eat fish too.
But they're typically associated with rocks and crayfish.
I think macaron vertebrates where bass are just much more generalist predators,
probably much like a croppy is.
Should I just keep buttoning around?
Or do you need some specific?
I think we're probably good on this, and we'll probably, if we head back...
Get to in Madison.
I don't know.
I mean, if it was 82 here, I'm sure it was, I don't know if you'd be pushing 90, but I bet you it was pretty darn warm.
This feels like what I expected.
It's like a nice day in spring for me.
This would be a nice five-net day outside of the...
It's a little windy.
Because I don't know, yesterday, yesterday was a nice day, but when it gets windy like this,
depending on the net location, sometimes it causes the net to roll,
and that could be a little bit of a pain sometimes.
There's everything waterproof there for you, Ethan.
This is it.
Okay, because...
A little splash is fine.
All right.
I mean, there's not really anything I can do.
It's fine.
No, that's a little bit more than a little.
And that wind's picking up now.
I'll see.
It'll just...
Once we go a little bit further, we'll go a little bit further.
I'll see.
It'll just...
Once we go a little bit more, I mean, I wonder if I could go a little faster,
maybe, and maybe that'll help, just to get us away from this.
There.
Peace.
Yeah, so they're tougher to see, but there's at least a couple rock fires that are out
in this area here, and through our radio telemetry, most of the walleyes live right
in this bay.
Yeah.
There's a weed bed in about nine feet of water, where oftentimes we're out here doing
our telemetry, that's where they'll be, that's during the day too, I'm sure they distribute
themselves around, but like we're on a rock, there's a rock bar right here.
Yeah, we're on top of one.
So I think some of the better trees, Ethan, will get our up here around the corner.
I think what's interesting too, is if you look from a distance here, does it look like
there's anything different about the forest after 240 trees?
No.
I don't know what surprised me when we did this one too, it's like, it doesn't look different
at all.
Yeah.
I'm asking questions about it, or I want all the length, weight and age data from Bass
Thunder.
It looks like hopefully that's why I'm here doing an example.
Thank you.
And what happens is you go through this approach quite smart part of this approach to process
Working on independent research, particularly for like our younger technicians that are just getting it started in the field. They want to embrace that experience.
So there's not a lot of base fishing field.
No, we've dabbled in a little bit like we've got radio transmitters like you saw going to a tiger musky yesterday.
So we're tracking those fish year round on Escanaba. So we want to understand their winter behavior as well.
So that's a little bit of winter work. We have done some of the fish sticks work in the winter time on some lakes as part of projects.
We were going to get into some winter fisheries work by actually putting, setting gill nets underneath the ice.
But that project kind of fizzled out the collaboration with Minnesota Duluth. It wasn't their fault or our fault.
It just, there was some challenges with it and we never really got it off the ground.
How do you collect it from bike nets or winter nets?
You basically drill a hole and you send out this kind of runner that goes along the ice and you've got to intersect another hole to get the other end of it.
And then that gill net hangs and you basically pull it out the hole.
And you can pop in minotraps and things like that too.
So Ethan you wanted to get maybe some GoPro or kind of still footage closer to the older stuff.
Are we going okay?
Perfect.
All right.
The winter is kind of present, what I call general fisheries ecology and management scientists that could handle just about any species.
But we do have some specialization with Matt Mitro with his focus on like statewide trout resources.
And then E.L.B.S.I. is a kind of a quantitative stock assessment scientist.
So he's more trained like almost like a marine fisheries person would be.
And he handles a lot of our Great Lakes questions.
But these are big models, big powerful models, complex models.
And he's got a very special skill.
Thanks for watching.