My watermark is Lake Ontario and all the Canadian Great Lakes.

They are full of crayfish, the animals I love! I was fortunate over my career as a freshwater biologist to be able to conduct a lot of fieldwork on various shores of Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, Georgian Bay, Manitoulin Island and even Lake Superior.

I have crossed long stretches of calm and stormy waters in small boats, camped on offshore Islands and watched beautiful sunsets. I have counted hundreds of cormorant, gull and tern nestlings, caught giant northern pike, searched out various species of crayfish under rocks in clear cool waters and in deep, chimney-topped muddy burrows in wetlands and marshes. I have stood on the pristine beach at Caribou Island, the furthest, offshore island in freshwater and atop castle-like rocks in the mouth of the French River. The Great Lakes are wondrous and wild, their waters can be clear, calm, smooth like a mirror or dark, threatening topped with giant whitecaps worthy of any big sea.

We swim and fish in them, drink out of them (even make beer out of them!) but somehow we have forgotten how important and precious they are….. We dump, industrial toxic waste in them, throw garbage in them, and even empty our sewers and toilets in them. We must not forget that for those of us who live near or on the shores of the Great Lakes, our bodies are largely made up of water from them!
Keep them clean, if not for my precious crayfish then for our own collective health.
Dr. Crayfish.