Perhaps no single person has had a bigger impact on the Great Lakes as we know them than Howard Tanner.
Born on Sept. 4, 1923, the son of a grocer in northern Michigan started fishing on Sunday mornings with his father at age 5. The two chased brook trout near the railroad tracks along the Jordan River in Antrim County — the same region of northwest Michigan fished by a young Ernest Hemingway just several years earlier. Tanner remembers the catch limit at the time was 15 per day, and the Tanners, like everyone else in those days, were not catch-and-release guys. Especially after the country entered the Great Depression, his father lost the store, became sheriff and moved the family into the living quarters of the county jail.
"We ate all we caught," the 91-year-old Tanner told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "There was no question about that."
By age 29, Tanner had acquired a doctorate in fisheries biology from Michigan State University.
His first job after graduation was as portentous as it was ambitious. He literally turned life upside down in a little lake in the middle of a Michigan state forest using a generator, a pump and a pipe to suck the water 40 feet up from the bottom to the surface.
"The research reason for that was the nutrients would gradually settle to the bottom of the lake, but there was no oxygen down there for biological activity and the question was: What would happen if you pumped that nutrient-rich water back up on the surface where there was sunlight and life?"
As the junior scientist in the experiment, it was Tanner's job to maintain the generator that ran around the clock on the shore of West Lost Lake. He still vividly remembers one early summer morning in 1952.
"There was a fisherman sitting on the bank with his rod, smoking a pipe as I put gas in and checked the oil, and I went over to say good morning. He said: 'Could you tell me what you're doing?' And I said: 'Yes, we're sucking the water off the bottom of the lake and putting it up on the top.' He looked at me and said: 'That's just exactly what I thought,' and walked away," Tanner said with a wry smile. "I can hear him in the bar saying, 'You know what I saw today?'"
The experiment did what was expected — it sparked a bloom of plankton near the surface. But the flicker of life flared out once the scientists turned off the pump.
more
A Watershed Moment | Great Lakes at a Crossroads - The man with the salmon plan
Born on Sept. 4, 1923, the son of a grocer in northern Michigan started fishing on Sunday mornings with his father at age 5. The two chased brook trout near the railroad tracks along the Jordan River in Antrim County — the same region of northwest Michigan fished by a young Ernest Hemingway just several years earlier. Tanner remembers the catch limit at the time was 15 per day, and the Tanners, like everyone else in those days, were not catch-and-release guys. Especially after the country entered the Great Depression, his father lost the store, became sheriff and moved the family into the living quarters of the county jail.
"We ate all we caught," the 91-year-old Tanner told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "There was no question about that."
By age 29, Tanner had acquired a doctorate in fisheries biology from Michigan State University.
His first job after graduation was as portentous as it was ambitious. He literally turned life upside down in a little lake in the middle of a Michigan state forest using a generator, a pump and a pipe to suck the water 40 feet up from the bottom to the surface.
"The research reason for that was the nutrients would gradually settle to the bottom of the lake, but there was no oxygen down there for biological activity and the question was: What would happen if you pumped that nutrient-rich water back up on the surface where there was sunlight and life?"
As the junior scientist in the experiment, it was Tanner's job to maintain the generator that ran around the clock on the shore of West Lost Lake. He still vividly remembers one early summer morning in 1952.
"There was a fisherman sitting on the bank with his rod, smoking a pipe as I put gas in and checked the oil, and I went over to say good morning. He said: 'Could you tell me what you're doing?' And I said: 'Yes, we're sucking the water off the bottom of the lake and putting it up on the top.' He looked at me and said: 'That's just exactly what I thought,' and walked away," Tanner said with a wry smile. "I can hear him in the bar saying, 'You know what I saw today?'"
The experiment did what was expected — it sparked a bloom of plankton near the surface. But the flicker of life flared out once the scientists turned off the pump.
more
A Watershed Moment | Great Lakes at a Crossroads - The man with the salmon plan