The Park District’s Liz Ricketts and videographer Andy Cutraro took stock of white sucker fish in the outfall at Ravine Drive Beach earlier this week. The pair were filming for an upcoming PBS Detroit’s Great Lakes Now (https://www.greatlakesnow.org/)  for a segment about the Shedd Aquarium’s efforts to track the annual migration of these native fish from Lake Michigan.

The Park District’s natural areas staff and volunteers have partnered with the Shedd since 2017 to do daily spring counts of fish in our ravine streams. The data is collected, along with weather and water conditions, from sites in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, to provide insights into what triggers the annual migration to streams along the Lake Michigan shoreline. For more information on the project, see https://www.sheddaquarium.org/stories/researching-a-great-lakes-migration-the-sucker-spawning-run