http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/green/chi-great-lakes-invasives_30jul30,0,5835308.story
A Tribune team follows researchers to the bottom of Lake Michigan as they try to explain the rapidly shifting ecosystem
"OFF ATWATER BEACH, Wis.—This place should be an underwater desert.
But as the three researchers wearing scuba tanks and lead weights drop through the water, the landscape of rounded stones 30 feet below is disturbingly full of strange, new life.
In just a few years, the gravel and white boulders that for centuries covered the bottom of Lake Michigan between Chicago and the Door County, Wis., peninsula have disappeared under a carpet of mussels and primitive plant life.
The change is not merely cosmetic. In the last three years or so, scientists say, invasive species have upended the ecology of the lakes, shifting distribution of species and starving familiar fish of their usual food supply."
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