I found the language and the writing style are a bit hard to follow so I was not able to continue reading. It's not the author's fault in any case. Just me lacking an understanding of what's going on in the book.

I felt the book started out well. I enjoyed the opening chapters about surgeon. However, after that I struggled to keep focused, as it just seemed like it was slipping more and more into a boring read. Which I found unusual, I almost always devour nature books, especially ones set in my home waters. I tried multiple times to get through this, but eventually had to give up and admit that it's just not for me. My inability to finish it should not be used to penalize the author. Especially after reading other reviews and how much others enjoyed it. Therefore, I will not be posting a review on any of my usual sites. Thank you for the opportunity to read the book.

I loved leaning about this topic. I am a lake lover. I've always been drawn to and at ease in the lake and this book was a fascinating look into one of my favourite ecosystems.

There is so much to lean and understand about the world we live in. And the more we learn, the better we can protect our favourite spaces.

The artwork in the book alone would make me want to buy a physical copy. I'm so thankful for my ebook copy.

The Accidental Reef and Other Ecological Odysseys in the Great Lakes is a science based monograph on the man-made changes in the Great Lakes presented by Dr. Lynne Heasley. Released 1st Aug 2021 by Michigan State University Press, it's 264 pages and is available in paperback and ebook formats.

This is a fascinating look at how man-made changes in an area which encompasses one olympic-sized swimming pool near the banks of the St. Clair River has changed a whole ecosystem with outward rippling effects of astonishing magnitude. Coal clinkers dumped many decades ago created a reef which provided a habitat which favored zebra mussels (a non-native species), and sturgeon which in turn changed the entire ecosystem. The author's voice is clear and understandable. Her parenthetical authorial asides are wryly self-deprecating and spot on: "Skull fractures have been observed, note two fish biologists. (Are there times when scientific detachment seems forced?)." There are several other ecological niches discussed by the author in addition to the aforementioned, and she weaves them together skillfully.

By hyper focusing on the measurable areas, the author renders the big picture more accessible and comprehensible. She meticulously builds up the net of interconnecting threads and shows their interdependence at the same time inviting the reader to begin to extrapolate to the bigger picture of our impact on entire biomes. The text throughout is layman accessible and engaging. The author has provided annotations throughout and the chapter notes and bibliography will provide readers in search of more information a good basis for further reading, without getting bogged down in overly dry academic language.

Heasley also does a wonderful job of bringing the dichotomy between the different interests, for example divers and fishers, to life. Often seen as mutually exclusive (and antagonistic), there are outstanding personalities in every camp and she introduces the reader to these people through their words and actions. I really enjoyed reading the chapters about Greg from Gregory A.D.

I also enjoyed the line drawn sketches by artist Glenn Wolff throughout. They enhanced the work and allowed me a moment of reflection over what I'd been reading. The style is simple and rustic, but full of small details that invite the viewer to pause and look.

Five stars. This is a fascinating and illuminating read. It would make a superlative acquisition for libraries, fans of natural history, ecology, and popular science writing. It's easy to imagine the author is a gifted lecturer and teacher.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Overall a great book about the Great Lakes!!

Lynne Heasley takes the reader through the story of how the Great Lakes as we know them today came to be. Despite all of the struggles that the Lakes had to go through with industrialization and pollution, the Lakes are still here today to be enjoyed by many. I really enjoyed how the author wrote about Indigenous peoples and their history with the Great Lakes.

I loved how the author weaved together storytelling with scientific facts while also keeping the reader engaged. The author was also very funny and made a lot of great jokes! I also appreciated the side notes that the author left to the reader. There were definitely times where I was a bit bored, but I am also not wildly interested in the Great Lakes so that's on me. I chose to read this book to learn more about them, and I was not disappointed!!

I definitely recommend to anyone wanting to understand the Great Lakes to read this book!

This book has a lot of interesting information about the ecology of the Great Lakes. Any reader is bound to learn something new about the lakes. The information about sturgeon in the lakes was fascinating. Overall though the book was a bit tedious to read..

I grew up near the Niagara River which connects Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, punctuated by the escarpment that creates the magnificent Niagara Falls. Just before my teen years we moved the length of Lake Erie to Metro Detroit. If I drive east for an hour through heavy traffic I will reach the St. Clair River, which begins at the southern end of Lake Huron and becomes the Detroit River.

Both the Niagara and St. Clair rivers have a long history of industrialization along their banks, with chemical pollution and waste impacting the river and those who live along the river. I remember visiting Niagara Falls and seeing the brown foam along the river banks. Manhattan Project waste was dumped in my hometown’s dump not far from the river, and Love Canal was a short jaunt up the road. The long history of industry along the St. Clair River includes lumbering, paper mills, and Canada’s ‘Chemical Alley.’

A few years back, prepandemic, we took an overnight trip to Port Huron, Michigan on the St. Clair River. My husband’s family came from Canada to settle there; in 1920-21 his great-grandfather worked for the Morton Salt mine. We had breakfast at a restaurant with windows to the river and after we ate we walked along the shore, passing fishermen casting their lines off the riverside. At the Ft. Gratiot lighthouse we watched the passing of the largest on the Great Lakes, the Paul R. Tregurtha.

The purpose of our trip was to donate a family heirloom New Testament from my husband’s family. The book dated to the early 19th c, perhaps 1830, and was given to my husband’s great-great-grandmother by a Native American, John Riley, whose name appears in the history books. He and his brothers were sons of an American father and Native mother, and their grandfather is a distant ancestor of my husband’s. The Riley brother aligned with the Colonists in the French and Indian War, and acted as translators for pivotal Michigan treaties.
The 1819 Treaty awarded John Riley land in what is now downtown Port Huron, land that was taken away in the 1836 treaty when Michigan became a state. Riley disappears from the history books after this time.

We meet with the Bluewater Indigenous Alliance and turned the New Testament over to the museum for display as a local, Native American artifact.

I thought of the people we met that day as I read The Accidental Reef. The native bands have fished the St. Clair River since time immemorial. The Europeans that claimed their ancestral land used the water for lumbering and paper making and chemical making and salt mining. Now, the fish in those waters carry the chemicals we have dumped into them, and Michigan suggests we eat no more than 8 walleye fish a year. In effect, the native population’s food supply has been poisoned.

Once, the lakes teamed with sturgeon, a species that has been around since the dinosaurs, a slow growing and long living critter of nightmare proportions and armored with plates. Once, they were so thick in the St. Clair River that fishermen just clubbed them on the head. They were fished for their flesh and for their roe to make caviar. We thought they were gone. But they were found spawning on an ‘accidental reef’ created in the St. Clair River.

Heasley explains the threats to the Great Lakes: diversion through the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal which lowers lake water level and gives invasive species like Asian Carp an entry into Lake Michigan (‘protected’ by an underwater electronic fence); the Welland Canal through which international ships pass, bringing invasive species; the threat of diverting the water to water insecure areas; the aging Enbridge oil pipeline that crosses the Straits of Mackinac, a disaster waiting to happen. (A 2010 Enbridge leak in the Kalamazoo River was one of the two worst inland spills in US history.)

Heasley’s Harper’s Index inspired list of facts is chilling to read as she shows how over time humans have taken the abundance of American resources and decimated it for short-term economic interest. Trees. Salt. Sand. Iron.

One example is the sand mining of Lake Michigan ancient coastal sand dunes for industrial use. In 1976 the Sand Dune Protection and Management Act was passed, but mining continued. Sand ranks 2 in global consumption of natural resources, used for solar panels and computer chips and fracking and industry. Entire sand dunes have been carted away. Good Morning America viewers voted The Great Bear Sand Dunes as America’s most beautiful place. We love our sand beaches. And yet, we car the sand away for industry.

Lynn Heasley has written an entertaining and informative book on the St. Clair River and the Great Lakes.