Great Lakes Whitefish Collapse Exposes Failed Environmental Policies, Threatening Michigan’s Fishing Legacy

For more than 30 years, Richard Boda has chronicled his life on the Great Lakes in a handwritten logbook — a legacy for his children and a record of the once-bountiful waters that sustained his family’s livelihood. But what started as notes on thriving catches has become a somber account of collapse.Boda, a third-generation commercial fisherman and member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, now finds himself grappling with a crisis decades in the making. Whitefish stocks in Lakes Michigan and Huron have plummeted by 70% over 15 years, driven not by overfishing — which the industry...