  {"id":11414,"date":"2025-03-05T11:46:23","date_gmt":"2025-03-05T17:46:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/freshwater\/?p=11414"},"modified":"2026-03-04T10:21:43","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T16:21:43","slug":"bootsma-weighs-in-on-quagga-mussels-food-chain-disruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/freshwater\/bootsma-weighs-in-on-quagga-mussels-food-chain-disruption\/","title":{"rendered":"Bootsma weighs in on quagga mussels food chain disruption"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Lake whitefish populations in parts of the Great Lakes have declined 80% since the 1990s, largely due to quagga mussels disrupting the food chain. Dr. <a href=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/freshwater\/people\/bootsma-harvey\/\">Harvey Bootsma<\/a> is featured in &#8220;All Too Clear: Beneath the Surface of the Great Lakes&#8221; documentary and weighs in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"uwm-u-flex uwm-u-flex--wrap uwm-u-flex--left\">\n<a class=\"uwm-c-button uwm-u-mr-20 uwm-u-mb-20\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wpr.org\/environment\/drebert-melnick-documentary-quagga-mussels-great-lakes\" rel=\"\">Read the full article<\/a>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lake whitefish populations in parts of the Great Lakes have declined 80% since the 1990s, largely due to quagga mussels disrupting the food chain. Dr. Harvey Bootsma is featured in &#8220;All Too Clear: Beneath the Surface of the Great Lakes&#8221; &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38966,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[81,248,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atmospheric-science","category-in-the-news","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.3 (Yoast SEO v27.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>School of Freshwater Sciences<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The whitefish population has declined 80% since the 1990s due to quagga mussels. Harvey Bootsma provides insight.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/freshwater\/bootsma-weighs-in-on-quagga-mussels-food-chain-disruption\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bootsma weighs in on quagga mussels food chain disruption\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The whitefish population has declined 80% since the 1990s due to quagga mussels. 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