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Michigan Native Tells Story of How Salmon Got to Great Lakes

Category: News Release

 Mar 18th, 2019 by Keith Worrall  305

Modified Mar 18th, 2019 at 10:26 AM

By RJ WOLCOTT, Lansing State Journal

HASLETT, Mich. (AP) — Close to 10 million chinook and coho salmon swim in Lake Michigan, Lake Huron and Lake Superior.

There were none when Howard Tanner started as the chief of the Michigan Department of Conservation’s Fish Division in 1964.

His boss, Ralph MacMullan, spent much of their first meeting lambasting the fish department for its previous lack of action and dysfunction. Heaps of dead fish were washing up on beaches, the lakes were overly commercially fished and there was little recreational fishing to speak of.

He gave Tanner a mandate: “Do something.

“And if you can,” he told the Lansing State Journal, “make it spectacular.”

By introducing salmon into the Great Lakes in the 1960s, Tanner did just that.

And, more than 50 years later, his old boss’ words have become the title of his new book, “Something Spectacular: My Great Lakes Salmon Story.”

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