It’s always something with these people, always some sort of Doom
When Climate Change Comes for the Fish Fry
Each week across Wisconsin, diners crowd into supper clubs, VFW halls, and corner taverns for a ritual that has endured for generations: the Friday night fish fry. Almost half of Wisconsinites say they sit down to a fish fry at least once a month. But increasingly, what’s on the plate isn’t local. As warming lakes, invasive species, and disrupted spawning cycles threaten native fish populations, the tradition faces an uncertain future. What happens when a cherished custom must adapt to a changing ecosystem?
In this project, journalist Jeff Oloizia follows the journey from hook to fryer, shadowing conservation teams, consulting scientists, and sharing tables with chefs, anglers, and historians. Through data, storytelling, and on-the-ground reporting, he explores a quieter climate crisis: the erosion of cultural traditions through ecological loss, and what’s at stake when the natural world stops cooperating with the stories we tell about who we are.
Oh, good, storytelling! A slight increase in global temperatures is not big deal, but, the invasive species are. Which is nothing to do with ‘climate change’, natural, anthropogenic, or a combo. And, guess what? Those fish can be fried, too.
Anyhow, that blurb leads to the full story which was in Madison Magazine back in mid-August, starting with a story on going on a fishing trip
The reel screamed. I leaned back and cranked against it, slow and steady, for what felt like hours. When I finally hauled the fish over the rail?—?a gleaming king salmon, as long as a toddler?—?I felt a rush of triumph that quickly gave way to something else. Clinging to the fish’s belly was a slick, black parasite, writhing like something cursed.
“What the hell is that?” I asked our guide.
“Lamprey,” he said, peeling it off to reveal a funnel of razor-sharp teeth like you’d see in the sandworms of “Dune.”
Sea lampreys aren’t new to these waters; they arrived in the early 1900s, slipped in through human-made canals, and never left. They latch onto fish, boring into flesh to feed on tissue and blood. A single adult can kill up to 40 pounds of fish in its lifetime. For decades, scientists kept them largely in check with lampricide. But warming waters and shifting lake conditions have complicated those efforts, helping the parasites spread once again.
So, this has nothing to do with a warming world of your fault
The lamprey is only part of the story. Across the Great Lakes, climate change is reshaping the rhythms that native fish have followed for centuries. Warmer waters and early thaws are scrambling the spawning calendars of walleye, yellow perch and whitefish. Migrations are mistimed. Eggs hatch too early or fail to hatch altogether. The native fish species that fed generations of Wisconsinites?—?at church suppers, family cookouts and Friday night fish fries?—?are vanishing from local waters.
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