In its pristine state, the waters of Lake Erie were already primed to sustain an abundance of algae—the foundation of its food web. The warmest, shallowest and furthest south of the Great Lakes, it was naturally loaded with the building blocks of life—among them carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, zinc, copper, calcium and silicon. This is why Lake Erie, which holds only 2 percent of the overall volume of Great Lakes water, is home to about 50 percent of Great Lakes fish.
