The round goby is a native of the Caspian Sea and an aggressive consumer of other fishes’ eggs. It had established itself in Lake Michigan, and the fear was it would use the Sanitary and Ship Canal to swim out of the lake and into the Des Plaines River. From there, it could swim into the Illinois River and on to the Mississippi. But, as Shea put it to me, “Before the project could be activated, the round goby was already on the other side.” It became a case of electrifying the canal after the fish had bolted.
