Foreword

Abstract

If it is true that each generation stands on the shoulders of the one preceding, then our generation is indebted to Henry Regier for significantly elevating today’s, and tomorrow’s, Great Lakes fisheries and aquatic ecosystem science and policy community. It seems self-evident now that limnology and fisheries management are inextricably connected. But not so long ago, practitioners of the two scientific disciplines rarely communicated, or if they did, had trouble understanding each other. That is the divide Henry Regier did so much to bridge, and the Great Lakes are better understood and thus managed because of his work. I met Henry long after he had earned his reputation as one of the leading ecological scientists in the Great Lakes community. A generous host and natural mentor, he shared memories and witty observations about his life, his career, and the history of Great Lakes fisheries and aquatic ecosystem management and policy in general. One of the key topics we discussed was what he called, The Great Laurentian Spring of 19681993, during which the people most engaged in Great Lakes science and management made globallyrecognized breakthroughs in the understanding of these complex, but connected ecosystems. As a result, they devised cooperative relationships among scientists, management institutions, universities, and the public attacking Great Lakes problems and promoting positive solutions for both the Great Lakes ecosystems and the people that depended on them for their food security, livelihoods, and sense of well-being. In characteristic ‘Regier’ language, Henry later defined this spring as a “multi-stranded epistemic network and shared ecosystem praxis... a promising beginning.” Henry was modest about his role in what was more than a promising beginning. Henry was critical in that spring; he didn’t just have a front-row seat – he appeared on the Laurentian Great Lakes “stage” as both a member of the binational Great Lakes Fishery Commission (GLFC) and the International Joint Commission’s (IJC) Research Advisory Board (now the Science Advisory Board). Teaming with other scientists such as Jack Vallentyne and George Francis, he did much to pull these agencies and their conceptual frameworks together to confront the deterioration of the world’s biggest freshwater system. He was the right person working at the right time to promote the linkage of fisheries management with the “biological, chemical, and physical integrity of the Great Lakes Basin ecosystem,” a phrase inherent in the U.S.-Canada Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (GLWQA), and the ecosystem approach of the 1978 version of the Agreement. He bridged not only science divides, but the divide between science and management and the public! Through his work and teachings, Henry insisted that fish and the quality of the water in which they live are part of a single, complex system. What Henry did with that notion helped reshape our understanding of fisheries management but, more broadly, environmental or ecosystem management. In essence, Henry saw clearly that to have a healthy, more productive environment, we – as those people