A new film explores the massive effort on the part of scientists, governments, and small businesses to save the Great Lakes from the invasive sea lamprey.

“The Fish Thief” was released on Jan. 31.

“It’s a remarkable story of threat, accidental threat to the fishery, and then an all-out effort on the part of scientists and policy makers to find a solution to this,” Great Lakes Fishery Commission Executive Secretary Marc Gaden said.

In the 1920s, the lamprey accidentally swam into Lake Erie through shipping canals.

“They’re not very picky eaters, so it’s like this perfect storm of invasion where the lamprey had just about anything they could get their teeth into in the Great Lakes as food, whether it’s whitefish or salmon, trout, even sturgeon and walleye,” Dr. Gaden said.

By 1940, they were in Lake Superior and threatening commercial fishermen’s way of life.

“And what’s the most impressive thing to me is just the tenacity and the perseverance of the scientists who took this on,” Film Director Thomas Lindsey Haskin said. “They finally found what was considered a needle in a haystack to find a way to control this invasive species. And for anybody who likes biodiversity and who cares about fishing in the Great Lakes or who likes to go into a restaurant and get Great Lakes fish in the restaurant, they have these people to thank.”

Gaden wanted to make sure the story was told while there are still people who can give a firsthand account, like the Sivertson family in Duluth and folks from the Great Lakes Fish and Wildlife Commission in Bayfield.

“We collected more than 100 interviews with people throughout the Great Lakes Basin and beyond,” he said.

Haskin said no previous knowledge or interest in the Great Lakes region is needed to take something from the film.

“This is a film about human tenacity and human perseverance to me,” Haskin said. “This was a devastating problem that was killing small town economies and killed people’s jobs, and small businesses were going under on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border.”

“The Fish Thief” is streaming on Apple TV and Amazon Prime.