From Great Lakes Bureau Chief Mary Ellen Geist: Today, greatlakesnow.org posts the third in a series of short videos about the Great Lakes by filmmaker Aaron Martin.
Aaron is a producer and director who is dedicated to telling dramatic stories about how humans and the environment interact.
Aaron regularly produces segments on the ecology, blue economy and natural history of the Laurentian Great Lakes for Detroit Public Television’s Great Lakes Bureau. Aaron also produced The Ethanol Effect, an hour-long documentary for national PBS examining the political and economic effects of producing fuel from corn, and was the producer/director of Beyond the Tap, a half-hour special on the water crisis in Flint, Michigan for PBS WORLD Channel, in addition to producing segments for the PBS NewsHour, SciTech Now and Local USA on subjects ranging from a deadly disease affecting bats to underwater archaeology.
In this video, Aaron travels to Lake Erie to explore the lessons mayflies teach us about pollution.
Mayflies have long been a natural indicator of the health of Lake Erie. They almost disappeared in the middle of the last century when the lake was poisoned by sewage and industrial pollutants, and then returned when the lake recovered. Now the lake is facing a new
set of environmental threats, and something interesting is happening to the mayflies: Small hatches have been showing up later and later into the fall. Detroit Public Television’s Great Lakes Bureau visits Lake Erie’s southern shore to investigate.
