Sitting by a dock near the northern tip of Door County, Wisconsin, Charlie Henriksen looked out at the surrounding waters, where Green Bay meets Lake Michigan.

“Our dock is 5 miles from what used to be the greatest fishing in the Great Lakes,” Henriksen said.

The lifelong Wisconsinite has run his commercial fishing business, Henriksen Fisheries, for over 37 years, and has been fishing in this area for 50. For much of his career, Henriksen said fisheries in Green Bay and across Lake Michigan, including his, were anchored by the lake whitefish — a species of freshwater fish native to the Great Lakes.

Yet as climate change and invasive species threaten the whitefish’s reproductive patterns, experts say the species is at risk of disappearing entirely from Lake Michigan in the next few years

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