Even when they’re young, the characteristic iridescent hues of the Arctic grayling are noticeable at the right angle.
Fish and wildlife biologist Sean Leask counts and measures hundreds of the fish, which have been raised at the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians’ streamside rearing facility. They’ll be released into the Boardman-Ottaway River later in the day.
This story is made possible through a partnership between Interlochen Public Radio and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.
“Some of these might be catchable by the end of next year,” Leask said. “I don’t know what their growth will look like in the wild.”
That’s because Arctic grayling haven’t been seen in Michigan waters for almost a century as industrial activity decimated their numbers — but northern Michigan tribes and the state are trying to change that.
One year into raising and releasing grayling to the region’s waterways, biologists with the tribes are grappling with questions about whether the fish are surviving and how to adapt their efforts to extreme weather. No released grayling have been seen in the wild. Flood conditions and the small number of fish they began with are complicating survey work.
But the tribes remain optimistic their restoration efforts will improve as they collect more data in the coming years. Biologists think it will be around six to eight years before they can tell if reintroduction has been successful.
“This is an experiment,” said Dan Mays, inland policy biologist for the Grand Traverse Band. “We’re trying our best.”
In the summer and early fall, the Grand Traverse Band raised and released around 8,000 young grayling into the Boardman-Ottaway River. They’re one of three northern Michigan tribes that received grayling eggs from a state hatchery in 2025, the culmination of years of planning plus millions of dollars in combined state, federal and private funding. The eggs were sourced from one of the last remaining North American populations in Alaska’s Chena River.
Mays is already feeling more optimistic about the number and the size of the fish compared to last year, when a power outage at the tribe’s rearing facility killed a majority of the grayling.
“Overall, four times as many grayling,” he said. “We’re also stocking a higher proportion of bigger grayling this year. Greater size, greater survival.”
Raising the grayling is one challenge.
Tracking the fish to see whether they’ve survived is another. None of the three northern Michigan tribes have recaptured a grayling yet.
“It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack and the haystack is the size of a river,” said Alex Ontkos, inland fisheries biologist with the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians.
Earlier this year, that tribe stocked 391,000 grayling eggs using in-stream incubators. Not all of those eggs hatched, with viability rates estimated around 50% to 60%, Ontkos said.
Unlike the Grand Traverse Band’s method, larvae hatched directly into incubators on the Manistee River near Kalkaska, grew into tiny fry, then left the incubator.
While biologists observed tens of thousands of fry leaving the incubators, they have yet to see or recapture a grayling. The team with the Little River Band will continue to survey for fish this fall.
“I don't think that that's because they're not out there,” Ontkos said. “It's just a matter of being in the right place at the right time.”
Being in the right place at the right time has been trickier for another tribe Up North.
Kris Dey, hatchery manager for the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, said two years of ice storms and extreme flooding in the region has made it hard to tell what’s been working or not.
Understanding how fish are surviving or growing has been tricky, as parts of the watershed are still swollen or blocked by storm debris.
“All the places that we scouted for years and prepped and prepared,” he said, “we have not had a great time getting out into the river and evaluating where they're at and how they're doing.”
The tribe also reared eggs earlier this year and released them as fry into the Maple River near Petoskey.
Looking ahead, Dey worries about how a shifting climate might affect grayling restoration efforts beyond worsening extreme weather. The Arctic fish species thrives in cold waters, and Dey said Michigan waterways will likely trend warmer in the future.
“Trying to plan for a warmer future is very, very difficult,” Dey said.
But there are ways to adapt their grayling efforts. He wants to upgrade their current egg incubator system to allow the grayling to grow more before release.
“Climate change and the dramatic weather that we’re having may make us do things in a different way,” he said.
While none of the partner tribes have recaptured a grayling yet, there have been signs of last year’s grayling stocked by the team with the Grand Traverse Band.
Monitors along the Boardman-Ottaway River have picked up some signals from fish tagged prior to release last year.
Leask with the Grand Traverse Band said the signals could’ve been from a brown trout or an otter with a grayling in its stomach, but he wants to be optimistic.
“I’m hopeful they were a live fish with a tag,” Leask said. “It wasn’t many, but enough to give you a little hope.”
The tribe plans to do predation studies next year to find out what animals are eating the grayling.
On a sunny September day, staff with the Grand Traverse Band waded out into the north branch of Boardman-Ottaway River with buckets of grayling.
Tina Frankenberger, Grand Traverse Band’s tribal environmental resiliency lead, sprinkled some tobacco on the water, an Anishinaabe tradition that helps their ancestors hear prayers more clearly, she said.
Frankenberger said her prayer, gently tipped the bucket, and watched the grayling slowly disperse downstream.
“Our taking of them and helping them to reestablish their population helps us to reestablish ourselves, our culture and our traditions,” she said.
This reporting is made possible by the Northern Michigan Journalism Collaborative, led by Bridge Michigan and Interlochen Public Radio, and funded by Press Forward Northern Michigan.
