Lake Erie Monsters

While some of Lake Erie's creatures have disappeared, new and old species continue to live in its sandy waters — some of which stand as a surprise. B y B ecky B o B an

Lake Erie’s biological saga has mysterious origins. Roger Thoma, retired Ohio EPA environmental scientist, speculates inner glacial lakes and rivers — including the Maumee, Wabash and Ohio rivers — allowed species to funnel into the lake prior to the glacial retreat, which would explain the presence of southern species. “[Yet] there’s some species that do not show any indication they’ve been there for 10,000 years,” Thoma says, citing human introduction, anoxia and habitat loss in the last century. Its tumultuous history chapters many unusual critters. “There’s far more going on than we give them credit for,” says Roberta Muelhleim, assistant curator of vertebrate zoology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

Freshwater Drum

Haunting croaks from below the boat are likely the world’s only freshwater drum species creaking a love song. Though culinarily worthless, drums eat zebra mussels, crushing them in their throat and blowing out the inedible splinters through their gills.

Sea Lampreys

Lampreys start life as tiny filter feeders. The adult fish sports a mouth that looks like a disheveled knife drawer — used to kill 40 pounds of fish per year, says Muehlheim. “Nature always has something that can out-do a science fiction movie.”

Gizzard Shad

These wedge-shaped, silver fish arrived in Lake Erie in the mid-1900s. Ill-adapted to its winters, they enter Ohio’s warm rivers only to die in droves as if part of a cultish pact that short-circuits the food web. “Ninety percent of them die,” Thoma says.

Opossum Shrimp

Opossum shrimp swim upside-down, a tradition started by their ancestors. Millions of these cold-water primitive crustaceans call Lake Erie home. And have, Thoma says, since the glaciers retreated, or, “since the lake was a lake.”

Freshwater Jellyfish

Harmless to humans, craspedacusta sowerbyi principally exist as hydras. When water quality suffers, hydras transform into jellyfish, swarming in two-week blooms to reproduce before perishing. They look like tiny translucent umbrellas.

Spotted Gar

Minnows mosey through an underwater jungle, oblivious to the crocodile-like snoot of a spotted gar awaiting. These endangered, dappled three-foot fish are rare, even in the Sandusky and island areas where they’re typically spotted.

Round Goby

In 1986, Thoma was one of the first to collect and record round goby in Fairport Harbor. Native to foreign seas, round goby have a love-hate relationship with Erie. They prey on zebra mussels, but drive out native benthic species, like darters.

Lake Erie Sturgeon

Growing up to 10 feet long and weighing 200 pounds, sturgeon are toothless vacuums that troll Lake Erie’s bottom for snails, mussels, and crayfish with electroreceptive barbels. Their bodies were once harvested by fishermen for caviar.

2023 Best Doctors

By Lynne Thompson

PHOTOGRAPHED BY MEGANN GALEHOUSE

Fox anchor Natalie Herbick shares her breast cancer story and how she hopes to use it to empower others.

Natalie Herbick is happy, energetic and camera-ready as she hurries into her local Panera on a late Sunday morning in early June. The 39-year-old Fox 8 news anchor and New Day Cleveland co-host, dressed in flowing white palazzo pants and a band-collared chambray shirt, stands out among a steadily increasing line of patrons in jeans, leggings and T-shirts. Her dark-brown hair, tastefully streaked with a few golden highlights, appears freshly blown dry, and her makeup is perfectly applied.

Herbick wins a spirited battle for the lunch check by refusing to pay for her order at the counter register until I place mine, then leads the way to a corner booth. The conversation ranges from the advantages of square-shaped nails and hard-gel manicures to eyebrow pencils — her favorite is Benefit’s Goof-Proof.

“My sister still tells me I put it on too thick,” she says as she pulls a tube of it out of her purse to show off.

But talk eventually turns to the subject we’ve met to discuss.

This year, Herbick was diagnosed with breast cancer. She subsequently opted for a double-mastectomy and reconstruction. She’s still recovering from the latter, performed almost two weeks before our meeting, a fact amazingly at odds with her picture-perfect appearance and effervescent demeanor to which viewers of her daily, twohour lifestyle show are accustomed.

“I have to really stop myself from trying to do too much because I feel pretty good,” she says between spoonfuls of chicken-noodle soup.

The experience has launched a personal mission to reinforce the impor-

Ntance of regular breast-cancer screenings and to disseminate information that she feels she should have had, even if she’d never developed the disease. She informed viewers of her diagnosis and planned treatment in a taped interview with Fox 8 morning and noon news co-anchor Stefani Schaefer that aired during the station’s news broadcasts and addressed her upcoming absences from New Day Cleveland

“I was just in survival mode before,” she says during a phone call the day before her implant surgery. “Now let’s start to analyze: What exactly did I have, and how can I help people moving forward?”

“I don’t remember everything that went through my mind,” she says. “The world just kind of stopped.”

It was a diagnosis Herbick had wondered if she’d ever face. Her grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer in her 80s. And her mother died in March 2019, at age 63, after a 3½-year battle with ovarian cancer. Although doctors determined neither cancer was hereditary in nature, the diagnoses spurred Herbick to begin scheduling annual mammograms at age 37. The first two showed no signs of cancer.

“I was told that I had dense tissue,” she says. “I never knew that was anything to be concerned about.”

NATALIE HERBICK LEARNED she had cancer on cloudy-but-mild Monday, Jan. 30, while driving to the Department of Motor Vehicles. She picked up a call from a nurse navigator at the Cleveland Clinic who told her a biopsy taken from her right breast was cancerous. Herbick remained silent as the woman explained that doctors would be calling to discuss a treatment plan. “O.K., have a nice day,” she said before disconnecting the call and beginning to cry as she drove west on Interstate 480.

But in fall 2022, Herbick’s Cleveland Clinic gynecologist, Dr. Tammy Parker, suggested she get a breast-cancer risk assessment at the clinic’s Breast Health Center at Fairview Hospital because of her family history. After a physical exam, study of previous mammograms and review of Herbick’s mother’s genetictesting results and father’s family medical history, a nurse practitioner determined Herbick had a 21.4% chance of developing breast cancer at some point in her life taking precautions at a younger age than most.