After reading the story about Mary and Joey (our founders) as part of our Who We Are page, some people may ask why focus on whales?  Why doesn’t our organization bring other ocean-based life forms to Lake Michigan?

That is a great question and it is worthy of an answer.

• Mary and Joey would love to bring sharks to the area.  However, the city of Grand Haven, the city of Holland and the city of Muskegon have all formed a lobbying group that could influence the removal of all of our funding if we were to introduce sharks in to our area.  They claim that man-eating creature swimming in Lake Michigan could have a negative impact on the beach communities causing people in Grand Rapids to stay home and swim at Reed’s Lake.  There has also been concerns that Conklin, Michigan residents may chose to swim in Crockery Lake instead of coming to the Lake Michigan shoreline.  While we believe these concerns are unfounded, this is a battle that Mary and Joey do not wish to fight at this time.
• The technology for transitioning salt water creatures into ones that will thrive in fresh water is still in its infancy.  We are currently working with Monsanto and Microsoft to enhance our technologies and make them more effective.
• Frankly, it costs a lot of money.   We had to be selective about where we focused our resources.  In the past there were a lot more grants from the federal government.  Unfortunately, when the Republican party started their efforts to shut down the government on a periodic basis our funding became more unpredictable.  Instead of attempting to bring dozens of ocean-based creatures to the lakes, we would focus on one . . . The Whale.

So Why Whales?

Whales are big
Whales are fun
Whales make big splashes
Whales are easier to see than something that would be smaller