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Even when they’re young, the characteristic iridescent hues of the Arctic grayling are noticeable at the right angle.
On a brisk morning in September, fish and wildlife biologist Sean Leask counted and measured hundreds of these fish, which were raised at the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians’ streamside rearing facility, located just outside Traverse City in northern Michigan.
“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. By the 1930s, industrial activity like logging and overfishing, along with competition from non-native fish, had decimated their numbers. But three northern Michigan tribes and the state are trying to change that by reintroducing the fish to local waters.
“Our taking care of them and helping them to reestablish their population helps us to reestablish ourselves, our culture, and our traditions,” said Tina Frankenberger, the Grand Traverse Band’s tribal environmental resiliency lead.
Their work joins broader efforts by tribes around the country to restore native species — from salmon to oysters to condors — that are culturally and economically important, while also strengthening the ecosystems that these species depend on against threats like climate change.
One year into raising and releasing grayling to northern Michigan waterways, biologists with the Michigan 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 that 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 grayling reintroduction has been successful.
“This is an experiment,” said Dan Mays, inland policy biologist for the Grand Traverse Band. “We’re trying our best.”
Young Arctic grayling swim in holding tanks at a Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians streamside rearing facility near Traverse City.
In the summer and early fall, the Grand Traverse Band raised around 8,000 young grayling and released them into the Boardman-Ottaway River. They’re one of three northern Michigan tribes that received grayling eggs from a state hatchery in 2025, along with the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians and the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians. This was the culmination of years of planning plus millions of dollars in combined state, federal, and private funding to restore ecosystems. The eggs for Michigan’s reintroduction efforts were sourced from the Chena River in Alaska, a state where Arctic grayling are plentiful and more genetically diverse than the only remaining population in the Lower 48, in Montana’s Big Hole River.
Mays is already feeling more optimistic about the number and the size of the grayling that the Grand Traverse Band raised 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, an inland fisheries biologist with the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians. Earlier this year, this tribe stocked 391,000 grayling eggs using in-stream incubators on the Manistee River near Kalkaska. Not all of those eggs hatched, with viability rates estimated around 50 to 60 percent, Ontkos said.
Unlike the Grand Traverse Band, the Little River Band let larvae hatch directly into the incubators, grow into tiny fry, then leave the incubator. While biologists observed tens of thousands of fry leaving the incubators, they have yet to see or recapture a grayling.
“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.” The team with the Little River Band will continue to survey for fish this fall.
Being in the right place at the right time has been trickier for another northern Michigan tribe.
Kris Dey, the hatchery manager for the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, said two years of ice storms and extreme flooding in parts of northern Michigan have made it hard to tell how fish are surviving or growing, 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,” Dey said, “we have not had a great time getting out into the river and evaluating where they’re at and how they’re doing.”
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.
And even after a successful reintroduction, some tribes are grappling with maintaining a species’ stability. Thanks to efforts from the St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin, lake sturgeon have made a comeback in the Lake Winnebago watershed, but scientists question whether populations can adapt quickly enough to warming winters.
Staff with the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians wade in the Boardman-Ottaway River near Traverse City, Michigan, to release Arctic grayling.
In northern Michigan, biologists said there are ways to adapt their grayling efforts for a changing climate. Dey wants to upgrade the Little Traverse Bay Bands’ current egg incubator system to allow the grayling to grow more before release, in hopes of increasing their likelihood of surviving in the wild.
“Climate change and the dramatic weather that we’re having may make us do things in a different way,” Dey said.
While none of the partner tribes have recaptured a grayling yet, there have been signs of the grayling stocked last year 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 which animals are eating the grayling.
After counting and measuring, staff with the Grand Traverse Band waded out into the north branch of Boardman-Ottaway River with buckets of grayling. Frankenberger sprinkled some tobacco on the water in an Anishinaabe tradition that helps their ancestors hear prayers more clearly, she said.
After saying her prayer, Frankenberger gently tipped the bucket, then watched the grayling slowly disperse downstream in the Boardman-Ottaway River.
“I think about them reestablishing their connection to this river,” she said. “I like to think it’ll help rebuild those connections for our people.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In Michigan, 3 tribes are on a mission to bring back a fish that disappeared 100 years ago on Oct 21, 2026.
