By Mike Anderson
While most of us were busy planning for the holidays, documentary filmmakers Zach Melnick and Yvonne Drebert from Inspired Planet Productions were braving the elements on Lake Simcoe in late November and early December, trying to record the sex lives of lake whitefish.
Operating a boat equipped with a specialized underwater drone, allowing them to film for hours in challenging weather conditions, they spent two weeks hoping to sneak up on schools of whitefish and document one of nature’s miraculous events.
“We’re trying to get as many days on the water as we can. It’s not our choice to be out there. It’s up to the whitefish when we do this. Our goal is to capture whitefish during spawning. And they love this horrible time of the year,” Drebert said.
While the married couple have produced several award-winning nature documentaries, including the series All Too Clear for TVOntario, this time round the filming is sponsored by The Great Lakes Fishery Commission and Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) for scientific research.
“It started from a desire to tell the story. But now we’re filming for science, specifically to understand their spawning behaviour. If we understand how they reproduce, we might be able to figure out how to help them,” Melnick said.
According to recent studies, whitefish populations in the Great Lakes, especially in Lakes Michigan and Huron, have plummeted, with commercial catches dropping by 70 per cent since 2009.
“Whitefish in the Great Lakes are at a crisis. Right now, commercial fishers, including indigenous fishers, are not able to catch enough fish to make a living. In a lot of areas, you would call it a collapse,” Melnick said.
Biologists attribute much of the decline to the impact of invasive species, such as quagga and zebra mussels, which filter out plankton and algae that sustain young (larval) whitefish, leaving an aging, geriatric population that does not reproduce itself. They warn that whitefish could disappear from Lake Michigan and Lake Huron within the next five to ten years.
Climate change may also be contributing to the stress on the species.
“There is concern about climate change because their eggs don’t hatch until the spring. So ice cover is critical to keep wave energy from whipping them out of the little cracks where they live between rocks. So, a lack of ice is a problem for whitefish,” Drebert said.
Lake whitefish typically spawn in the late fall, from September to December, in shallow, rocky areas as water temperatures drop below 8 degrees Celsius.
Spawning occurs when female whitefish release their eggs (roe), and the males fertilize them by releasing their sperm (milt) in the water.
But capturing whitefish spawning on camera hasn’t been easy. For the past three years, the couple pursued the species throughout the Great Lakes. But, they were only able to capture spawning once in Lake Michigan.
“We’ve been trying to do this in late November up to mid-December throughout the world’s largest freshwater lakes. And it’s been strikeout after strikeout,” Melnick said.
That is, until they began filming in Lake Simcoe.
“There’s a lot of whitefish in Lake Simcoe. So that increases our chances of actually getting to fish doing their thing,” Drebert said.
Lake Simcoe is the only lake in Ontario that MNR has historically stocked with whitefish, averaging between 100,000 and 150,000 juvenile fish each year. In 2025, according to its “Fish ON-Line” data portal, MNR stocked 144,000 fingerlings.
And, recent surveys have found that “wild” (natural-born) whitefish in Lake Simcoe are reproducing in greater numbers.
Melnick and Drebert are hopeful that a few weeks in harsh conditions on the lake will pay dividends for the future of the whitefish.
“Whitefish is one of the most important species ecologically. What we got this time was just so much more than what we were able to get before. It is almost certainly the most comprehensive record of the spawning activity for this species ever in history,” Melnick said.
“The first scientific paper from this footage came out in April. And we expect there will be more scientific output.”
“Lake Simcoe is a place of hope for whitefish. They’re not doing well in the Great Lakes, and if there’s a good population here, it could help bring them back elsewhere in our watershed,” Drebert added.
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