Environment
How Catfish and Algae Are Cleaning Up the Chicago River
The two are something like an odd couple in the fight to restore the river to health.
In the world of angling, voracious channel catfish are considered an easy catch.
Thanks to the catfish’s ability to “manage some degradation”—as Margaret Frisbie, executive director of the nonprofit Friends of the Chicago River, puts it—releasing the hardy fish into Chicago’s river system is a simple way to show the effects of water pollution and measure signs of progress.