“They’re more than lakes,” Egan said Wednesday from the Amphitheater stage at Chautauqua Institution.

Egan, an author and journalist, recently penned the book, “The Death and Life of the Great Lakes.” Accompanied by Emily Morris, institution vice president of marketing and communications and chief brand officer, Egan discussed his book and the impacts of invasive species like mussels and algal blooms have on the Great Lakes.

Egan has been reporting on the Great Lakes for more than a decade.

“That’s where I got most of the material for this book,” Egan said.

Egan is currently a reporter for Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and a senior water policy fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Sciences. He was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize twice. Egan has won the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, John B. Oakes Award, AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award and J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award.

His book was selected by Robert Moore as the New York Times Book Review’s Book Club pick for April. Moore described the Egan’s work as “bursting with life.”

Egan said the fight to preserve lakes around the world should be an apolitical issue and that Democrats and Republicans should both contribute.

The issues raised in the Egan’s book point to the industrial revolution and essentially opening up the Great Lakes to connect one end of the country to the other. This allowed for invasive species to populate in non-native basins.

“These doors are really a door to the continent,” Egan said of the opening of the Great Lakes.

Egan spent much of his time on stage discussing quagga mussel that are impacting Lake Michigan, and other lakes across the country. He likened the invasive mussels in lakes to a wild fire that decimates a forest, but he points out that trees grow back.

“We don’t just suffer in the Great Lakes, we suffer across the country,” he said of opening the country’s bodies of waters to invasive species like the quagga mussel.

A contentious topic locally is the use of herbicides to eliminate algal blooms and overgrown weeds. Egan said the often hazardous algal blooms are due to high phosphorus levels that are caused by numerous factors.

In fact, Egan is currently working on a second book that will take a fresh look at phosphorus and how it impacts the lakes around the U.S.

As for lake pollution in general, Egan believes it began in the 1900s, and noted that Americans have become accustomed to their nearest lake being polluted. He said while the lakes will never return to their former glory, measures can be put in place to ensure they are never eliminated.

“The public should be interested in the public’s resource,” he said. “These lakes don’t belong to the farms or the shippers, they belong to everybody.”