“If the wars of [the 20th] century were fought over oil, the wars of [the 21st] century will be fought over water.”
—Ismael Serageldin, August, 1995

The story of the Great Lakes is told through a collection of interrelated individual stories. In the process viewers travel on a voyage of discovery around the five lakes, a journey that explores the natural beauty, economic importance, tourism, commerce, ecosystem and challenges of the Sweetwater Seas. Through the prism of individual experiences the grand story of these astonishing bodies of water is presented. Examples of such stories include:

· Host Bill Henkel spends two weeks as a docent at the Pottawatomie Lighthouse on Rock Island, off the north end of Wisconsin’s Door County. The Kentuckian’s fascination with the Great Lakes is distilled in an unforgettable experience as the keeper of the oldest lighthouse on Lake Michigan.

· A kayak expedition explores the Lake Huron shore at French River Provincial Park in Ontario, where Champlain first encountered La Mer Douce. The images of the vastness of the freshwater seas echo Champlain’s astonishment when he saw “oceans” of sweet water.

· A camper-van excursion to the northern shore of Lake Superior reveals some of the oldest exposed rocks in the world, part of the Canadian Shield, to explain the history of the Great Lakes, from the pre-Ice Age string of lakes and rivers to their present configuration.

· An iron boat captain from Duluth sails to the Soo Locks at Sault Ste. Marie, and we examine the history of Great Lakes shipping and the commercial importance of the bodies of water. The site of the Edmund Fitzgerald wreck leads to the danger of Great Lakes shipping, particularly on Lake Erie.

· The Great Lakes Compact is also examined from the perspective of Native Americans in our interview with Frank Ettawageshik, Executive Director of the Untied Tribes of Michigan and a member of the Little Traverse Bands of Chippewa and Odawa Indians. He was a Native American delegate in the original negotiations whose personal story begins and ends on the shore of Little Traverse Bay at the north end of Lake Michigan.

· The story of the endangered piping plover is told at Sleeping Bear Dunes, leading to a review of efforts to save endangered species throughout the lakes. In 2019, a nesting pair of piping plovers successfully raised chicks in the middle of Chicago’s lakefront.

· Larry Mawby of the renowned L.Mawby Winery in Michigan’s Leelenau Peninsula, near Traverse City, leads us on a commercial journey to some of his markets in Chicago and Minneapolis. At Pops for Champagne in Chicago the trail ends at the Watershed, a club that serves only products from within the Great Lakes watershed. Mawby’s story segues into the wine industries in Michigan and New York, in turn opening the tales of agriculture around the lakes.

· Wisconsin farmer Dan Brick demonstrates how individual farmers can fight destructive algae blooms on the Great Lakes from Green Bay to Saginaw Bay to western Lake Erie. Brick has been working with government agencies to not only increase farm yields but to be a better steward of the land and decrease his nutrient runoff into the Great Lakes, a model of individual effort that will put an end to Lake Erie’s annual “dead zone.”

· JoAnne Cook of the Grand Traverse Band of Chippewa Indians shares a deeply spiritual view of the Great Lakes while explaining her legal actions on behalf of her people to make sure the crude-oil pipeline beneath the Straits of Mackinac is not allowed to fail.

· At Niagara Falls we follow the power from the hydroelectric plant to an end user in Buffalo as an emblem of the industrial powerhouse that once was centered on the Great Lakes. This leads to examination of the industrial economy of the region. Rachel Havrelock, the founder and director of the University of Illinois, Chicago, Freshwater Lab leads us through her vision of an industrial resurrection around the Great Lakes.

· Shedd Aquarium scientists are trying to rescue the St. Lawrence beluga, which are dying from industrial pollutants downstream from Montreal and Quebec City. The story of the struggle faced by these whale helps reveal the reality that the Great Lakes flow like a river to the Atlantic Ocean, albeit slowly.

· The last story is from the Toronto lakefront, which ties to the lakefront-park projects in Cleveland, Toledo, and Milwaukee, finally returning to the granddaddy of all preserved lakefronts, Chicago. This segues into a review of the fantastic national, state, and provincial parks that ring the Great Lakes and the beautiful cityscapes that highlight the grand story of the magnificent bodies of water.

THE SWEETWATER SEAS is not just a beautiful documentary—it is also a call to action by showing what other voices are doing on the Great Lakes.