Quagga Mussel

Our planet’s greatest freshwater ecosystem, like you’ve never seen it before

All Too Clear uses cutting-edge underwater drones to explore how quadrillions of tiny invasive mussels are re-engineering the ecosystem of North America’s Great Lakes at a scale not seen since the glaciers. The mussels are trapping nutrients, the building blocks of life, on the lake bottom. Without nutrients, organisms of all kinds – from the tiniest plankton to the largest fish – are vanishing, creating vast biological deserts. The scientific community is divided into those racing to find a way to control the invaders, and those who see an ironic silver-lining in the new world created by the mussels – a once-in-a-lifetime chance to restore an ancient and forgotten native ecosystem.

The mussels have also had an extraordinary side effect: they’ve made the lakes clearer than they’ve ever been before. We’ve harnessed this clarity to film never-before-seen visuals: from dazzling shallow water worlds that look more like the Caribbean than the Great Lakes, to previously undiscovered shipwrecks, completely entombed in mussels, 300 feet beneath the surface. 

All Too Clear is an eye-popping exploration of our freshwater world that makes us all part of the high-stakes mission to breathe life back into the depths. 

Coming soon.