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Beneath the serene waters of Lake Michigan and other Great Lakes, a war rages. It pits armies of invaders bent on establishing colonies against a dwindling force of native lake dwellers.

The invaders — at least 56 organisms not native to the Great Lakes — have infiltrated the lake over the decades, most of them arriving stealthily in freighter ballast tanks.

You’ve heard about the tenacious zebra mussel, which has cost industries on the Great Lakes billions of dollars over the past two decades to keep pipes open and water flowing through homes, businesses and power plants. You may have heard about its even more destructive cousin, the quagga mussel: It roams farther than the zebra and blankets nearly the entire lake bottom. Damage: unfathomable.

And there are more lake pillagers likely to come. (See carp, Asian.)

We mention this because we just finished an impressive series in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “A Watershed Moment: Can We Protect The Great Lakes From A New Wave of Invasive Species?”

The answer: gulp. History isn’t on our side. Nor do most people comprehend the staggering scale of what’s happening beneath the waves: