Today I will talk about some of the innovations and lessons from the Great Lakes with regard to managing pest fish. I will start by putting the region into context from a New Zealand perspective and then I will focus on some surveillance tools, surveillance planning and control methods being developed in the region. I believe that many of the problems you face are the same as those in North America. However, there is significant investment occurring in the U.S. to manage a variety of species and overlap in issues may provide opportunities for collaboration. David Hamilton talked about linking this region to the world for water quality and monitoring and I believe the same applies to pest fish management. Certainly, the Great Lakes region has already gained from ongoing aquatic plant management collaborations with Paul Champion (e.g. Gantz et al 2015).