Fish from the Great Lakes region took center stage at the 44th annual National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fish Fry on June 5 in Washington, D.C. Both wild-caught and aquaculture-raised fish and shellfish were served to attendees by 17 seafood chefs and vendors, including Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant (IISG), Michigan Sea Grant and Wisconsin Sea Grant.
U.S. Secretary of State Wilbur Ross samples Wisconsin-raised Atlantic salmon at the Wisconsin Sea Grant table. (Wisconsin Sea Grant Photo/Titus Seilheimer)
The fish fry promotes awareness and understanding of aquaculture and commercial fisheries. Every year, up to 1,100 people purchase a ticket to sample seafood near NOAA headquarters on the National Mall. Guest chefs come from locations around the United States from as far away as Alaska and Puerto Rico to Chesapeake Bay.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant shined a spotlight on an invasive species by serving smoked, wild-caught Asian carp, flaked to perfection and presented on crackers with a cream cheese spread. The silver carp, also known as silverfin, were wild-caught in the Midwest—but not in Lake Michigan, as IISG staff members were sure to point out. While this invader continues to spread and has reached Lake Calumet, just south of Chicago and only a few miles from the Lake Michigan shoreline, barriers have kept it from entering the Great Lake.
For years, there has been a popular phrase in the aquatic invasive species crowd: “If you can’t beat ’em, eat ’em!” And that is exactly what IISG Director Tomas Höök told people at the fish fry as they sampled the silverfin spread. He was joined by Lisa Kim and Hollis Jones, Knauss Fellows working in Washington, D.C. Kim, sponsored by IISG, is an ocean policy analyst in the National Ocean Service headquarters, while Jones is sponsored by Louisiana Sea Grant and was placed as a research integration specialist with the National Sea Grant College Program.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant is a part of University of Illinois Extension and Purdue Extension.
With increased rainfall in the Great Lakes region, many homeowners have been affected by flooding more than usual. Eliana Brown, a stormwater specialist with University of Illinois Extension and Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant (IISG), has created a video series called “Stormwater@Home” to teach homeowners simple steps they can take to better manage stormwater on their property. The series gives tips and tricks to help avoid pooling in yards, flooding in basements and excess runoff flowing into local waterways.
“Most people want to pitch in and do the right thing to help out their neighborhoods and waterways,” said Brown. “This video series showcases some examples of practices people can do at their own home at various levels of investment.” While some stormwater management techniques might take a large amount of time, effort and money to put into practice, many actions that homeowners can take do not require as many resources.
“Things have been really wet in the area since around the spring of 2018,” said Veronica Fall, a climate specialist with University of Illinois Extension and IISG. “This has contributed to a lot of flooding events not just because there has been excessive rainfall, but also because the soil has been so saturated that rainfall is not absorbed and therefore just runs off, eventually entering our waterways [and contributing to dangerously high water].”
“The conditions that we’re currently experiencing with frequent, heavy rainstorms and flooding events are expected to become much more typical in the future,” said Fall. “It is critical that homeowners take action now to better manage stormwater on their property before conditions worsen.”
Brown’s Stormwater@Home video series covers the following topics:
“Managing rainwater is a way for us to take responsibility for what runs off our impervious surfaces,” said Brown. “It’s important to reduce the amount of runoff on our properties to mitigate flooding and impacts to waterways. We hope this video series also shows that these practices can be beautiful and enjoyable.”
Partners at hundreds of water access sites throughout the Great Lakes region are set to participate in an AIS Landing Blitz from June 28 to July 7 to inform boaters and others of the risks of introducing and spreading aquatic invasive species (AIS).
Volunteers, along with paid inspectors, will be partnering with state and local agencies at boat launches to educate visitors on procedures used to prevent the spread of AIS, ways to identify AIS, protocols for reporting an AIS discovery, and local AIS laws and regulations.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant (IISG) has partnered with Lake County Forest Preserves and will be at the Fox River Forest Preserve boat launch on Saturday, June 29 teaching people simple steps to help prevent the introduction and spread of aquatic invasive species in Illinois. On the same day, staff from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources will be helping people at Lake Wawasee and Syracuse Lake public access ramps.
While similar events have been hosted in previous years, this is the first time that all of the Great Lakes states and provinces are involved and coordinating efforts to maximize the event’s impact.
“This is the first time that these valuable educational events will be held simultaneously across the entire Great Lakes region,” said Greg Hitzroth, an aquatic invasive species outreach specialist with IISG and Illinois Natural History Survey. “It’s a chance to work directly with boaters and deliver a coordinated, regional message about the importance of AIS prevention during the busiest boating weekends of the year.”
Working with local communities and volunteers will be key to the success of the event, says Jordan Wood, an AIS outreach assistant who works with Hitzroth.
“Boaters will have the opportunity to engage directly with volunteers in their community during the Blitz,” Wood said. “Seeing community members taking time out of their day reinforces that it takes all of our efforts to help protect our lakes and rivers, including the Great Lakes, from the unwanted impacts of invasive species.”
For more information on the AIS Landing Blitz, including educational materials, locations and volunteer opportunities, visit www.glc.org/blitz. For more information on IISG’s Be A Hero – Transport Zero campaign, visit TransportZero.org.
The Great Lakes Legacy Act team that successfully remediated the wetlands below the former Zephyr Oil Refinery in Michigan won the Western Dredging Association (WEDA) 2019 Environmental Excellence Award. During its Annual Summit & Expo in Chicago, held from June 4-7, WEDA presented two Environmental Excellence Awards, recognizing projects that demonstrate environmental awareness in each of two categories. The “Environmental Dredging” award went to the Zephyr Refinery Project and the “Mitigation and Adaptation to Climate Change” award to the La Quinta Aquatic Habitat Mitigation Project.
The prize winners fulfilled and exceeded the criteria of the Environmental Commission and made outstanding contributions to meeting the goals of WEDA, which are to “promote communication and understanding of environmental issues and stimulate new solutions associated with dredging and placement of dredged materials such that dredging projects, including navigation and environmental, are accomplished in an efficient manner while meeting environmental goals.”
The 2019 WEDA Environmental Excellence Award for Environmental Dredging was presented to the project team from EA Engineering, Science, and Technology, Inc., PBC (EA) and Sevenson Environmental Services (SES) for the dredging and restoration of the Former Zephyr Refinery: Fire Suppression Ditch project (Zephyr project). Other entities accepting the award included project owners the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Great Lakes National Program Office (GLNPO) and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ), as well as project partners Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, the West Michigan Shoreline Regional Development Commission, and the Muskegon Lake Watershed Partnership.
The Zephyr project area is located along the North Branch of the Muskegon River in the Muskegon Lake Area of Concern (AOC), Muskegon, Michigan. For more than 40 years, the Zephyr Oil Refinery operated with historic releases of petroleum and metals into the Muskegon Lake watershed. These releases contributed to significant contamination of the sediment and wetlands surrounding the site and resulted in the loss of fish and wildlife habitat, as well as other beneficial use impairments (BUIs) to the AOC. The Zephyr project was identified in the Stage 2 Remedial Action Plan for the Muskegon Lake AOC for restoration in order to support BUI removal. Under the Great Lakes Legacy Act, through the strong partnership between the U.S. EPA GLNPO and MDEQ, the project was completed in late 2018.
In addition to receiving the Environmental Excellence Award, the U.S. EPA GLNPO accepted WEDA’s Special Recognition Award for accomplishments toward restoring and protecting the health of the Great Lakes, specifically by remediating historical contamination in ports, harbors and other waterways. The people at GLNPO were honored as key players and leaders in finding practicable solutions to complex problems, just as they had in the remediation of the wetlands near the former Zephyr Oil Refinery.
The Zephyr project provided numerous environmental benefits by remediating legacy contamination and restoring native habitat within a Great Lakes AOC, and contributing to the future removal of BUIs within the AOC. It demonstrated how innovative partnerships and contracting approaches can lead to success on many levels. The remediation will provide economic benefits to the Muskegon Lake area and Great Lakes region and the many lessons learned will be beneficial for future projects. In addition, the thorough public outreach activities – the site is located adjacent to residential areas – demonstrated the importance of engaging with residents and other concerned citizens.
“Community outreach was a priority and a team effort at Zephyr,” said Caitie Nigrelli, environmental social scientist with the U.S. EPA and Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. “We were digging up petroleum-based contaminants upwind of a neighborhood. We wanted to be a good neighbor. We needed to know that our project was maintaining air quality standards, and had a plan in place to communicate that. We went door to door before construction started to alert neighbors of potential odors and thank them in advance for their patience.”
Sustainable approaches were implemented in the remediation, including the reuse of all woody debris and trees removed on the site for habitat structures. The project team also left approximately 8% of the haul road material in place for an upcoming restoration project on the adjacent property, therefore reducing disposal quantities and reusing material in a beneficial manner. Finally, the environmental dredging of the Former Zephyr Refinery: Fire Suppression Ditch area included many unique elements that will be transferable and adaptable to future contaminated sediment remediation and restoration projects with similar characteristics.
To learn more about the Zephyr remediation process and to see drone footage of the wetlands before and after cleanup, visit Great Lakes Mud.
For further information, contact: Thomas P. Cappellino, WEDA Executive Director Craig Vogt, Ocean and Coastal Environmental Consulting
Each year, graduate students nominated by Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Knauss Fellowship turn in a report at the end of their tenure as a fellow. This year, it was time for Katie O’Reilly—a doctoral candidate at Notre Dame and the brilliant @DrKatfish on Twitter—to say goodbye and reflect on her growth and achievements over the past twelve months.
“In true communicator style, I decided to create a web page for my report, 2018 Knauss: A Year in Review,” O’Reilly said. “This truly amazing experience would not have been possible without the support from all of you: everyone at Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, the Sea Grant Knauss team, my PhD advisor Gary, and especially my Sea Grant mentor Brooke. I cannot thank you all enough for giving me this opportunity to grow in my career.”
If you want a fun and interesting way to dive into the world of a NOAA Sea Grant Knauss Policy Fellow, experience O’Reilly’s year as a fellow through her visual storytelling in 2018 Knauss: A Year in Review.
The Illinois Sustainable Technology Center and Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant (IISG) co-hosted the 2019 Emerging Contaminants Conference on May 21-22 in Champaign, Illinois. The fourth annual conference featured presentations on the latest in emerging contaminant research, policies and outreach strategies.
This year’s conference focused on a variety of pollutants in water, soil, and air ranging from pharmaceuticals, viruses, algal toxins and endocrine disruptors to pesticides, flame retardant chemicals, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and microplastics.
Many people show concern about eating genetically modified organisms (GMO) like the new farm-raised Atlantic salmon that includes a gene from chinook salmon and DNA sequence from ocean pout, an eel-like species. However, an article by Tony Briscoe in the Chicago Tribune—”Indiana salmon hatchery to raise nation’s first genetically modified animal cleared for human consumption”—covers why GMO fish produced via aquaculture are needed to help feed the world’s growing populations, how the new salmon production is similar to GMO crop production, and why the thought process of “GMO is scary” is not necessarily accurate. Tomas Höök, director of Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, comments on the public perception of GMO in the United States, as well as the necessity for aquaculture to feed people when marine fisheries are being overfished or have reached the limit of sustainable fishing levels.
The Environmental Protection Agency plans to dredge 60,000 cubic yards of polluted sediment out of a canal that connects the Grand Calumet River in East Chicago to Lake Michigan. It’s part of a larger project to remove century-old industrial contaminants from the river.
Every year, Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant takes local kids out for activities on the river for Grand Calumet River Stewardship Day. Caitie Nigrelli says since the EPA started removing polluted sediment out of the river in 2011, she’s seen wildlife in the area rebound — which has been great for the kids.
“Many of them got to see a bald eagle for their first time soaring over the river, and they got to see a flock of five or six great blue herons take off,” Nigrelli says.
Watering your lawn in the early morning or in the evening. Using phosphorus-free fertilizers. Mowing your grass to a height of at least 3 inches. These are but a few steps you can take to have healthier and environment-friendly lawns.
We want to share lawn care tips that are important to homeowners, so won’t you help us by answering a brief questionnaire?
If you are at least 18 years old and take care of your lawn, we want your opinions. Our questionnaire will take no longer than 20 minutes to complete, and fully completing the survey makes you eligible to be entered into a drawing to win an iPad!
If you have questions about this project, you may contact either of the principal investigators, Sarah Zack (szack@illinois.edu) and Lulu Rodriguez (lulurod@illinois.edu). If you have questions about your rights as a participant, feel free to get in touch with the University of Illinois Office for the Protection of Research Subjects at 217-333-2670 or irb@illinois.edu.
Thank you for taking the time to assist our researchers with this study.
IISG is hiring an experienced communication coordinator to oversee communication and lead efforts to develop and maintain programs and products that promote science-based knowledge and highlight IISG’s research, outreach and education efforts. Learn more at the #linkinbio.
“Community outreach was a priority and a team effort at Zephyr,” said Caitie Nigrelli, environmental social scientist with the U.S. EPA and Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. “We were digging up petroleum-based contaminants upwind of a neighborhood. We wanted to be a good neighbor. We needed to know that our project was maintaining air quality standards, and had a plan in place to communicate that. We went door to door before construction started to alert neighbors of potential odors and thank them in advance for their patience.”
;
