July 15th, 2014 by iisg_superadmin
Boaters, anglers, and swimmers, you many want to think twice before heading out into Lake Michigan today. Forecasters are predicting waves swells as high as 7 ft, creating dangerous conditions for any one in water.
The high waves are the result of an unusual weather pattern expected to continue into tomorrow. A small piece of the polar vortex has dropped down to the southern Great Lakes, bringing fall-like weather to parts of Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana.
The cool air may be a welcomed break from July heat, but the shifting weather is not without its downsides. Right now, parts of the lake are actually warmer than the air above it, creating the perfect conditions for waterspouts. The wave swells created by gusty winds also bring a higher chance of rip currents, especially along Michigan’s western shore.
Whether you are planning a trip to the lake or not, you can track wave height and other lake conditions in southern Lake Michigan as the strange weather continues with the IISG real-time buoy.
*The week’s strange weather brings a chance of waterspouts like this one captured near Winthrop Harbor in 2013. Photo by Phil Mathis.
July 14th, 2014 by iisg_superadmin
It’s been two years since we launched our summer internship program, and we couldn’t be happier with the results. Our interns did great things at IISG—educated boaters on AIS prevention, investigated community perceptions of sediment remediation projects, installed a real-time buoy in Lake Michigan, and more. But this impressive work didn’t stop at the end of the summer. Several are now in graduate programs, including law school. Some moved on to internships focused on Great Lakes monitoring and renewable engineering. And a few have even stayed at IISG.
To celebrate the program’s two-year anniversary, we go back to where it all began with a four-part series showcasing our first round of interns—what they did and where they are now. The series wraps up with Naoki Wada.
What did you work on while interning with IISG?
During my internship, I led a project that resulted in the first-ever nearshore real-time weather observation buoy in Indiana’s Lake Michigan waters. Data from the Michigan City buoy is used for research, educational, and weather alert purposes. I was responsible for configuring, testing, deploying, operating, and recovering the buoy in 2012. I also developed a user manual to ensure proper buoy operations in the future.
What did you like most about your internship?
I was responsible for the whole project—from configuration of the internal system and construction of the mooring structure to deployment and later retrieval in preparation for winter storage. It was a great learning experience with a lot of trial and error. I learned how to manage a project and gained knowledge of various technical features and techniques. The experience also taught me that it’s ‘ok’ that I don’t know everything. There are always ways to figure it out. Also, I liked that the effort was not for the sake of learning, like in school, but to help someone and society.
What are you doing now?
I am a graduate student in mechanical and ocean engineering at University of California at Berkeley. My primary interest is the development of offshore floating wind power, for which the experiences and knowledge gained as an IISG intern has proven highly useful. This summer, I am also interning as a renewable energy consultant at an engineering service company in San Francisco called Black & Veatch. My main task is to conduct production estimates for large-scale solar power plants to verify the feasibility of the proposed projects.
As you can tell, I am very interested in engineering and renewable energy. I am interested in both the technical and non-technical aspects of these fields and am trying to find the way I can best contribute to the worldwide effort to develop renewable energy.
How did your time with IISG help prepare you for your graduate program and internship?
The experiences I had as an IISG intern is obviously highly relevant to what I am studying in graduate school. Through the internship, I learned how difficult it was to develop and deploy a small observation buoy and what kind of tasks and processes were involved. Because these same processes generally apply to other floating structures, including offshore floating wind platforms, I know I will use the knowledge I gained at IISG throughout my graduate program.
Also, the project management skills I learned will be useful as I move into industry. It is similar in that there will be a product or deliverable that has to be created on a limited budget and time frame. Knowing how to plan ahead is always important because things can definitely go wrong unexpectedly.
What advice would you have for future IISG interns or those considering applying?
One experience and summer can lead to bigger opportunities in many ways. Even if you’re not 100 percent sure what you will do in the future, just go for it if it’s the type of thing that you might like. Commit to the opportunities in front of you and the path will follow.
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For the latest information on our internship, visit the career opportunities page.
July 10th, 2014 by iisg_superadmin
It’s day four of the Shipboard and Shoreline Science Workshop, and teachers from across the Great Lakes region are hard at work conducting field experiments alongside researchers aboard the EPA R/V Lake Guardian. The group was in Lake Erie’s Presque Isle Bay yesterday collecting water samples and hunting for invasive species. Their work, along with some of the researchers and participants, was featured on WICU 12 Erie.
“I’m going to bring this back to my classroom,” Chad Solomon, a teacher at Chicago’s Whitney M. Young Magnet High School told WICU. “We live in Chicago, but very rarely do kids actually get to the lake. I am going to be bringing this experience back to them.”
Joining the teachers at this shoreline stop and throughout the research cruise is IISG’s Kristin TePas. Kristin coordinates the annual teacher workshop, held each year on a different lake, for the Center for Great Lakes Literacy and the EPA Great Lakes National Program Office.
Sea Grant-funded researchers Sam Mason and Steve Mauro were also on board sampling for emerging pollutants like plastic and pharmaceuticals. You can learn more about Mason’s research in Lake Erie and across the Great Lakes in the latest issue of UpClose. And watch for the next edition later this month to hear from Mauro directly about his work on the Lake Guardian.
*Photo taken during the 2010 cruise on Lake Michigan
July 9th, 2014 by iisg_superadmin
While Asian carp, the invasive fish making their way towards the Great Lakes, are a popular food in several countries, they haven’t completely taken hold here. But that may change if proprietors like Dirk Fucik in Chicago have their way.
From Chicagoist.com:
“Highly invasive Asian carp are advancing on the Great Lakes, so fire up your grill. Asian carp are eaten and appreciated globally, but the fish have never been popular in America because they’re bony and are thought to be bottom-feeders (actually, you can tell your pesca-prejudiced pals, Asian carp are plankton-feeders.) Nevertheless, Asian carp burgers at Dirk’s Fish & Gourmet Shop have been well-received.
’90 percent of the people who try it like it,’ Dirk Fucik says. At Taste of Chicago one year, Fucik gave out 800 carp burgers in two hours.
Fucik fillets the carp, then grinds the remaining fish. ‘Once you’ve done that, it’s like ground anything,’ Fucik says. He’s used Asian carp in the meatballs in Italian wedding soup, and he’s received a lot of compliments for his Asian carp gefilte fish. Fucik recommends preparing his burgers with some cambozola cheese in the middle, or using Dirk’s Thai or ‘Terry-aki’ marinades. The burgers cost $6 per pound, compared to $18 a pound for salmon burgers.”
July 8th, 2014 by iisg_superadmin
It’s been two years since we launched our summer internship program, and we couldn’t be happier with the results. Our interns did great things at IISG—educated boaters on AIS prevention, investigated community perceptions of sediment remediation projects, installed a real-time buoy in Lake Michigan, and more. But their impressive work didn’t end with the summer. Several are now in graduate programs, including law school. Some moved on to internships focused on Great Lakes monitoring and renewable engineering. And a few have even stayed at IISG.
To celebrate the program’s two-year anniversary, we go back to where it all began with a four-part series showcasing our first round of interns—what they did and where they are now. In this third edition, we check in with Meredith Brackett.
What did you work on while interning with IISG?
During my IISG internship, I worked with Paris Collngsworth on a study comparing zooplankton and nutrient data collected by the Great Lakes National Program Office (GLNPO) with data collected by the Interagency Lower Trophic Level Monitoring Program of the Lake Erie Committee Forage Task Group (LEC-FTG). We used a mathematical model to calculate the similarities in zooplankton communities across time and locations. This study will help improve monitoring efforts by determining whether the LEC-FTG survey is capturing characteristics that the GLNPO data is not.
What did you like most about your internship, and why?
My favorite part of my internship was collecting nutrient and biological samples aboard the EPA R/V Lake Guardian. This allowed me to gain hands-on experience in the field and collect the zooplankton species that I was looking at in my data study.
What are you doing now?
I am currently interning with the Oak Ridge Institute of Science and Education (ORISE) at GLNPO. My work there is focused on Great Lakes projects, such as formatting web releases for the International Association for Great Lakes Research website, working with USGS on uploading GLNPO monitoring sites to the Science of the Great Lakes (SiGL) Mapper database, and formatting the website for the IISG Limno Loan program. Additionally, I am still doing work on the R/V Lake Guardian.
How did your time with IISG help prepare you for your ORISE internship?
The internship really helped me meet people in the different areas of the Great Lakes and expand my contacts in the industry. I met the people I work with now while at IISG, actually. Additionally, the internship allowed me to learn about various aspects of Great Lakes ecosystems, and I apply this knowledge daily in my current position.
What advice would you have for future IISG interns or those considering applying?
My advice would be to definitely apply for the internship! It is a great way to make contacts in the environmental industry. There are tons of networking opportunities. Additionally, the IISG internship is a great way to experience environmental work underway in the Great Lakes basin and to see all of the career opportunities available.
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July 3rd, 2014 by iisg_superadmin
It’s Fourth of July! Let’s head for the beach! You’ve packed up towels and snacks and sunscreen for a day in the sun and surf. Now give some thought to water safety too.
Since 2010, 357 people have drowned in the Great Lakes, according to the Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project (GLSRP). To date, GLSRP has tracked 27 deaths this year, which is up from this time last year. This may be due to the water’s cold temperatures after a tough winter. Colder water uses up your energy faster than warmer water.
GLSRP’s Dave Benjamin and Bob Pratt teach water safety classes on beaches, in schools, and at other venues. On June 30, they brought their message to Ogden Dunes in Indiana, advocating for safer swimmers, safer waters, and safer responses.
Safer swimmers means learning how to swim, but if that’s not the case, putting on life jackets, or other flotation aids, especially for young children. It also means keeping a close eye on children in the water.
But children are not the only ones at risk. Young men make up 4 in 5 deaths from drowning. They tend to take more risks, or can be over confident about their swimming skills.
Safer waters mean swimming where there are lifeguards and away from structures that can cause dangerous currents around them.
Part of a safer response is knowing what it looks like when someone is in trouble in the water. “Hollywood portrays drowning as this very dramatic thing with the victim waving their arms and shouting for help, but when someone is drowning you will simply see their head tilted back in the water and a look of distress on their face,” said Benjamin.
The safe swimming experts recommend looking around the beach before trouble happens to spot items that can be used for floatation. For example, if you haven’t brought a cooler yourself, you will probably see others on the beach that can be used in an emergency.
If you find yourself in troubled waters, such as a rip current, the most important thing to do is not panic. Pratt recommends that you remember to flip, float, and follow. “Flip over on your back, float to conserve energy, and follow the current so that when you know where it is headed, you can swim out of it.”
July 2nd, 2014 by iisg_superadmin
Protecting fish populations worldwide while still meeting the steadily increasing demand for fresh seafood is a critical challenge facing several countries, but aquaculture (fish farming) is making significant advances in efficiency and sustainability that can meet those needs.
“Globally, we’ve hungered for 3.2 percent more seafood every year for the last five decades, double the rate of our population. Yet more than four fifths of the world’s wild fisheries are overexploited or fully exploited (yielding the most fish possible with no expected room for growth). Only 3 percent of stocks are considered ‘underexploited’—meaning they have any significant room for expansion. If we continue to fish at the current pace, some scientists predict we’ll be facing oceans devoid of edible marine creatures by 2050.
Aquaculture could come to the rescue. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN predicts that farmed fish will soon surpass wild-caught; by 2030, aquaculture may produce more than 60 percent of fish we consume as food.
One of the most pressing concerns about aquaculture, though, is that many farmed fish are raised on a diet of 15 million tons a year of smaller bait fish—species like anchovies and menhaden. These bait—also known as forage fish—are ground up and converted into a substance called fishmeal. It takes roughly five pounds of them to produce one pound of farmed salmon. Bait fish are also used for non-food products like pet food, makeup, farm animal feed, and fish oil supplements.
It may appear as though the ocean enjoys endless schools of these tiny fish, but they too have been mismanaged, and their populations are prone to collapse. They’re a ‘finite resource that’s been fully utilized,’ says Mike Rust of NOAA’s Fisheries arm. Which is disturbing, considering that researchers like those at Oceana argue that forage fish may play an outsize role in maintaining the ocean’s ecological balance, including by contributing to the abundance of bigger predatory fish.
And that’s where Belov’s trout come in: Though he swears no one can taste the difference, his fish are vegetarians. That means those five pounds of forage fish can rest easy at sea. It also means that the trout don’t consume some of the other rendered animal proteins in normal fishmeal pellets: like bone meal, feather meal, blood meal, and chicken bi-products.”
Read the complete article at the link above for more about recent developments in aquaculture, and visit our aquaculture page for further information.
July 1st, 2014 by iisg_superadmin
It’s been two years since we launched our summer internship program, and we couldn’t be happier with the results. Our interns did great things at IISG—educated boaters on AIS prevention, investigated community perceptions of sediment remediation projects, installed a real-time buoy in Lake Michigan, and more. But their impressive work didn’t end with the summer. Several are now in graduate programs, including law school. Some moved on to internships focused on Great Lakes monitoring and renewable engineering. And a few have even stayed at IISG.
To celebrate the program’s two-year anniversary, we go back to where it all began with a four-part series showcasing our first round of interns—what they did and where they are now. Our second interview is with Sahana Rao.
What did you work on while interning with IISG?
I worked with Margaret Schneemann on water issues in Chicago and northeastern Illinois. I mainly worked on research and text for an outdoor water conservation guidebook aimed at stakeholders in northern Illinois. The guidebook explains the need for outdoor water conservation and outlines ecological, economic, and legislative strategies to promote conservation. I also helped a little bit with the Lawn to Lake program, which encourages the use of natural and organic fertilizers and gardening practices that reduce nutrient runoff into Lake Michigan.
What did you like most about your internship?
The work I did during my internship with IISG was very interdisciplinary, so I never got bored—if I had had enough of turf science for the day, I could always switch to reading about lawn watering ordinances. I also got to explore the benefits of and connections between different aspects of water conservation that I might never have considered otherwise.
What are you doing now? If you are in school, what are you studying? If you are working, who with and doing what?
I am working towards my J.D. at New York University School of Law. I’ll be a second year in the fall and plan to pursue a career in environmental law once I graduate. I’m back in Chicago for the summer, doing a legal internship at the Environmental Law & Policy Center. My work here ranges from researching questions that might be raised in a permit appeal to writing memos on broad legal issues to helping attorneys prepare for oral arguments. Through this internship, I have learned more about the environmental implications of zoning and nuisance law, the regulatory framework created by the Clean Water Act, and new approaches to reducing pollution, such as water quality credit trading. And I’m looking forward to learning much more as the summer continues!
How did your time with IISG help prepare you for law school?
Working with Sea Grant was a unique experience because I got to explore environmental issues –particularly water issues—from several different angles. I think the main takeaway I got from this internship is that environmental issues tend to exist on the intersection of science, economics, behavioral psychology, and law. The projects I worked on with Margaret inspired me to do a senior thesis on urban water management in developing countries, in which my goal was to examine the relative success of the strategies used by six water utilities to meet their constituents’ needs. These strategies incorporated both law and economics, and they varied in response to different water resource conditions, so the skills I learned while working with IISG came in handy.
In general, I’ve tried to apply this mindset to my education as much as possible. I learned that being an effective advocate for the environment requires a certain level of versatility. During college, I supplemented my environmental science degree with minors in psychology and economics. In law school, I plan on taking classes like Corporations, Tax, and International Law in addition to environmental law courses so that I can better understand how the pieces of the global-environmental-puzzle fit together.
What advice would you have for future IISG interns or those considering applying?
Do it! IISG internships are a great opportunity to not only expand your knowledge of environmental issues in the Midwest but also to develop essential skills like researching and writing for a variety of audiences. You get to work with and learn from highly qualified folks in really cool settings—whether you’re in downtown Chicago or on a boat on one of the Great Lakes.
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June 27th, 2014 by iisg_superadmin
Last month, IISG’s Caitie McCoy held a workshop for teachers in the Buffalo River area of New York to debut a new curriculum, “Helping Hands: Restoration for Healthy Habitats.” This latest edition is specific to the Buffalo River area of concern, and offers a direct link to important environmental projects that are taking place in the students’ community.
The Great Lakes Legacy Act remediation project on the Buffalo River resumed June 16, and will remove 500,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment from the river, then replace native aquatic plants to help restore the local ecosystem.
18 teachers from grades 4-11 attended the workshop to learn more about the restoration project and the curriculum, and were treated to hands-on activities and a tour of the river area to help bring the project and its impacts into their classes.
“It’s great to see so many educators come out to this kind of workshop,” Caitie said. “Many teachers want to incorporate place-based learning in their science curriculum, but may lack resources to do so. Now instead of using distant examples like rainforests to teach science, they can use their neighborhood rivers and lakes. These are places that students can visit and experience the science in person. They develop a love for these places and want to protect them.”
