If you tuned in to “Off the Hook: Extreme Catches” this past Sunday on Animal Planet you got a chance to see Asian carp, a major aquatic invasive concern, as well as some people who are fighting the flying fish.
“The Animal Planet show that spent four days filming on and around the Illinois River last summer for a feature on the acrobatic insanity of everyone’s least favorite invasive fish, the Asian carp, will be shown Sunday.
“Off the Hook: Extreme Catches,” with host/professional wrestler Eric Young presents “Carpocalypse Now” at 7 p.m. Sunday. Greg Gephards, who owns Schooners on War Memorial Drive and had a role in the production of the program, is hosting a party for the occasion.”
IISG staff members and interns traveled to the Indiana shoreline earlier this week to help launch an environmental sensing buoy four miles off the coast of Michigan City, Indiana. They were joined by researchers from the Purdue University
School of Civil Engineering, who partnered with IISG to develop the buoy, and staff at the Indiana DNR.
IISG Science Writer Anjanette Riley was there for the launch and recalls the day’s events:
“If I had to describe the launch process in one word, it would be ‘meticulous.’ The approximately 6-hour process was carefully divided into a series of steps: Steps for the final calibration of the real-time data sensors, steps for placing the 2,000 lb anchor on the lake bottom, steps for rigging the buoy up to be dragged behind the DNR boat to its final destination in 62-foot water, and still more steps for attaching it to the anchor’s line. To a passer-by the process must have looked a little hectic, with people running around securing lines and popping back-and-forth from the building to test light-sensitive sensors. And maybe things were a little chaotic at times, but a chaos complete with checklists.
This is not to say that the day played out without any hiccups. In fact, the whole thing almost had to be scrapped for another day because of a malfunctioning light needed to announce the buoy’s existence to nearby boaters. Cary Troy, the lead researcher on the project, had brought four of these lights from Purdue just in case one didn’t work. Four proved to be too few, though, when the time came to install it atop the buoy. We knew going in that the buoy might not be able to go out that day. There was always the chance that the weather would not be on our side that morning and we would need to wait for another, better day. But with the weather the best it had been for several days, the anchor sitting on a barge at the Port Authority ready to be carried out into the lake, and the buoy all working as planned, a small but important light stood in the way.
To keep the day moving, the team decided to divide and conquer. Cary Troy and graduate student Jun Choi rode the four miles out into the lake on a flat barge carrying the buoy’s anchor, hoping to at least get that in place on the scheduled day. A temporary buoy was attached to the anchor to mark the location and hold the line that secures to buoy in place until the real thing was ready.
Meanwhile, IISG’s Naoki Wada set about trying to repair the light. As a summer intern, Naoki was a key player in the buoy development and continued to lead the way during much of the launch. Step one in the repair process was to hook the light up to a car battery to charge. Once out on the lake, the light is designed to charge during the day using a series of solar panels and flash in 15-second intervals at night or when overcast. That afternoon, though, the sun was replaced with the faster-acting car battery. Step two involved making a series of alterations to the light to test why the now-charged light was not consistently functional. In the end, the launch date was saved when Naoki discovered that removing an internal screw was enough to keep the light working as designed.
With the light finally mounted in place, IISG and crew from the Indiana DNR set about rigging the buoy to safely lower it into the water. The weight and the sensitivity of its sensors meant that the crew needed to be in constant control of the buoy’s movement from the minute it entered the water—something much easier said than done with a machine designed to float. The rigging and lowering process was perhaps the most meticulous part of the day, with as many as eight people at one point tying rope, connecting chains, checking the balance of weight, supporting the buoy into the water, and preventing it from floating under the boat as it drove away from the dock.
The same ropes and chains were then used to transport the buoy four miles into the lake at about 5mph, the manufacturer-recommended speed for dragging a buoy behind a boat. The last step was to remove the drag lines and attach the buoy to the anchor line put in place earlier that day in a process that looked much like the rigging of an hour earlier acted out in reverse. Months of work planning, developing, and launching the buoy were capped off by the whole launch crew snapping photos of the now-operational buoy as the DNR boat sped back to shore.”
To read more about how the buoy will support research into the weather patterns and biology of Lake Michigan and help beachgoers plan visits to Indiana’s shores, visit IISG’s news page.
Special thanks to Naoki Wada for his extensive work ensuring the buoy was operational in time for last week’s launch and overseeing the day’s events. Additional thanks to Brian Breidert, Randy Brindza, Ben Rhoda, and Jamie McNeill IV from Indiana DNR.
Much of the press and media attention on the growing Asian carp threat has been focused on the Chicago canal and Lake Michigan. But that is not the only potential entryway for the invasive fish to enter the Great Lakes.
“At the top of that list of secondary pathways is an area in northern Indiana called Eagle Marsh, which separates the Mississippi basin’s Wabash River from the Maumee River basin that feeds Lake Erie. The two watersheds have a history of merging in extreme rains, so to reduce the threat of carp making the jump into Lake Erie, the federal government has erected a fence between them.”
Read the complete article linked above for more information about other potential pathways that Asian carp might take.
Last week, Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant had a two-day meeting and retreat at the
Indiana Dunes State Park in Chesterton, Indiana. In addition to devoting some time to planning and discussing current and future projects, we were treated to a couple of informative and scenic tours in the area, learning more about the extensive restoration work to protect the dunes, the state park and national lakeshore, and the water quality of Lake Michigan.
Staff members were able to join National Park Service workers on-site to learn about and get their hands dirty at the
Great Marsh Restoration Site not far from the dunes. Once very large, the remaining Great Marsh area is approximately 12 miles long and harbors a wide range of plants, animals, insects, and other beneficial organisms. Those native species are threatened by invasive species, however, and work is ongoing to plant and establish native species to bolster the wetlands’ resistance to invasive species and restore the natural balance of the area.
Informative, fun, and muddy, the chance to do on-the-ground work in restoring this watershed was a valuable experience for everyone involved, and offered a practical reminder of the importance of restoring and protecting these areas.
There are more terrific photographs of the restoration project and the lake shore on
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant’s Facebook page. Head over and check them out, and be sure to plan a visit to the park for yourself.
Changes in weather patterns, such as warmer winters and lower rainfall averages, can have large effects on water availability, lake levels, plant and fish life, and more. Because so many people and industries rely on the Great Lakes, those changes can have a significant impact beyond the obvious, as is the case for the shipping industry.
“For decades, the mathematics of waterborne transport here were simple. For every 10 to 11 metric tons of cargo that moved into and out of the Toledo port, about one metric ton of sediment left the channel. (Last year, 10.4 million metric tons of cargo were handled at the port.)
But with climate change, the equation is almost certain to get more complex and more expensive, say scientists and port managers. More mid-winter snow melts and rainstorms — and more frequent heavy rainfalls, especially in spring — may lead to higher soil-erosion rates, meaning that Great Lakes rivers are likely to carry more soil into harbors. Higher air temperatures already are warming the Great Lakes, blocking ice from forming, and increasing rates of evaporation that may lead to lower lake levels.”
Follow the link above to read the complete article on these potential consequences for the Great Lakes, the shipping and transportation industry, and the communities that rely on these resources.
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant researchers and specialists have been able to extend internship opportunities to four students this summer. Working directly with our staff and researchers, the students will get hands-on experience in their field while helping us pursue ongoing projects. Read more about this year’s group of interns and the issues they’ll be helping us address and investigate below.
Naoki Wada is a fourth-year Mechanical Engineering student studying at Purdue University, and is interested in how ocean waves can be harnessed as a sustainable energy resource.
As a native of Japan, Naoki was particularly struck by the results of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami: “My home country, Japan, where the supply of natural resources is very scarce, experienced one of the largest earthquake and tsunami last year, putting most of their nuclear power plants out of operation due to the safety concerns and…forcing the nation to rethink their future energy security. As an island nation surrounded by the ocean, utilizing oceanic energy by means of wave/tidal/current/power generation can be a remedy.” Naoki feels that the United States can also benefit from technology related to ocean-generated power; in addition to providing sustainable energy, it doesn’t require as much land as solar or wind farms and may be more palatable to planners and developers. After his graduation at the end of this year, Naoki intends to pursue graduate work in this field.
During his 2012 summer internship, Naoki is working with IISG-funded researcher Cary Troy of Purdue University and IISG staffers Carolyn Foley and Angela Archer to deploy a real-time monitoring buoy off of Michigan City, IN. The buoy will beam information about wave height, water temperature, wind direction, and other variables to the web every 10 minutes. Naoki is responsible for getting the buoy up and running so that IISG and Purdue University can continue to deploy it every year in the same location.
Sahana will be a senior at the University of Pennsylvania next year, and is majoring in Environmental Science with minors in Psychology and Economics. Sahana grew up in the Chicago area and considers Chicago her home, making this internship a terrific opportunity to work on issues close to her heart.
Sahana is working at the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) this summer with IISG/CMAP Water Resource Economist Margaret Schneemann to create an outdoor water use manual for the 80 member-communities of the Northwest Water Planning Alliance (NWPA) in Illinois. The NWPA Outdoor Water Use manual is meant to educate homeowners about the consequences of outdoor water use and provide information on various approaches that homeowners or their communities can take to conserve water by reducing their outdoor use. The manual also contains information on a lawn-watering ordinance that the NWPA is recommending its member communities to adopt.
Meredith Brackett
Meredith is a recent graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, with a bachelor’s degree in Earth Systems Environment and Society. While planning to attend graduate school in the future, her internship with IISG will allow her to gain hands-on experience in the field as well as helping her find areas and issues for future study.
Meredith explains more: “I am working with Dr. Paris Collingsworth this summer and we are conducting a study to compare zooplankton community 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 are using statistical models to calculate zooplankton community similarity metrics at specific sample sites through time and space. This study will determine whether the LEC-FTG survey is capturing zooplankton community characteristics that are unique to those captured by the GLNPO data set.”
Lainey Pasternak
Lainey will be entering her junior year at the University of Illinois this fall, majoring in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, with a concentration in Resource Conservation and Restoration Ecology.
As an intern with IISG, Lainey will be working to help increase recreational water user knowledge of and education about steps to prevent aquatic invasive species from spreading in the Southern Lake Michigan area. She will also be designing and conducting a survey to evaluate Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant’s current outreach efforts, and use those results to formulate a formal research report and academic poster presentation by the end of the summer. Lainey will then be presenting the findings and the entire scope of her internship work at the 2012 Illinois Water Conference at the University of Illinois.
“Becoming an intern with IISG’s Aquatic Invasive Species Outreach team has allowed me to acquire a stronger knowledge base about the general AIS issues and management in the Great Lakes area, the role of recreational water users in their spread, and the importance of evaluating outreach campaigns,” Lainey says. “By surveying and speaking directly with the public, I will gain further insight into how to communicate current complex environmental issues with and to others. Overall, I am very excited to be a part of the Illinois-Indiana Aquatic Invasive Species Outreach Team this summer and expect to make a difference in this area for our future clean waters.”
We look forward to the results of the hard work from our interns, and sharing their efforts in another post later this year. Check back to see how these projects are progressing.
According to some of the latest research, a population of Asian carp as small as 20 in number could be enough to establish a damaging population of the invasive species in the Great Lakes.
From The Atlantic Cities:
“The report notes that this small population would have a greater than 50 percent chance of successfully spawning if they were to find a viable river access point to the lakes. Lake Michigan is the most likely target, and the Chicago Area Waterway System of rivers, sanitary canals and locks would be the most likely entry point. Already, the environmental DNA of carp has been detected as close as six miles from Lake Michigan. Some worry that the carp’s entrance into the Great Lakes is inevitable.”
Read more, including links to the full report and additional information, at the link above.
One of the unsung agencies that is heavily involved in restoring coastal ecosystems just happens to be one of the biggest and most crucial – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and their Ecosystem Restoration Program are heavily involved in planning, developing, and executing projects that restore damaged ecosystems and areas and provide environmental benefits to communities, including several projects in and around the Great Lakes.
“The USACE works to restore degraded ecosystems to a more natural condition through large-scale ecosystem restoration projects, such as the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration, Louisiana Coastal Area Ecosystem Restoration, Chesapeake Bay Oyster Recovery, Aransas National Wildlife Refuge Beneficial Use of Dredged Material (restoration of marsh critical to the endangered Whooping Crane), and Houston Ship Channel Beneficial Use of Dredged Material (marsh restoration in Galveston Bay), and by employing system-wide watershed approaches to problem solving and management for smaller ecosystem restoration projects.”
Read more about this terrific program and about the substantial work that goes into these projects at the article linked above.
Ensuring safety for visitors to Lake Michigan involves several factors, many departments and people, and a terrific amount of work. And still, unless good, accurate information reaches visitors and people who need it, potential problems can’t be avoided.
One such concern each summer season is the presence of
rip currents – a strong flow of water under the surface that carries away from the shore. Each year, swimmers and surfers in all major bodies of water can be endangered by the presence of these currents. That is why developing a more accurate and immediate way of warning beachgoers about rip currents is incredibly important, and why the National Weather Service, the U.S. Coast Guard, life guards at several beaches, and other organizations are partnering to develop and share information about rip currents.
From the Northwest Indiana Times:
“…the National Weather Service’s Chicago office in Romeoville, Ill., and the Northern Indiana office teamed up with beach operators to enhance predicting and warning of rip currents along Lake Michigan’s beaches in an effort to reduce drowning deaths.
In addition to modeling to predict rip currents, forecasters now have the help of lifeguards at beaches at Indiana Dunes State Park in Chesterton, Washington Park in Michigan City, Warren Dunes State Park in Sawyer, Mich., and Silver Beach County Park in St. Joseph, Mich. The lifeguards report water conditions twice daily and can see the rip currents in the water from their guard stands.”
Read the complete article
here, and find information about rip currents and beach conditions at the
Great Lakes Beach Hazards from NOAA. And most importantly, stay safe and have fun this summer at all of the Great Lakes.
