Echo

Groundwater proposals to heat up

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(WI) Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – Brian A. Wolf boasted about the shimmering water and the trophy bass he used to catch from Long Lake in central Wisconsin. But since 2005, the lake has undergone a remarkable transformation: It’s essentially gone. “It’s as if someone pulled the plug in a bathtub,” said Wolf, a property owner on the lake. “This lake is dead.” Wolf and his neighbors blame irrigation on nearby fields as part of the reason for the disappearance of their lake.

Wildlife

State’s a haven for bats

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(MI) Detroit Free Press – When people act oddly, they’re sometimes described as having bats in their belfry. Yet if you live in Michigan, one of America’s bat havens, there’s a good chance you really have bats in the belfry, or at least in the attic. Joe Willis, a partner in Bat Removal Specialists of Michigan, works in the metro area getting bats and other unwanted critters out of homes and commercial buildings and keeping them out. More

Echo

Bedbugs are back in Michigan

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(MI) The Detroit News – It started in February when Debra Miller, who works as a caregiver, noticed dozens of red welts on the body of a man she cares for in the Griswold Senior Apartments complex. “We didn’t understand what was going on,” Miller said. “At first we thought it was the soap. Then we thought it was the fabric softener. Finally, I held up a magnifying glass and saw that something was digging into his skin.”

Echo

Pinconning fisherman sues state to keep, sell walleye

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(MI) Detroit Free Press – One of Michigan’s most successful commercial fishermen is suing the state to try to overcome a decades-old ban on catching walleye in the Great Lakes. Dana Serafin of Pinconning is forced to release thousands of walleye from his nets while catching other fish in Lake Huron. In 2008, he proposed a three-year study of the walleye population that included a provision for him to keep and sell some of his haul. More

Echo

MONDAY MASHUP: Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes

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By Rachael Gleason

You can locate some of the Great Lakes’ shipwrecks thanks to this mashup. The interactive map features about 120 nautical disasters – although Great Lakes historian Dave Swayze estimates more than 4,000 ships have been lost to the lakes. Each dot represents a shipwreck. Some contain information about how the ship went down, such as the Appomattox. The large wooden steamer hit ground on the western shore of Lake Michigan more than a century ago.

Water

Book tells tale of tragic Lake Huron freighter sinking

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By Eric Freedman
Nov. 30, 2009

LANSING — The Edmund Fitzgerald is the best-known of the Great Lakes’ doomed ships, but the freighter’s demise with its entire crew off Whitefish Point in the Upper Peninsula is by no means the state’s only such maritime disaster. Andrew Kantar, a Ferris State University professor, tells another such story, that of the ill-fated freighter Daniel J. Morrell. It sank in 1966 off the tip of the Thumb in Lake Huron, northwest of Harbor Beach. “Each of the Great Lakes has its own tragic history, and Lake Huron’s violent moods have become legendary,” Kantar writes in “Deadly Voyage: The S.S. Daniel J. Morrell Tragedy” (Michigan State University Press, $16.95).

Echo

Plan for turbines on Great Lakes modified to measure offshore wind energy potential

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By Nick Mordowanec
Nov. 29, 2009

A university intends to measure Lake Michigan’s potential for offshore wind power with a $1.4 million federal grant. The original plan by Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Mich., was to place wind turbines in the Great Lakes. But that’s changed. “We are not putting wind turbines out there,” said Arn Boezaart, interim director of the university’s Alternative and Renewable Energy Center.

Water

Lawmakers want to lift pesticide ban to battle bedbug blast; Ohio, Michigan among hardbitten

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By Emily Lawler
Nov. 28, 2009
LANSING, Mich. — Forget letting the bedbugs bite – even having them in your home is a danger. The entire United States is dealing with a resurgence of these pesky parasites, which feed on human blood. “They can cause red itchy lesions,” said Kim Signs, a zoonotic disease epidemiologist with Michigan’s Department of Community Health.

Recreation

Some hardy souls around Lake Michigan brave the cold

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(IL) Chicago Tribune – Lake Michigan can be an angry beast in late autumn, when icy winds whip across its surface and thrashing waves lay siege to the receding shoreline. The same Chicago-area beaches that buzz with activity each summer become like a barren moonscape — inhospitable to all but the most peculiar of aquatic life: The Great Lakes surfer. More

Echo

Old fish makes new Great Lakes comeback

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By Mehak Bansil
Nov. 27, 2009

LANSING–Lake sturgeon, one of the oldest surviving species from prehistoric times, is making a small comeback in the Great Lakes region. “They’ve increased about a couple of percent since their lowest numbers, but at least the populations aren’t going down anymore,” said Bruce Manny, a fishery biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey’s Great Lakes Science Center in Ann Arbor. The increase is due in part to a spawning project in Black Lake, an inland lake in Cheboygan County. According to a report in the Journal of Applied Ichthyology, 40 percent of the lake sturgeon released into Black Lake as part of the project survived their first winter, but Manny said, there are no estimates on the actual number due to a lack of comprehensive studies.