Nearshore

Robot week: Remote-controlled Stealth II reveals nearshore landscape

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Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of stories on how new technology is  giving researchers a glimpse of the critical nearshore area of the Great Lakes. With researchers hunched over remote controls, operating the Stealth II looks more like playing a video game than doing science. The Environmental Protection Agency purchased the underwater vehicle in May 2009. Using a hand control, agency scientists can operate the Stealth II as it hovers at various depths of the Great Lakes’ nearshore. The Stealth II’s camera allows scientists to map the bottom of nearshore areas and better understand habitat types.

Water

Robot week: Triaxus reveals Great Lakes sunken ships and data treasures

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Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of stories on how new technology is giving researchers a glimpse of the critical nearshore area of the Great Lakes

One of the Environmental Protection Agency’s newest members uses side-scan sonar to look at the watery depths of Lake Michigan. Fanning its sound waves down to the lake floor, it searches for the returning signals bouncing off the bottom in search of bounty–it found a shipwreck last year. But the Triaxus Towed Undulator does more than treasure hunts. Beneath the water, it glides behind the Lake Guardian, the agency’s research vessel. With its quick data collection, the agency can do in days what would otherwise take a year, said Glenn Warren, team leader for the agency’s environmental monitoring and indicators group in the Great Lakes National Program Office.

Echo

VIDEO: Physical barrier, rapid response to fight Great Lakes invasive species may be years away

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Editors note: This story is part of a series relevant to the International Joint Commissions biennial meeting next Wednesday and Thursday in Windsor. Two approaches to keep ravenous carp and other invasive species out of Lake Michigan are gaining ground, but both could be years from completion. Electrical barriers in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal are the only obstacles keeping silver carp and other aquatic invasive species from entering the lake. The carp could harm native Great Lakes fish that use similar resources. And silver carp can injure boaters when they jump out of the water.