Wildlife

Alewives: The trouble they cause and the salmon that love them

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By Jeff Gillies, jeffgillies@gmail.com
Great Lakes Echo
Sept. 3, 2009
Editors note: This is the second of three stories in a series about the challenges of managing non-native fish in the Great Lakes. Pacific salmon, the big money species in the multi-billion dollar Great Lakes fishery, need a feast of alewives to thrive. But alewives are an invasive species that harm lake trout, a native fish that biologists have been trying and failing to re-establish for decades. Alewives keep lake trout down in two ways, said Mark Ebener, fish assessment biologist with the Chippewa Ottawa Resources Authority.

Nearshore

Amphibious vehicle may storm the beaches of Saginaw Bay

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(MI) The Bay City Times – State and local officials involved with the Saginaw Bay Coastal Initiative are looking at the Truxor, an amphibious vehicle, to clear muck that gathers at the shoreline and remains suspended in the water at the public beach in Bangor Township. Charlie Bauer, with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality’s Water Bureau, gave a presentation on the Truxor at a meeting this morning at the state park Visitor Center. More

Echo

Waterlife – a Great Lakes Film Epic – Coming to Michigan Tech Sept. 9

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(MI) Michigan Tech News – The Great Lakes are many things: bodies of water, sources of life, a story and a poem. “Waterlife,” a film that follows the flow of the water in the Great Lakes from the Nipigon River to the Atlantic Ocean, captures the significance of the Great Lakes and the Great Lakes ecosystem in a compelling, feature-length documentary. Michigan Tech’s Center for Water and Society is sponsoring a free showing of the film at 7 pm Wednesday, Sept. 9, in the Dow Environmental Sciences and Engineering Building, Room 641. It has only been shown once before in Michigan, at the Traverse City Film Festival.

Wildlife

Alewives: Should Great Lakes managers kill ‘em or keep ‘em?

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By Jeff Gillies, jeffgillies@gmail.com
Great Lakes Echo
Sept. 2, 2009
Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of stories about the challenges of managing non-native fish in the Great Lakes. Fishery managers have made little progress in restoring lake trout, the Great Lakes’ dominant predator until the species collapsed in the 1940s and 1950s. Most of them agree that alewives, a non-native fish, are a big part of the problem. They invaded the lakes from the Atlantic Ocean after the Welland Canal opened in 1932.

Echo

Federal agency proposes to study urine and blood of residents to evaluate effectiveness of Great Lakes Restoration Initiative

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By Sarah Coefield, coefield@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
Aug. 26, 2009

Editor’s note: This story is part of an occasional series on the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative
With more than 100 projects vying for a piece of the $475 million Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, taxpayers may wonder:  Are they worth it? At least one agency is poised to find out if restoration projects will lower pollutants in people. Eighteen of the proposals in the initiative to clean or protect the Great Lakes address contaminants.  The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry intends to monitor some of those projects by checking for contaminants in Great Lakes residents’ blood and urine.  The goal is to analyze them before cleanup and then several years later, said Steve Dearwent, the chief of health investigations in the agency’s division of health studies.

Echo

Going up and diving down: Exploring the Great Lakes with blimps and subs

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By Jeff Gillies, jeffgillies@gmail.com
Great Lakes Echo
Aug. 21, 2009

A marshmallow blimp and a yellow submarine are gearing up to explore the Great Lakes from above and below. The SkySentry Aerostat — an unmanned blimp designed for military use — wouldn’t be out of place advertising a used car clearance sale, Michael Scott writes in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Instead, officials are testing the big white blimp’s ability to collect imagery of Lake Erie algae blooms that turn the lake’s shallow western waters green and suffocate fish. Check the Plain Dealer’s story for video and a slide show.

Echo

New federal funding proposal could help kill exotic organisms in the ballast of Great Lakes ships

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Editors note: This story is part of an occasional series of Echo reports on the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. By Allison Bush, bushalli@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
Aug. 20, 2009

Preventing shipborne organisms from damaging the Great Lakes ecosystem is one target of the Obama Administration’s $475 million Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. Ships carry ballast water to make them more stable as their cargo is offloaded. When they take on more cargo, they flush the ballast back into the lake or ocean.  That water can carry from foreign ports plants and animals that compete with native organisms for habitat and food.

Land

Great Lakes cities not so walkable; rate your own community with this widget

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Find out your home’s Walk Score:

By Sarah Coefield, coefield@msu.edu
August 19, 2009
Great Lakes Echo

Despite rising gas prices and growing concern over greenhouse gases, many Great Lakes residents find it difficult to leave their cars at home. The Web site www.walkscore.com ranked the walkability of 40 large cities across the United States. Of the five Great Lakes cities that were examined, only Chicago made the top ten. So what makes a city walkable? Dan Burden says a walkable community is “built around the human foot.”  He founded Walkable Communities Inc. and has worked with cities nationwide to identify trouble and encourage pedestrian-oriented development.  Burden is also on the board of advisers for Walkscore.com.