Summer inspectors help boaters prevent the spread of invasive species in Wisconsin's waters

June 26, 2018

By Jennifer A. Smith

As another Wisconsin summer hits its stride, it's a good time for Wisconsin boaters to think about responsible boating practices.  They can enjoy the great outdoors and protect our waters at the same time by taking simple actions to prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species (AIS).

Clean Boats, Clean Waters is a statewide boater education program that Wisconsin Sea Grant implements in partnership with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and University of Wisconsin-Extension.  With the help of Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funding, Sea Grant educates boaters along the Great Lakes coast.

Trained watercraft inspectors are stationed in four areas of the state, where they teach boaters how to take the preventative steps required by state law to minimize the risk of spreading unwanted “hitchhikers,” such as zebra mussels and quagga mussels, from one body of water to another.

Tim Campbell, Sea Grant’s AIS outreach specialist, works closely with Wisconsin DNR on the program.  As he summed up Wisconsin law, “Basically, you’re not allowed to transport aquatic plants, mud or animals on a public roadway. You also can’t transport lake or river water, so you need to drain out the water before leaving the boat landing.”

While more than 90% of boaters say they are familiar with Wisconsin law and “always” or “usually” take steps to clean their watercraft, that still leaves many boating trips each year that present some risk.

Inspectors talk to boaters (and users of other watercraft, like kayaks and paddleboards) about these requirements and, when needed, help them take the necessary actions, such as removing plants from a hard-to-reach part of a trailer or draining excess water from boat compartments.

“Especially at the beginning of the boating season, people can be rusty in their boating habits,” said Campbell.  “And it’s always good for inspectors to be there to talk to the few people who haven’t yet heard the ‘Stop Aquatic Hitchhikers!’ message.”

Clean Boats, Clean Waters inspectors are based out of Appleton, Green Bay, Milwaukee/Port Washington, and the Kenosha/Racine/Milwaukee area.  The aim is not to penalize boaters, but to help them comply with the law and protect our waters so they can be enjoyed for generations to come.

“Many of the boaters thank me for being out and doing my job, which is pretty cool,” said inspector Matthew Cherney, a UW-Madison student majoring in geological engineering and geoscience.  Cherney, who is from Appleton, covers boat launches in and around Milwaukee.

The inspectors are all college students and work through Labor Day or so.  It’s gratifying work, said Nick Holtmeier, a UW-Whitewater student majoring in biology and Spanish, whose area is northeastern Wisconsin. "My favorite part of performing inspections is getting to talk to the public to inform them about a topic for which I have a passion.”

The program has been quite successful in holding the line on the spread of AIS.  Said Campbell, “Clean Boats, Clean Waters has been going on since 2004, and we know that it works to change boater behaviors.  It’s the best program we have to really make an impact on the spread of invasive species.”

Tiny Quagga Mussels Have Big Impact on Lake Michigan . . . And Perhaps Climate Change

July 17, 2017

By Marie Zhuikov

As prior researchers have demonstrated, Wisconsin Sea Grant researchers further confirm that the tiny quagga mussel has an outsize impact on Lake Michigan. What’s novel about the study team’s work is the exploration of the age-old biological truth: what goes in must come out. They found the invasive mussels’ sheer numbers and feeding efficiency are changing the lake’s ecosystem dynamics. Perhaps the climate, as well.

Laodong Guo and his graduate student Stephen DeVilbiss, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, looked at the impacts of quagga mussels from an aquatic chemist’s point of view in a paper published this year in the Journal of Great Lakes Research. They took measurements in Lake Michigan and collected mussels from the lake. They brought the mussels into the lab to assess filtration and excretion rates, and the type of things excreted to better understand their role in the lake’s carbon cycle.

The researchers found that the mussels are highly efficient; each one can filter up to 578 gallons of water every year, with younger, smaller mussels pumping more efficiently. In addition to feces, the mussels excrete dissolved nitrogen and phosphorus, and they “breathe” out carbon dioxide into the water -- so much carbon dioxide, in fact, that it could impact the climate.

“There are so many mussels that the carbon dioxide they release into the water, which gets into the air, may add to the problem of global warming,” Guo said. “Normally, in places like the ocean environment, the water absorbs carbon dioxide. However, Lake Michigan is somewhat oversaturated with carbon dioxide because of the quagga mussels. We need to look at whether this is causing acidification in the lake.”

Estimates of the number of quagga mussels in Lake Michigan by NOAA researchers range from 750 to 950 trillion. More information about how quagga mussels are impacting carbon dioxide dynamics in Lake Michigan and other Great Lakes can be found in a paper Guo and his postdoc, Peng Lin, published last year in Nature’s Scientific Reports.

Another impact the researchers found from their field studies is that quagga mussels are changing the way phosphorous is cycled in the lake. Normally, the amount of phosphorous, a vital nutrient needed for diatoms and other species important in the food web, rises during the winter when it is released from particulate matter resuspended from coastal sediment during storm events and turbulence. The sediment then gets transported from shallow areas to deeper regions in the lake.

“Because quagga mussels carpet the bottom of the lake, the resuspension of phosphorus during winter and during storms is less than it used to be,” Guo said. “When we compare data from

before and after the invasion of the quagga mussels, we find there’s only about one third to less than half of the amount of total phosphorus present in the winter water column.”

Guo thinks these findings will be useful for fishery and environmental managers and Great Lakes researchers. He plans further investigations into how the mussels are impacting the lake’s nutrient and carbon cycling. “It’s kind of unbelievable how the vast numbers of tiny quagga mussels are changing Lake Michigan,” Guo said.

Stalking a Fish Virus

Wisconsin Sea Grant research team tracks the location of the deadly viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus.

July 14, 2017

By Aaron R. Conklin

First, they developed the test. Now they’re using it to track a stealthy, fish-killing virus.

In 2013, Tony Goldberg, a UW-Madison professor of epidemiology, and Kathy Toohey-Kurth, a virologist at the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, used funding from Wisconsin Sea Grant to lead a team that created a quick and accurate test for viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus (VHSV), a deadly disease that attacks the internal organs of fish, leading to bloody and large-scale fish kills. Over the past year—again with support from Wisconsin Sea Grant--Goldberg and his research team have ventured into the rivers and streams of Wisconsin, from the Apostle Islands to Janesville and the Wisconsin-Illinois border, working with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to collecting fish samples to test and track the virus’s current locations and movement among fish populations.

The goal? Developing an effective management strategy to contain VHSV.

“If we catch wildlife diseases early, there’s a lot we can do about them,” said Goldberg. “There’s a window where you can intervene and be adaptive and smart and prevent or even get rid of some diseases with really careful management. VHSV will not be the last fish disease to plague Wisconsin. If we do this exercise and are effective with it, we have a test case, an action plan for the future.”

Taking steps toward that plan has involved a substantial amount of fish sampling and laboratory work. Last fall, Goldberg’s team collected samples from several thousand fish across most of Wisconsin’s major geologic zones.  Whitney Thiel, a graduate student in UW-Madison’s freshwater and marine sciences program, has spent the intervening months performing enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) tests on the scores of fish samples, generating data on the fishes’ antibody levels, which rise in response to an exposure to diseases like VHSV.

The data will help the team solve the project’s biggest mystery—finding the specific cutoff point between negative (never exposed to VHSV) and positive (exposed to VHSV) fish.

“This test has never been applied to many of these fish species before,” explained Goldberg.  “Once we’re able to say what proportion of fish in a lake are serologically positive or negative, that will tell us where in Wisconsin fish have an immunity to the virus.”

That’s critically important information to have, particularly for fisheries managers. VHSV is particularly insidious. Past research (including Goldberg’s) indicates that it can lie dormant in fish population for years, a lurking threat in the absence of visible fish kills. Goldberg studied freshwater drum in Lake Winnebago, using the test his team developed to discover that the fish were maintaining the virus at low levels.

“We know from experience that if you have a naïve population and expose them to the virus for the first time, it’s bad--you get fish kills,” explained Goldberg.  “If we have areas where there are a lot of positive fish, we would want to make sure we didn’t move fish out of there into other areas. If we know our fish hatcheries are free of the virus, we might want to stock fish preferentially into lakes that don’t have the virus so they don’t all die and we don’t waste our money.”

Researchers still don’t know how VHSV manages to persist within lakes. Several possible explanations exist, including the fish shedding the virus during spawning. One of Goldberg’s colleagues at Michigan State University, Mohamed Faisal, recently conducted a study that suggested the virus may be associated with Diporeia, the microscopic Great Lakes zooplankton that historically served as a primary food source for multiple fish species.

“We have a virus that wasn’t here before, and it’s pretty clear it kills fish,” Goldberg said. “So what do you do about it? You have to know where it is. If we just close our eyes and choose not to know where the virus is, it’s just going to spread. We need to set management zones, we need to know which fish to move, we need to educate the public.”

Thiel still has several more months of sample testing to complete before a clearer picture of VHSV in Wisconsin can emerge. In the coming weeks, the research will be taking samples from infected fish to  better understand how their immune systems respond to it.

“Honestly, at this early stage, I would not be surprised by any result,” said Goldberg of the ongoing study. “The only thing I’m pretty confident in is that we’re going to find positive fish where we have found them before.”

Sea Grant’s ‘Survey Girl’ is Helping to Establish a Collaborative Stormwater Awareness Campaign for Lake Michigan

May 1, 2017

By Marie Zhuikov

She’s been on the job for over a year now, and Wisconsin Sea Grant’s social scientist located in Milwaukee, Deidre Peroff, has found plenty of ways to put her skills to use. One major project she’s working on is designed to collaborate with several stormwater awareness campaigns for people living along Lake Michigan’s Wisconsin shoreline.

“There are many different campaigns out there designed around stormwater,” Peroff said. “Some of them overlap in the messaging that they use – but they’re really all trying to relay the same message, which is what you do at a household level is connected to how chemicals and pollution can get into Lake Michigan through untreated stormwater.”

The project is led by Jacob Fincher of the Southeastern Wisconsin Watersheds Trust, Inc. (also called Sweet Water) and is funded by the Wisconsin Coastal Management Program. Sweet Water already has its own popular campaign around Milwaukee, Respect our Waters, which features Sparkles the Water Spaniel as a mascot and “spokes-dog.” But this new effort would extend new messages northward to Door and Brown counties, along with the watersheds in between.

Additional project partners include the Lake Michigan Stakeholders steering committee, the Lakeshore Natural Resource Partnership, East Central Regional Planning Commission and the Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance.

Although Peroff was hired too recently to be included in the original grant application, Fincher of Sweet Water realized how useful her social science skills could be and brought her in. Peroff’s first contribution was to develop a survey that was sent to 55 organizations along the Wisconsin Lake Michigan coast that already have stormwater campaigns. The survey asked them what counties and watersheds they work in, what kind of outreach they do, which topics they address, and if they are interested in working to develop a collaborative stormwater outreach campaign.

The survey is just wrapping up, but Peroff has already learned from it. “I got an idea of what people are already doing and what they’re interested in,” she said.

The project team is going to meet in a few weeks to discuss the survey results and decide on next steps.

“The ultimate goal is to get people on the same page so we’ll have a greater impact with the campaign,” Peroff said. Plans include developing another survey for households along the lake, which Peroff will also help design. “I feel like my superhero nickname should be Survey Girl,” she laughed.


The messages will be spread via workshops, community events, television and radio ads, and online. The campaign’s effectiveness will be evaluated by an advertising agency as well as through a follow-up survey. Guess who will likely have a hand in that survey?

University of Wisconsin Sea Grant/Water Resources Institutes

The latest issue of the Aquatic Sciences Chronicle is now online! Green infrastructure, urban water contamination, ghost nets and more. http://bit.ly/2mfgBmy

We [Heart] Actinobacteria

Backed by funding from Wisconsin Sea Grant, UW-Madison researcher Trina McMahon has become the worldwide authority on the key bacteria in freshwater lakes.

October 11, 2016

By Aaron R. Conklin

Every ecosystem has a top dog, a species that out-evolves and outcompetes everything else to survive and thrive under a wide range of conditions. In freshwater lakes, that champion is a special group of actinobacteria, small microbes—like, really, really tiny —that make up a superabundant group of bacteria that’s involved in most of what goes on in the freshwater universe.

Nobody knows more about freshwater actinobacteria than University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of environmental engineering Trina McMahon. With the support of Wisconsin Sea Grant, McMahon’s laboratory members have spent the last five years studying the little critters from every imaginable angle—and in the process have become the pre-eminent experts on the topic. What they’ve found has enlarged our understanding of how freshwater lakes function and exist.

“If you think of the lake as an entity, a living breathing thing that cycles nutrients, these bacteria are responsible for half of it,” said McMahon. “They’re very, very tiny, but because of their numbers and their level of activity, they’re driving huge amounts of the carbon cycling and nutrient regeneration,” said McMahon. “We’ve had a special place in our heart for a long time for the freshwater actinobacteria.”

The relationship began back in 2007, with Ryan Newton, one of McMahon’s first Ph.D. students. Newton, who’s now an assistant professor with the UW-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences, developed a baseline bar code of actinobacterial RNA sequences that allows researchers to track, classify and enumerate bacteria in lakes. Using that code, Newton and McMahon demonstrated that actinobacteria are the predominant species in inland lakes. 

In 2012, McMahon’s lab used a cutting-edge method to take a single cell of the actinobacteria and sequence its genome. What they found was that the actinobacteria have a rhodopsin protein similar to the protein in the human eye that allows it to sense light. In the actinobacteria, however, the rhodopsin almost certainly does more—converting the light into energy. (Those findings were recently published in the International Society for Microbial Ecology Journal.)

In a 2014-16 funded project with Wisconsin Sea Grant, McMahon and UW-Madison structural biologist Katrina Forest took it further, revealing something even more surprising about freshwater actinobacteria.

“Actinobacteria have the retinal found in most opsin proteins that allows them to harvest light, but we think they also have another light-harvesting structural molecule that allows harvesting of a different wavelength of light, amplifying the energy that gets harvested in a way that not many other bacteria have.”

That extra method of acquiring energy helps explain why they’ve shot to the top of the ecosystem ladder like a supercharged bullet. Currently, a graduate student in Forest’s lab is charting the actinobacterial cell’s biochemical machinery to definitively identify the structure of this second light-capturing molecule. McMahon suggests it might be possible that different groups of actinobacteria harvest different wavelengths of light.

In addition to the light-harvesting mechanism, McMahon’s lab has noted that the actinobacteria also interact extensively with the gunky-green cyanobacteria and algae that often overtake freshwater lakes during the summer months.

“They have in their cell wall/membrane all this machinery to suck up other dead organisms’ parts,” McMahon explained. “We think of them as vultures or scavengers—they wait for other organisms to die and then they eat up their parts. Then they recycle the atoms into carbon dioxide and also into new cell material. They are the foundational recyclers of the lake.”

McMahon said the interactions take a variety of forms—everything from the actinobacteria eating the dead cyanobacteria to sucking up molecules excreted by the cyanobacteria during periods of rapid growth.

“They’re super in one sense but they’re also crippled in another in that they depend on being able to scavenge what they can’t make themselves,” she said. “What’s fascinating is that we haven’t figured out if the actinobacteria help fuel the cyanobacteria blooms or keep them in check,” said McMahon. “There’s some early evidence that maybe they’re actually partners with the cyanobacteria in certain roles, which would mean that understanding actinobacteria might help us control cyanobacteria blooms better.”

McMahon’s well aware that she faces a strong ewwww factor associated with her research—who wants to talk about gross bacteria and smelly, potentially poisonous blue-green algae in our lakes? To get around that, McMahon has begun talking about actinobacteria using the same language people use to talk about the bacteria that live in humans’ guts, performing helpful tasks like digesting our food and bolstering our immune systems.

“People start to feel a little less scared about the bacteria when they think about it that way,” she said. “If we can understand how the actinobacteria function, and all the different ways they get energy and support the ecosystem, then we have that much deeper an understanding of the lake system. Then we can either do some kind of intervention to improve lake quality or at least make a prediction about what’s going to happen if we do make an intervention.”

McMahon’s research focus will now shift to determining how special each of the strains of actinobacteria are. Armed with genome sequences from the Great Lakes, Lake Mendota, lakes in Sweden and other countries around the world, McMahon’s working to determine whether the bacterial strain she’s studied in Madison’s Lake Mendota is endemic to all lakes or has adapted to its specific environments.

“Maybe the cell in Lake Mendota gets carried to a lake in northern Wisconsin, but maybe it can’t live there because it depends on its friends who are in Lake Mendota,” she said. “We would actually prefer if they weren’t too endemic, because we’d like to take what we’ve learned and apply it to all lakes.”

Connect With Wisconsin Fish, and Their Fishers and Growers

Eatwisconsinfish.org website relaunches 

June 21, 2016

Eatwisconsinfish.org relaunches today. Newly simplified navigation, bright images and plenty of recipes are in evidence. The site is part of a Sea Grant initiative that educates consumers about the health benefits of seafood consumption, and how to evaluate the safety and sustainability of the seafood they buy.

More than 90 percent of the seafood eaten by Americans is imported from other countries. Sea Grant launched the Eat Wisconsin Fish project in 2014 to help consumers learn more about local fish that are available to purchase in Wisconsin, a state rich in both fishing heritage and water resources. Generations of families have commercially harvested Wisconsin waters of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior since the 1830s, and Wisconsin fish farmers are leaders in aquaponics, cultivating fish and plants together to efficiently recycle nutrients said project lead Kathy Schmitt Kline, an education specialist.          

The relaunched website has six major areas: fish, why eating local fish is a healthy and delicious choice that also keeps dollars in local economies, and providing a detailed list of Wisconsin’s commercially caught and farm-raised fish; producers, which introduces Wisconsin’s fishermen and fish farmers; recipes; resources, which offers a seasonal buying guide and a Wisconsin map indicating where to get the most fresh fish; events; and about the Eat Wisconsin Fish initiative.

Funding for Eat Wisconsin Fish has been provided by the Buy Local, Buy Wisconsin grant program from the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection and by the National Sea Grant College Program, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce. 

Sea Grant Advisory Board Member Spearheads Lake Superior Conservation; Group Receives Award

May 16, 2016
Wisconsin Sea Grant today extended congratulations to the Apostle Islands Sport Fishermen’s Association (AISA), which received the Wisconsin Conservation Congress’s 2016 Local Conservation Organization of the Year Award last Friday. It was during the congress’s three-day statewide annual meeting.

The award cited the association’s 36-year track record to improve both the fishery and the habitat in the Apostle Islands. Recently, AISA spearheaded an initiative with Wisconsin Sea Grant to alert anglers and boaters to the dangers of so-called ghost nets in Lake Superior. The nets are commercial fishing nets that have broken free of moorings, which then drift—picking up debris and continuing to trap fish. If anglers or boaters become entangled in the nets, they run the risk of damaging boats, equipment or even capsizing. The sport fisherman’s association and Sea Grant have collaborated with Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission on the effort.

“Al House of the Apostle Islands Sport Fishermen’s Association spearheaded this safety effort that is protecting property and even lives,” said Sea Grant Fisheries Specialist Titus Seilheimer. “We know the message is getting out there. Just last summer, for example, we heard from the National Park Service that they knew what to do when rangers encountered a ghost net at the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. Our ghost net education pointed them in the right direction for removal and disposal that cleaned up an area and removed a safety hazard.”

Since 1980, the AISA has engaged in other worthwhile activities, including:

·       Acting as an essential partner in the creation of the Gull Island Refuge to provide protection to the Lake Trout that reproduced on the Gull Island Shoals. This refuge has been one of the most important factors in the successful restoration of Lake Trout in the Apostle Islands.

·       Developing habitat for the Piping Plover, an endangered species that nests in the Chequamegon Bay area.

·       Formulating innovative stocking programs for walleye and chinook salmon.

“It is a great honor to receive this award from the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, an organization which for 82 years has worked to protect Wisconsin’s natural resources for the benefit of all Wisconsin residents,” said Al House, current AISA president. “It is a credit to all past and present AISA members, officers, and board members for their efforts on behalf of the Apostle Islands Fishery. We thank them, as well as all the other organizations, both here and state wide, that work on behalf of our natural resources.”

House is also a longtime member of the Wisconsin Sea Grant Advisory Council.

The Wisconsin Conservation Congress is a statutory body of citizen-elected delegates that advises the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board and Department of Natural Resources.

Apostle Islands Sport Fishermen’s Association Website

Wisconsin Sea Grant to Invest $1.96 Million in Science-Based Projects to Enhance the Great Lakes Economy and Regional Quality of Life

February 22, 2016

By Moira Harrington

The University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute, which is dedicated to the sustainable use of Great Lakes resources through research, education and outreach, today announced the award of $1.96 million in research dollars for 2016. Sea Grant will fund 19 projects on six Wisconsin campuses, along with a shipwreck exploration project in Lake Michigan in partnership with the Wisconsin Historical Society and an education project with the University of Wisconsin-Extension. 

“We often say the Great Lakes are a gift from the glaciers,” said Sea Grant Director Jim Hurley. “This gift is a valuable one—a 2011 study found 1.5 million jobs are tied to the lakes, with $62 billion in annual wages. Just as the lakes fuel our economy, they also enrich our quality of life. That’s why we are pleased that these science-based projects, 15 new ones and three continuing from 2015, can further Wisconsin’s economic, cultural and public health needs as tied to lakes Michigan and Superior.”

Researchers will look into the health of the waterways, better ways to grow tasty walleyes destined for people’s dinner plates, methods to prevent Great Lakes beach contamination, possible ways to lessen the destruction of floods and more.

In all, nearly 100 researchers, staff and students will be engaged in this work, said Hurley. The campuses are La Crosse, Madison, Milwaukee and Stevens Point, along with Northland College and St. Norbert College. 

Wisconsin Sea Grant Researcher Speaks About Chequamegon Bay Climate Change Projects at UMD

Wisconsin Sea Grant Researcher Speaks About Chequamegon Bay Climate Change Projects at UMD
February 15, 2106

By Marie Zhuikov
Wisconsin Sea Grant Researcher and Northland College Professor, Randy Lehr, was in Duluth on Feb. 2, speaking about his climate change research in the Chequamegon Bay of Lake Superior and a new integrated assessment project he’s starting for the same area.

Lehr spoke at the invitation of the University of Minnesota Duluth’s Anthropocene Research Center along with Peter Annin, with whom he co-leads the new Burke Center for Freshwater Innovation.
Lehr said that the Ashland, Wis., area is the focus of hard rains for some reason -- “Harder than most other places studied in the region.” He said the area can expect warmer, wetter weather in the future. With his Wisconsin Sea Grant funding, Lehr and his team are studying the impacts of these hard rains and warming temperatures on the bay and what tools city and natural resource managers can use to address and adapt to these impacts.

The related two-year integrated assessment he is just beginning, also with Sea Grant’s help, blends social and natural sciences. With this “Integrated Assessment and Climate Change Adaptation Planning in the Chequamegon Bay Region of Lake Superior,” Lehr and his colleagues will survey what the most valuable resources are in the area to people and will prioritize them in terms of their natural/social/ecological importance and how likely they are to be impacted by climate change.
“People love their lakes,” Lehr said. “Even if they move away from Wisconsin, surveys have found they are still willing to support local lake associations in their efforts to care for lakes.”

Community leaders and elected officials will be engaged in conversations as part of the process led by Northland College faculty. Decision tools will be developed to help communities decide what actions to take. Local cities (Ashland, Bayfield, Washburn), towns, tribes, the National Park Service and the Forest Service will be involved.

This type of integration is a first for Wisconsin Sea Grant, and may lead to similar assessments elsewhere in the state. The project will kick off with a meeting where all technical and subject-matter experts interact with community leaders, elected officials and their designated staff members.

The Burke Center for Freshwater Innovation that Lehr co-leads is co-located on the Northland College campus in Ashland, Wis., and in Cable, Wis., at the former summer home of the Burke family, Forest Lodge. Its operation is funded by an endowment by the Burke family and the focus is on aquatic research, communication and leadership on freshwater issues throughout the Great Lakes. The center and its 900 acres are being operated in partnership with the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest.

For more information, please contact Randy Lehr at rlehr@northland.edu.

February River Talk Puts a Dollar Value on the Watershed

The next monthly River Talk is scheduled for Wed. Feb. 24, 7 p.m. at Barker’s Waterfront Grille (Barker’s Island Inn, 300 Marina Dr., Superior, Wis.). Nancy Schudlt, water projects coordinator with the Fond du Lac Band will present, “The Value of Nature’s Benefits in the St. Louis River Watershed.”

The Wisconsin and Minnesota Sea Grant programs and the Lake Superior Reserve have teamed to offer this series of free science café-type evening talks about the St. Louis River Estuary. Everyone is invited to these informal “River Talks,” which are held monthly through May. Check the River Talk website for details. If you miss a talk, visit Wisconsin Sea Grant’s “Great Lakes Takes” blog for a summary.

River Talk Sponsors Tell Their Stories

November 11, 2015
By Marie Zhuikov

The next monthly River Talk is scheduled for Wed. Nov. 18, 7 p.m. at Barker’s Waterfront Grille (Barker’s Island Inn, 300 Marina Dr., Superior, Wis.) Erika Washburn, director of the Lake Superior National Estuarine Research Reserve; Jen Hauxwell, assistant director for research and student engagement for Wisconsin Sea Grant; and Jesse Schomberg, interim co-director of Minnesota Sea Grant will present, “The Story Behind the River Talk Sponsors: What the Heck is a National Estuarine Research Reserve and a Sea Grant?”

The Wisconsin and Minnesota Sea Grant programs and the Lake Superior Reserve have teamed to offer this series of science café-type evening talks about the St. Louis River Estuary. These informal “River Talks” are held monthly through May (except in December). Check the River Talk website for details. If you miss a talk, visit Wisconsin Sea Grant’s “Great Lakes Takes” blog for a summary.

Wisconsin Researchers Study “Rogue Waves” Like Ones Thought to Have Sunk the Fitzgerald

Preliminary findings show that sandstone bluffs like those in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore can increase the probability for these dangerous waves because waves reflect off them

November 9, 2015

By Marie Zhuikov

On the 40th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Wisconsin Sea Grant researchers are learning more about the type of waves suspected in the Great Lakes freighter’s foundering.

Chin Wu, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his research assistant Josh Anderson studied rogue waves and wave and current patterns in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in Lake Superior.

Rogue waves are defined as waves with a height more than double that of other waves occurring around them. They can be caused by multiple factors, such as wind, strong currents or shoreline geography. Also known as freak or killer waves, their tendency to occur unexpectedly and with huge force makes them especially dangerous.

On Lake Superior, a group of three rogue waves, colloquially called “three sisters,” is suspected as one of several causes for the sinking of the Fitzgerald in a storm near Whitefish Point, Mich., on Nov. 10, 1975. Because the waves follow each other closely, ships can’t recover and shed the water from the first before the others strike, which leads to sinkings. The captain of a ship near the Fitzgerald (Captain Cooper of the Anderson) reported that his ship was hit by two 30- to 35-foot waves. These waves, possibly followed by a third, continued in the direction of the Fitzgerald and may have struck it about the same time it sank. Twenty-nine crew members were lost.

For their experiment, Wu and Anderson deployed wave and current-measuring instruments throughout the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. They examined the data for rogue wave patterns, looking at three possible causes: refraction on shoals, diffraction around islands, and reflection off the sandstone bluffs so prevalent in the area, and which make up the popular mainland sea caves near Cornucopia, Wis.

Anderson says that although the study is still in progress, preliminary results show an increase in the probability for rogue waves near reflecting walls. The duo also found that if one rogue wave was observed, others can’t be far behind. “They group together during certain wave conditions,” said Anderson. “You might get three or four in an hour and then you won’t get one for the rest of the day.”

The largest rogue wave they observed at the sea caves was 12.8 feet when the other waves around it were 6.1 feet. However, the largest they observed during the study occurred on Gull Island Shoal in the eastern part of the lakeshore. It measured 17.7 feet when the other waves were an average of 8.9 feet.

Although the rogue waves observed in the Apostles aren’t nearly as large as the offshore ones that may have sunk the Fitzgerald, “They’re still dangerous to kayakers or sailboaters,” said Anderson. “Waves are hazardous and we still don’t know everything about them, so we’re doing this research for public safety and to understand them better.”

To document other wave and current patterns for their study, Wu and Anderson developed a computer model and calculated 35 years of conditions. “We found that basically, the overall wave climate has been increasing on Lake Superior due to less ice cover and stronger winds in the winter, which generates larger waves,” Anderson said. This can impact how sediment is transported around the islands and can change how bluffs erode.

Their ground-breaking work can be seen on the INFOs website.

New National Marine Sanctuary Much Closer to a Berth in Wisconsin

Oct. 5, 2015

By Moira Harrington

Wisconsin Sea Grant welcomed President Obama’s announcement today that the nation’s newest NOAA national marine sanctuary is moving closer to a designation along the Lake Michigan shoreline in Manitowoc, Sheboygan or Ozaukee counties and in the waters in a location to be determined, having met preliminary national significance criteria and management considerations. As proposed, it encompasses 875 square miles.

The Wisconsin sanctuary is currently on a so-called inventory list and now heads into a more intensive public comment period and scoping, preparation of an environmental impact statement and a management plan. Once those processes are complete, the clock would start ticking toward official designation. The timeframe for those actions is not fully known but could range from months to a year. If successful, Wisconsin would host only one of 14 National Marine Sanctuaries and only the second one in fresh water.

The Wisconsin site has been selected, in large measure, based on the success of shipwreck explorations in state waters of Lake Michigan. There are 59 Wisconsin shipwrecks listed on the National Register of Historic Places, far more than any other state. Of that number, a proposed 15 would be within the designated sanctuary boundaries. Another 24 known wrecks are in the proposed sanctuary but are not, at this point, on the register.

Since the 1990s, Sea Grant has supported maritime explorations through grant funding in collaboration with the Wisconsin Historical Society’s (WHS) maritime archeology program.

In addition to shipwreck exploration, mapping and registration for protection, the Sea Grant-WHS partnership extends public understanding of the nautical past by creating and sharing land-based signage that explains the shipwrecks’ significance; preparing geocaches, which are an innovative, accessible and active way to extend the learning; and co-hosting an entertaining and informative website, wisconsinshipwrecks.org.           

“Wisconsin has a rich maritime heritage and an equally rich legacy of preserving that heritage,” said Jim Hurley, Sea Grant’s director. “We are thrilled the national panel looking at siting the newest sanctuary has chosen the Great Lakes to move forward. It means continued historic preservation, along with tourism for an important area of the state and highlights an important ecosystem.” 

Marine sanctuaries are now found in Lake Huron, the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and touch states such as Hawaii, Texas, California and Massachusetts. Sanctuaries are established to protect natural and cultural features while allowing people to use and enjoy the waters in a sustainable way. No disruption of commercial or recreational activities occurs. Sanctuary waters provide a secure habitat for species close to extinction and protect historically significant shipwrecks and artifacts. Sanctuaries also serve as natural classrooms and laboratories.

Wisconsin applied for the sanctuary designation in December 2014 and competed against four other proposed locations. After an initial screening, Wisconsin and a site on the Potomac River emerged as the strongest applicants. The review panel was impressed by the broad range of support for the Lake Michigan proposal from the governor’s office on behalf of the state of Wisconsin; the cities of Two Rivers, Manitowoc, Sheboygan and Port Washington; Manitowoc, Sheboygan and Ozaukee counties; NGOs and area businesses. The Wisconsin Coastal Management Program, along with the WHS, were also highly instrumental in the application process.

The sanctuary’s application reads, in part, “The proposed Wisconsin sanctuary encompasses a key portion of an early transportation corridor that was critical to the expansion of the United States and the development of the agricultural and the industrial core of the nation.” 

Details on how to participate in the public comment period on the proposal are at sanctuaries.noaa.gov/wisconsin/

Safer Lake Michigan Surf Thanks to New Academic and Governmental Partnership

By Moira Harrington

Lake Michigan swimmers will be much safer from the risk of rip currents and other dangerous waves thanks to a new real-time effort that will match the academic know-how of a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher with the outreach capability of Wisconsin Sea Grant, expertise on coastal issues by the Wisconsin Coastal Management Program and resources of the Milwaukee County Parks Department.

Chin Wu, UW-Madison professor of civil and environmental engineering, and those organizations have teamed up to plan on installing a camera at Milwaukee’s Bradford Beach and an underwater wave sensor off of the harbor breakwall.

"In 2012 and 2013, dangerous Great Lakes currents and waves caused 88 drowning deaths and rescue incidents. In fact, rip currents claim more lives annually than tornadoes, hurricanes, lightning and floods," Wu said. "Our project will address these tragic statistics."

Rip currents occur when a strong offshore narrow current forms along sandy beaches as well as around

obstructions such as a sandbar, pier or jetty. The currents appear as a break in incoming wave patterns or as a channel of dark, churning, choppy water flowing offshore with no breaking waves. They do not pull swimmers down into the water, as an undertow would, but rather along the surface. Yet, the currents are strong and swimmers panic trying to escape them. That’s when drownings may occur.

“Our joint project will arm beachgoers with awareness so they can make better decisions while enjoying Lake Michigan. We want to provide information about rip currents or dangerous waves,” said Gene Clark, a coastal engineer with Wisconsin Sea Grant.

Todd Brieby of the Wisconsin Coastal Management Program said, “It’s gratifying to partner on this effort that will prevent further loss of life from these swimming hazards. This project is a successful example of a collaborative effort to address a coastal community need.”

Installed equipment will identify and more accurately pinpoint the movement and behavior of hazardous wave conditions. Additionally, computer models are being developed to better predict conditions. The information gathered from those tools will be shared with local officials, and in turn, the public through two sites: Integrated Nowcast/Forecast Operation Systems (INFOS) and soon at milwcountybeaches.org.

“On any given day, thousands of people visit Milwaukee’s lakefront and Bradford Beach,” said Jeff Baudry of Milwaukee County Department of Parks, Recreation and Culture. “They are attracted by the sand, sun, volleyball courts, concession stand and, importantly, the sparkling water of Lake Michigan. With this real-time warning system, they will also be safer.”

The warning information is also available as an app for download to a mobile device or a smart phone. See the bottom of this page.

The effort is being funded by a $200,000 grant from the Great Lakes Coastal Storms Program, which is a regional effort led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to make Great Lake coastal communities safer and more resilient to storm and weather hazards and climate change. Similar systems are in place for Port Washington, where a 15-year-old died in a rip current four years ago, and in Duluth, Minn.

Monofilament Mania: Wisconsin Sea Grant Donates Fishing Line Recycling Bins to St. Louis River Alliance

By Marie Zhuikov

With all the work going on to restore habitat in the St. Louis River Estuary, organizations would be remiss if they didn’t also address a man-made killer that lurks there: monofilament fishing line. That’s just what the St. Louis River Alliance of Duluth, Minn., is doing.

Wildlife can get caught and tangled in discarded or lost fishing line, sometimes leading to death. This spring, the Alliance began a program to install monofilament recycling bins at public boat landings along the estuary in Duluth and Superior, Wis. They sent out a call for cooperation and support to several local organizations, and organized adult and youth groups to participate in an “Adopt-A-Bin” program.

Wisconsin Sea Grant heeded the call by offering six bins that were donated by the NOAA Marine Debris Program a few years ago. The bins look more like small ship smokestacks than boxes. They are comprised of wide white PVC pipe tubing with a curved opening on top. Bill Majewski with the Alliance outfitted the tubes with a special wooden door that keeps birds from using the bins for nesting and deters people from throwing trash inside. The organization also created “Reel in and Recycle” stickers to let boat landing visitors know what the bins are for.

The donated bins were installed by Jill DiDomenico of the Alliance and her homegrown work crew (her children) in Superior last week. Anglers will notice them at Loon’s Foot Landing, Arrowhead Pier, Billings Park, and on Barker’s Island at the public boat launch, the dock by the Wisconsin Sea Grant/Lake Superior Reserve office, and the fishing pier along the Osaugie Trail on the mainland across from the office.

If you find discarded fishing line at any of these sites, please look for the bin and do your part to keep the estuary clean!

New Great Lakes Climate Change Tool Sparks Conversation and Planning in Coastal Communities

June 17, 2015

By Marie Zhuikov

Sea Grant climate change educators in the Great Lakes states have taken a tool developed in Mississippi-Alabama and adapted it for communities along the shores of our freshwater seas to use in preparing for the impacts of weather disruption. The educators have worked with several community planners in Wisconsin and northern Minnesota to assess the communities’ abilities to adapt under a changing climate, and they presented their work last month at a national climate adaptation forum. They hope other communities will follow suit.

The tool has a long name: A Self-Assessment to Address Climate Adaptation Readiness in Your Community. It was originally developed by the NOAA Coastal Storms Program at Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant. Staff with Minnesota Sea Grant saw a use for it in the Great Lakes Region, but the tool needed some tweaking.

“The original tool was focused on hurricanes and flooding,” said Hilarie Sorensen, climate change extension educator with Minnesota Sea Grant. “We customized the checklist for the Great Lakes. It’s meant to be a conversation-starter with communities that haven’t started the adaptation process yet but are interested in it, or communities that have a planning process coming up where they’d like to integrate a climate change component into it.”

Sea Grant staff help the communities go through the checklist of nine categories and identify where they are vulnerable and what tasks they can start with to prepare for the worst that new climate conditions can dish out. These include infrastructure, maintenance, water resources, tourism and business plans.

So far, two communities in Wisconsin have done so: the city of Ashland and Oconto County. Oconto County has been the first to incorporate the tool into an official planning process. They did this thanks to work by Angela Pierce, natural resources planner with the Bay Lake Regional Planning Commission, Julia Noordyk with Wisconsin Sea Grant and Sorensen.

“Climate change can be controversial, but Oconto County was great to work with,” said Pierce. “We explained that we were here to address the fact that things are changing and we need to be prepared. Hazard mitigation planning has always been based on past trends and with changing conditions, we can’t count on those anymore.”

The trio went through the self-assessment process with the county and in the process learned that the checklist needed to address wildfire and pest concerns more thoroughly. Pierce and Noordyk were able to adapt it to meet the county’s concerns by using information from the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts – a collaborative effort between the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the University of Wisconsin-Madison to scientifically assess climate impacts and limit vulnerability in Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest.

Pierce credits Sea Grant for providing the assistance to make community-specific climate change planning possible. She had tried in the past to incorporate personalized climate change actions into hazard mitigation plans but didn’t have the funding or tools to make it happen.

“Julia and Hilarie put in a lot of their time to develop the natural hazards and climate change section in the Oconto County plan,” Pierce said. “It was customized for the community – not just some summarized information. It’s one thing to gather information and put it in your plan. It’s another to go through the process with Sea Grant and have really good discussions that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.”

Right now, the climate change section is a stand-alone chapter in the Oconto plan. Pierce hopes to incorporate climate change throughout the plan in future updates and to work with other communities as they update their hazard mitigation plans.

Noordyk notes that in the future, local governments may be required to consider the impacts of climate change in their hazard mitigations plans in order to be approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and eligible for post-disaster funding. President Obama and FEMA have already announced that states will need to do so.

“Using this tool is a first step in getting communities to start thinking about how to integrate future climate conditions into planning processes they are already required to go through,” Noordyk said.

David Hart, Wisconsin Sea Grant assistant director for extension, said Oconto’s efforts are unique. “There haven’t been many hazard mitigation plans in Wisconsin that have included a climate change element.” And he credits Pierce’s willingness to address the issue.

Noordyk and Sorensen presented their work with Oconto County at the National Adaptation Forum held in May in St. Louis Mo., to make other planners and educators aware of the tool’s availability and usefulness.

Communications Work Captures National Awards

Eat Wisconsin Fish Campaign and 2012-14 Biennial Report Effectively Speak to Mission, and Audiences, and Impress Judges

June 11, 2016

Two Wisconsin Sea Grant communications projects recently won national awards.

“I’m gratified our work on behalf of worthwhile Sea Grant activities, in support of our mission and tailored to our audiences, has received recognition by national peers in the field of communications,” said Moira Harrington, assistant director for communications.

The Eat Wisconsin Fish campaign won a Grand Award. The judges wrote: “Bright. Eye-catching. Crisp. Appealing. All adjectives apply to this well-thought-out campaign, which has the chief virtue of a very clear focus on a single, simple message, employing a wide range of print, electronic and social media to deliver said message. An impressive effort.”

The 2015 APEX award competition drew 1,900 entrants. APEX is run by Communications Concepts Inc., which advises publishing, PR and marketing professionals on best practices to improve their publications and communications programs.

The campaign was created by Graphic Designer Yael Gen, and on behalf of a team of outreach specialists—Jane Harrison, Kathy Kline and Titus Seilheimer. They are addressing the fact that more than 90 percent of the seafood eaten by Americans is imported from other countries. Through this Sea Grant marketing and public relations effort, the goal is to move consumers to choose healthy, local fish for their dinner tables.

The campaign has included a strong logo, print elements (posters, table tents, flyers, brochure and fish case signage), other collateral (aprons and magnets) a website, two chef cook-off/public tasting events and a flight of television ads in one of Wisconsin’s markets. 

All materials are the result of more than 200 consumer surveys conducted in grocery stores in Wisconsin’s two largest cities. Two focus groups in those cities were held and shaped material development. The campaign has been ongoing for roughly one year. Subsequent tracking is planned (based on sales figures) to see what progress has been made to move consumers’ preferences and affect buying habits.

The 2012-14 Sea Grant biennial report is the second award-winner. It took a bronze in the institutional relations/publications category of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education 2015 Circle of Excellence Awards that overall attracted more than 3,000 entrants.

There were seven winners in the category and Sea Grant was one of only two programs within larger academic institutions to excel. Other winning publications were done on behalf of entire universities, such as Boston University, the University of Kansas and the University of California-Irvine.  

The judges shared these impressions of the report: “From the cover photo to the artistic representations to the high-quality science-based information and actions of Sea Grant, this book captures the mission of the Institute. The judges liked the overall design and the use of color. The photography portraits are well done and support the stories in the text on an emotional level. With an overall budget on the low side, the final product is of excellent quality, demonstrating creative use of available resources.”

Yael Gen was also the graphic designer on this project, and others who worked on the report were Moira Harrington and Elizabeth White. Marie Zhuikov and John Karl contributed photos. Zhuikov wrote two poems, about lakes Michigan and Superior, for the publication whose theme was the connection between art and science, and how the Great Lakes can inspire expression of all types. In turn, this can lead to support from all quarters for their sustainable use.

Be Current Smart: New Water Safety Tips for Swimmers Beach Safety Equipment to be Distributed Across Wisconsin

May 19, 2015

With summer just around the corner, millions of swimmers will enjoy Wisconsin’s Great Lakes beaches and cool water on a hot summer day, but waves and currents can be deadly. Since 2005, at least 26 people have died at Wisconsin beaches, according to Wisconsin Sea Grant.

To address this threat to swimmers, partners in Wisconsin and throughout the Great Lakes are hitting the beaches at the end of May with new water safety and emergency rescue equipment like ring buoys and life jackets as part of a water safety campaign: Be Current Smart. In addition to the equipment, the campaign includes water safety tips tailored to Wisconsin and other states in the region.

“Beach-goers can take simple steps to ensure a fun, safe day in the water,” said Todd Breiby, Wisconsin Coastal Management Program. “Parents have an important role in keeping a close watch on young children and making sure they wear life jackets.”

Rip currents are dangerous and can flow very fast away from shore. If caught in a rip current, the best means of escape is to swim to the side, out of the current and then back to shore. In addition to parents keeping a close eye on children while they are in the water or near the water’s edge, experts advise swimmers to “steer clear of piers,” and avoid getting trapped in danger zones near structures.

New water safety and emergency rescue equipment will be distributed and deployed by Be Current Smart partners throughout the Great Lakes and to 41 beaches in Wisconsin today and during May 27-28. Another six beaches in Door County, Wis., will receive safety equipment through funding by the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. First responders note it’s critical to quickly help someone in trouble by tossing a ring buoy or anything that floats.

The Be Current Smart campaign includes animations targeted for children and video news release footage with interviews from the U.S. Coast Guard, county sheriffs and park officials. Safety campaign partners supported the production of new beach sign templates, publications, curriculum, diagrams and descriptions of the types of dangerous currents. All materials are free and available for news media, beach communities, park staff, educators and others.

Wisconsin Sea Grant and the Wisconsin Coastal Management Program have been working on this campaign in Wisconsin with a group comprised of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Weather Service, UW-Oshkosh and local government representatives. Regionally, they’ve been working with the National Weather Service and NOAA Coastal Storms Program, as well as several Great Lakes Sea Grant programs.

Spotlighted Through New Grant: Fish From Wisconsin’s Sustainable Aquaculture Operations and the Great Lakes

May 12, 2015
By Moira Harrington

Wisconsin Sea Grant today announced it has received a new $29,000 grant to shine a spotlight on the locally produced, healthy and delicious fish choices harvested from the Great Lakes and the regulated, sustainable aquaculture operations across the state.

Yellow perch, Arctic char, burbot, chubs, lake herring, lake trout, lake whitefish, rainbow trout, smelt, tilapia and walleye are the bounty of producers and fishers right here in Wisconsin. Choosing those, consumers can be assured the fish are domestic, not part of the 90 percent of imported seafood Americans consume each year, most of it from Asia and up to only 3 percent inspected for health and safety.

“We welcome this new grant to continue our work on the Eat Wisconsin Fish outreach program,” said Sea Grant’s Social Scientist Jane Harrison. “Each year, Wisconsin issues 70 commercial fishing licenses to hard-working professionals—our fellow state residents—who are putting fish on our tables. Plus, there is a $21 million aquaculture industry that raises fish sustainably. It’s good to buy locally and support local businesses. Of course, the bonus is that the fish is delicious.”

Sea Grant has already launched a website, eatwisconsinfish.org, which includes recipes on how to prepare Wisconsin fish. The site further offers details about fish in local waters, nutrition, and locations to purchase Wisconsin fish. The new grant will strengthen ties among Wisconsin fish producers, fish sellers like grocery stores and restaurants, and consumers.

It will support awareness-raising events such as booths at public gatherings, advertising, and cooking demonstrations and tasting opportunities at restaurants and brew pubs.

The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture Trade and Consumer Protection’s Buy Local, Buy Wisconsin grant also will be devoted to the creation of a local fish buying guide distributed next spring to grocery stores and restaurants so those purveyors can make local choices to benefit their consumers and patrons. Those buyers, along with culinary school instructors and students, will also be invited to an Eat Wisconsin Fish workshop.

Sea Grant’s proposal was one of eight selected from 42 grant applications. Previous Buy Local, Buy Wisconsin recipients have generated nearly $6.6 million in new local food sales. The grants’ return on investment is calculated at 9 to 1.