Learning about the Lake Guardian working to protect our Great Lakes
I know with the pandemic, fewer people are out and about downtown. But this week, the Lake Guardian was docked right here in Detroit.
The 180-foot long EPA research vessel is on a mission to study our Great Lakes, keep an eye on the lower foodweb that underpins our ecosystem, and discover new species. Now, if that doesn’t sound like the USS Enterprise, I don’t know what does.
There are 26 crew members on board and resupplying. To talk about it. One of them. Joining me on the line is Dr. Annie Scoffield, she is lead for the Great Lakes biology monitoring program out of the Great Lakes National Program Office.
Credit Kelly House / Bridge Michigan
Dana Serafin still hauls in 20,000-pound boatloads of whitefish to supply regional restaurants and markets, but in recent years, the Saginaw Bay fisherman has found it more difficult to fill his orders.
Native whitefish, the main livelihood for Serafin and other Great Lakes commercial fishers, have been in decline for years amid changes to the food web, replaced in Serafin’s nets by healthier populations of walleye and lake trout that he’s not allowed to keep.
Mark Lentz tosses back a walleye that turned up in a Serafin Fishery net earlier this week in Saginaw Bay. As whitefish numbers decline in the Great Lakes, Lentz and other commercial fishers argue they should be able to keep the walleye that swim into their nets.
Scientists Concerned About the Bottom of the Food Web in the Great Lakes
By Lester Graham, Michigan Radio – April 14, 2021
Right now, scientists are on a ship taking samples and measurements of the Great Lakes. They’re trying to determine how the lakes will fare this year and watching for trends.
One trend, the warming climate, could mean changes for the base of the food web in the lakes. But, the researchers are not yet sure what those changes might be.
Annie Scofield is a Life Scientist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Great Lakes National Program Office in Chicago. But she’s not in Chicago.
Lake Michigan plankton Stephanodiscus Aulacoseira Subarctica Blue.
Credit Mark Edlund / St. Croix Watershed Research Station, Science Museum of MN
Right now, scientists are on a ship taking samples and measurements of the Great Lakes. They’re trying to determine how the lakes will fare this year and watching for trends.
One trend, the warming climate, could mean changes for the base of the food web in the lakes. But, the researchers are not yet sure what those changes might be.
Annie Scofield is a Life Scientist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Great Lakes National Program Office in Chicago. But she’s not in Chicago.
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