Dynamic Great Lakes

2012-01-29T14:31:00.000-08:00

In the Cool Dunes

Gifts of the west wind and the glaciers

cool dunes rise above the windy beach.

For thousands of years the dunes

grew tall and then the sand began to sing.

The sand sang of quartz from Wisconsin

and of ice mountains grinding

through, of Lake Michigan currents

and November winds that blew.

Quartz and hematite granules sang

as young girls wove garlands of wildflowers

from the wooded dunes:

bloodroot, Dutchman’s breeches, hepatica,

trillium, violets and Pitcher’s thistle.

They played in dappled shadows under

sassafras, witch hazel and choke cherry trees.

Bewitched, young boys carved their names

beside names of the girls they loved

in the smooth gray bark of beech trees

while silent deer and young wood ducks watched

in the cool dunes.

--Barbara Spring

Excerpted from Sophia's Lost and Found: Poems of Above and Below

Available from Barnes & Noble, Amazon and many fine independent bookstores.

Ice on Lake Michigan: An Eagle Flew Over

2012-01-21T10:30:00.000-08:00

On the beach this morning the sun was shining and an eagle flew overhead. It flew low enough to scout for any dead fish that the lake may have tossed on shore or fish that might be seen in the water. I took this photo this morning as the eagle flew overhead.

Usually ice begins to form along Lake Michigan's eastern shore by Thanksgiving. The Ice was late this year due to and unseasonably warm December. But now in January the ice is forming ridges on the sandy beach. The ice feet are building up with each splashing wave and we see ice balls that the waves have tossed on the shore and we see ice balls bobbing in the water. The hard rim of ice will prevent the beach sand from eroding. The sun on the new fallen snow was sparkling and the waves splashed over the ice ridges so they will continue to build up.

Read more about this phenomenon and about the environmental victory that allowed the American bald eagle to return to the shores of the Great Lakes in my book the Dynamic Great Lakes available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and many independent bookstores.

Great Lakes Areas of Concern: Map by Great Lakes Commission

2012-01-19T11:42:00.000-08:00

Great Lakes Areas of Concern

About the Areas of Concern

The Areas of Concern are watersheds along the Great Lakes suffering from degraded environmental conditions stemming from historic and ongoing pollution. They were designated under the U.S.-Canada Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement based on the presence of beneficial use impairments, such as restrictions on fish and wildlife consumption, beach closures, drinking water restrictions, loss of fish and wildlife habitat, etc.

A total of 43 AOCs have been identified in the U.S. and Canada: 26 located entirely within the U.S.; 12 located wholly within Canada; and five that are shared by both countries. Since the inception of the AOC program, two Canadian AOCs and one U.S. AOC have been delisted. Federal, state, provincial and local partners are working to delist the other AOCs.

Remedial Action Plans (RAPs) have been developed and and are being implemented for all designated AOCs in the Great Lakes basin. RAPs were developed for each AOC to address impairments to any one of 14 beneficial uses (e.g., restrictions on fish and wildlife consumption, dredging activities, or drinking water consumption) associated with them. RAPs use an ecosystem-based, multi-media approach for assessing and remediating impaired uses. The RAP process is a model of grassroots environmental democracy, stressing empowerment of the affected public within AOCs. Successful RAPs are community driven, with active federal, state and local involvement.

Area of Concern Contacts

This Area of Concern Contact List includes RAP advisory council chairs, state contacts, federal contacts, local coordinators and other contacts for each U.S. Area of Concern.

U.S. AOC Program Annual Meeting

The U.S. AOC Program Meeting is held annually to review recent developments affecting the program; discuss approaches for implementing delisting targets; build capacity to implement on-the-ground restoration actions; identify opportunities to address AOC restoration priorities; improve linkages between the AOCs, Lakewide Management Plans (LaMPs) and other programs; and consider actions that will strengthen the regional U.S. AOC program.

Statewide Public Advisory Council for Michigan’s AOCs

Of the 42 current Great Lakes AOCs, 14 are located in Michigan. They include rivers, lakes and bays located across the state. Michigan's AOC program is administered by Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment (formerly the Department of Environmental Quality) in collaboration with other state and federal agencies and local stakeholders.

The Statewide Public Advisory Council (SPAC) was formed in 1991 to facilitate public participation in decisions affecting Michigan's AOC program, heighten public awareness of and participation in the RAPs being developed in the AOCs, and generate public support for implementation of restoration and protection measures in the AOCs.

Virtual Library of Remedial Action Plan Resources

The Virtual Library of Remedial Action Plan Resources is a web page maintained by the Great Lakes Commission that provides a variety of information on the Great Lakes Areas of Concern program and associated Remedial Action Plans. Information contained on the page is updated frequently and expanded as needed to reflect new information as the RAP program evolves.

Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Resources

In 2010, the U.S. EPA was provided $475 million for the first year of a new, interagency Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) targeting significant problems in the region, including invasive aquatic species, non-point source pollution, and contaminated sediment. The GLRI uses outcome-oriented performance goals and measures to target these problems and track progress in addressing them. U.S. EPA, in concert with its federal partners and other stakeholders, is leading the development and implementation of the GLRI and will administer the funding. The Great Lakes Commission maintains a list of web links for the GLRI that may be useful to Great Lakes stakeholders who are interested in the GLRI or involved in developing funding proposals. The links on this page will be updated continuously.

Publications

A variety of recent and past publications and documents related to Great Lakes Areas of Concern are available on the Publications page.

Workshop and Meeting Proceedings

The Great Lakes Commissiom maintains summaries and proceedings of a variety of workshops and meetings related to Great Lakes Areas of Concern. Brief descriptions and links to those summaries are available on the Workshop & Meeting Proceedings page.

Palisades Nuclear Power Plant Detroit Free Press

2012-01-16T10:16:00.000-08:00

The Detroit Free Press
Tina Lam

Palisades Nuclear power plant, which sits on the shores of Lake Michigan, could soon be downgraded by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to a status making it among the nation's five worst-performing nuclear plants after a year of accidents, unexpected shutdowns and safety violations.
The regional head of the NRC said last week that if performance does not improve, the agency would not hesitate to shut down the plant. Palisades is one of the nation's 10 oldest nuclear plants, and after hitting its 40-year life-span in 2011, its license was extended until 2031.
"Quite frankly, we find your performance troubling, and it declined in 2011," regional administration Cynthia Pederson said in a rare public rebuke of the plant owned by Entergy Nuclear Operations.
Entergy acknowledged mistakes. One accident in September led to a loss of electricity at the plant that tripped its reactor and caused equipment to malfunction.
The accident "could have killed somebody," the plant's manager said last week in a shaken voice.
That was one of at least five unexpected shutdowns of the plant in the past year after valves malfunctioned, seals leaked or pumps failed. The NRC spent 1,000 extra hours last year inspecting the plant.
Antinuclear activists and watchdogs say there are even deeper problems the NRC has not addressed, including Entergy not having replaced major components that former owner Consumers Energy said needed to be replaced when it sold the plant in 2006. Although their age makes those components vulnerable, the NRC says the components still meet safety standards.
"If all these failings and accidents line up in just the right way, we could have a very bad day at Palisades," said Kevin Kamps, a Kalamazoo native and staff member at Beyond Nuclear near Washington, D.C.

Palisades nuclear plant accident investigated

It began with a light bulb.
Trying to fix a burned-out light bulb on an indicator button led to a serious incident that left the Palisades nuclear plant on Lake Michigan without half its electrical power on Sept. 25, 2011. A piece of equipment slipped while a worker was troubleshooting on a live electrical panel, causing an arc of electricity and a loss of half the indicators in the room that controls the reactor. Signals went haywire for a while. The plant shut down.
A plant spokesman notified local newspapers of the shutdown as required, but assured the public there were no safety risks.
Behind the scenes, the reaction was not so mild.
"This was an avoidable event," plant manager David Hamilton said last week at a daylong Nuclear Regulatory Commission public meeting on the incident, where Palisades managers were questioned at length about what happened.
In taking his share of the blame, Hamilton said, "I apologize if I get emotional, but I could have killed somebody that weekend."
Anthony Vitale, vice president of operations for Entergy at Palisades, said he was thankful that operators were properly trained and had been able to respond to prevent the accident from getting any worse. "I saw the look on the shift manager's face," he said. "I can tell you, I will never let that happen again."
In the meeting last week in Chicago, regulators said it wasn't even so much what did happen, as what could have.
The NRC has preliminarily flagged the incident as "yellow," one that has substantial safety significance.
Though they took the blame and promised fixes, Entergy officials said the problems stemmed in part from employees' failures to follow Entergy procedures used at its other plants. Entergy bought the plant in 2007 from Consumers Energy, which had operated it for decades.
"You've run it for four years," said Cynthia Pederson, the NRC administrator for Region III, which oversees nuclear plants in the Midwest. "Frankly, we're tired of that excuse."
Vitale and Hamilton admitted that the company's safety culture was lax, meaning some people were not as risk-conscious as they should be.
"We understand we need improvements in our people and our plant," Vitale said. The company has brought in a consultant to help it ramp up safety.
The incident was one of five unexpected reactor trips, three serious incidents and a violation in the last year that have landed the plant in hot water.
"We're concerned with the accidents and violations we've identified," Pederson told the Free Press on Thursday.
She listed Palisades' problems: organizational failures, a plan for change that came only after performance had declined steeply, poor instructions for work that needed to be done, failing to follow procedures, poor supervision and oversight, poor maintenance and multiple events caused by human errors or equipment failures. "The list could go on," she said.
"What we want to see is a change in performance," Pederson said. The plant already had more than 1,000 hours of extra NRC inspections last year and will undergo more this year, she said. A plant that is performing well gets about 2,500 hours yearly. The NRC wants to make sure the company finds and fixes the root causes of each problem.

Color-coded dangers

Each year, most of the nation's 104 reactors have minor problems that are considered of very low safety significance. Those plants are in the "green" category, which allows baseline inspections by resident NRC inspectors, who are on-site daily. Michigan's two other nuclear plants -- Fermi 2 and D.C. Cook -- are in the green category.
When more serious problems are discovered, the NRC puts plants into downgraded categories, starting with white, then yellow and then red, depending on seriousness. Without improvement, a red plant is shut down until problems are fixed.
The further the plant is downgraded, the more inspections it requires.
Earlier this month, the NRC determined that a pump failure at Palisades last May was a white finding, of low to moderate significance, and moved the plant from the green category to white. A dozen other U.S. plants are in that same category. That problem was caused by workers who didn't follow the right maintenance procedures, the NRC said.
Last week's hearing covered two other preliminary findings, one white and one yellow. If one or both are upheld, the plant could be downgraded to yellow.
Only two other plants nationwide are in that category now. A third plant is in the red, or worst, category, and a fourth is completely shut down after flood damage last year.
The second white finding, still preliminary, was that one of three critical water pumps used to cool the plant failed in May 2011 because of corrosion of a coupling; the same thing had happened in 2009 but the company had not determined the correct cause. The preliminary yellow finding was the electrical failure.
The NRC also issued a legal violation against Palisades earlier this month, separate from its performance reviews, after a supervisor walked off in anger from his job in the plant's control room in October 2010, without seeking permission to leave or asking anyone to take over his duties. The control room is the most sensitive area of the plant, overseeing the reactor's operation. Pederson said the company has promised corrective action and could yet be fined in that case.
Palisades already spent part of 2008 and most of 2009 in the white category because of problems at the plant.
David Lochbaum, director of nuclear safety for the Union of Concerned Scientists and a nuclear engineer, said the NRC's system of colored findings and increased inspections when plants are downgraded is a vast improvement over the way the agency used to do business.
The NRC used to assess performance every 18 months to two years. "Problems had to grow to epidemic proportions before the old system flagged them," he said, and the agency had no means to compel fixes. Since 2000, when the system changed to assessing 25 performance criteria every three months, it's quicker to detect and solve issues.
"It doesn't rely on words, promises or excuses," he said. As plants are downgraded, more NRC inspectors show up. If a plant has deeper problems, the inspectors will find them. A plant can't be upgraded until the NRC does a major inspection that finds no major problems.
"It's about objective evidence," Lochbaum said.

Equipment issues

Besides human failures, the plant has underlying equipment issues, some of them because of its age, antinuclear activists say. Cables break, aging pipes burst, reactor vessels deteriorate and corrosion hits equipment.
Palisades was completed in 1967 but didn't open until 1971. It's among the nation's 10 oldest plants. Its life-span was planned as 40 years, like other reactors. The NRC granted it a 20-year extension to 2031 four years ago. About 70 other plants have won similar extensions.
A 2011 Associated Press investigation found that the NRC often worked closely with plant operators to keep aging reactors within safety standards by weakening the standards.
Kevin Kamps, a watchdog with Beyond Nuclear, a Maryland nonprofit that opposes nuclear plants, said that has happened with some components at Palisades. In 2006, when Consumers Energy was seeking permission to sell Palisades to Entergy, it did a presentation to the Michigan Public Service Commission showing what fixes needed to be made and arguing that Entergy would be in a good position to afford them.
Many of those fixes still haven't been made. The reactor vessel at Palisades is possibly the most brittle in the country, meaning radiation bombarding the vessel has weakened the metal, according to NRC studies done on the problem at plants around the country to try to determine fixes for it, Lochbaum said.
Pederson acknowledged that problem Thursday but said that the vessel still meets acceptable safety standards.
Another problem, a corroded reactor lid that Consumers said in 2006 needed replacing, also falls within acceptable safety standards for now, she said.
Kamps said opponents of the plant wanted it shut down instead of winning a 20-year extension. "It's an accident waiting to happen," he said.
Pederson disagreed and said the plant is not dangerous to its neighbors.
"If it were, I'd shut it down immediately," she said.

Wolves and Moose on Isle Royale Lake Superior.

2012-01-05T06:30:00.000-08:00

Years ago my husband and I hiked Isle Royale and heard moose but we never heard wolves. We saw a moose in our path and we saw moose wading in the waters. The wolves are evasive so we never saw one. We heard loons at night and many song birds during the day. We picked tasty thimbleberries No cars or paved roads spoil the wild beauty of Isle Royale. It is a National Park where people can hike and camp.

The balance between wolves and moose on Isle Royale has been studied for years.

Read more about Isle Royale and the redfin lake trout in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes. Available on Kindle

http://www.amazon.com/The-Dynamic-Great-Lakes-ebook/dp/B005HM9BGU/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1314292440&sr=1-1

Also available in paperback here:http://www.publishamerica.net/product23502.html

or Barnes & Noble and Amazon and many independent bookstores.

2011-12-26T14:54:00.000-08:00

The Dynamic Great Lakes is available on Amazon's Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/The-Dynamic-Great-Lakes-ebook/dp/B005HM9BGU/ref=ntt_at_ep_edition_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2

The book got so many great reviews that the publisher deemed it "Critically Acclaimed."
The book has been updated recently. It is also available in paperback on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble as well as from the publisher http://www.publishamerica.net/product23502.html

The Steelhead are Running Now

2011-12-16T08:15:00.000-08:00

Unlike some types of salmon that may die after spawning, the steelhead lives to return and spawn year after year guided by their uncanny senses. Their particular place of birth is imprinted in their bodies and nothing short of death can keep them from returning to it. Their senses, especially their senses of taste and smell and extra senses located in lateral lines, lines that run along both sides of their body from the tail to the head, guide them to their traditional place for spawning. Beneath their lateral lines are a system of pores, canals and sense organs linked to the brain. With their lateral lines, fish are able to detect unseen enemies or prey. They sense currents, obstacles with the lateral line's sixth sense, in an intermediate area between hearing and touch; it allows the fish to remember low frequency vibrations and pressure waves built up as the fish passes rocks or other fish. Experiments have shown that fish use their keen sense of smell to help them home in on their traditional spawning grounds imprinted in their memories.

Great strength, speed and endurance make trout and their close relatives the salmon, the champions of fish. Their strength propels them over dams and through swift currents.

Read more about fish and other denizens of the deep in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes available on the Kindle reader, and as a paperback on Amazon.com, bn.com, Schuler Books and Music and many other fine bookstores.

2011-11-26T11:43:00.000-08:00

The Work of Ice Age Glaciers

2011-11-19T05:13:00.000-08:00

Pictured are glacial grooves on Kelley's Island in Lake Erie. This is the work of Ice Age glaciers. Here is a quote from my book, the Dynamic Great Lakes:

The glaciers ground softer rocks into smaller and smaller pieces.

The underside of the glacier picked up sharp pieces of stone and

rasped them across the earth. The glacier rasped polished grooves in

hard rock along Lake Superior’s northern shore and other places

such as Kelley’s Island in Lake Erie.

Some Ice Age glaciers remain in northern Canada and Greenland. The Dynamic Great Lakes is available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com and many other online stores and fine bookstores.

This Should Not Happen

2011-11-18T05:57:00.000-08:00

By Bobby Carmichael, USA TODAY

A BP (BP) refinery in Indiana will be allowed to continue to dump mercury into Lake Michigan under a permit issued by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

The permit exempts the BP plant at Whiting, Ind., 3 miles southeast of Chicago, from a 1995 federal regulation limiting mercury discharges into the Great Lakes to 1.3 ounces per year.

The BP plant reported releasing 3 pounds of mercury through surface water discharges each year from 2002 to 2005, according to the Toxics Release Inventory, a database on pollution emissions kept by the Environmental Protection Agency that is based on information reported by companies.

The permit was issued July 21 in connection with the plant's $3.8 billion expansion, but only late last week began to generate public controversy. It gives the company until at least 2012 to meet the federal standard.

The action was denounced by environmental groups and members of Congress.

"With one permit, this company and this state are undoing years of work to keep pollution out of our Great Lakes," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., co-sponsor of a resolution overwhelmingly approved by the House last week that condemned BP's plans.

Studies have shown that mercury, a neurotoxin, is absorbed by fish and can be harmful if eaten in significant quantities, particularly by pregnant women and children. Each of the eight Great Lakes states warns residents to avoid certain kinds of fish or limit consumption.

The permit comes as the states, working with the federal government, are trying to implement the $20 billion Great Lakes Regional Collaboration Strategy, an umbrella plan to restore the health of the lakes signed in late 2005.

Indiana officials said the amount of mercury released by BP was minor.

"The permitted levels will not affect drinking water, recreation or aquatic life," Indiana Department of Environmental Management Commissioner Thomas Easterly told the Chicago Tribune.

BP said it doubted that any municipal sewage treatment plant or industrial plant could meet the stringent federal standards.

"BP will work with (Indiana regulators) to minimize mercury in its discharge, including implementation of source controls," the company said, according to the Tribune.

Part of the concern is that the Great Lakes have only one outlet — the St. Lawrence River.

"Lake Michigan is like a giant bathtub with a really, really slow drain and a dripping faucet, so the toxics build up over time," said Emily Green, director of the Great Lakes program for the Sierra Club.

Books By Barbara Spring

2011-11-15T05:06:00.000-08:00

Books by Barbara Spring http://barbaraspring.yolasite.com You will find reviews of my three books at this link. The books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and many other places on the www.

2011-11-12T08:50:00.000-08:00

My watercolor of Flower Pot Island in Georgian Bay, part of Lake Huron. I enjoyed hiking the Bruce Trail in Canada and going out on a glass bottom boat to observe sunken ships. These waters can be dangerous. Wind and waves have sculpted the sandstone into shapes resembling flower pots.

My book, The Dynamic Great Lakes is now available on Amazon's Kindle as well as paperback. The book is about the many interesting features of the Great Lakes.

Sand Sculptured by Mother Nature

2011-11-11T09:59:00.000-08:00

Sometimes ice and wind carve sand into shapes. These sand sculptures make me imagine a game of checkers or an army of trolls marching. I took these photos a couple of years ago.

The Great Yin Mother

2011-11-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

Sophia's Lost and Found:
Poems of Above and Below

The Great Yin Mother

Yin rocks her cradle, an inland sea

supports us on her thighs

rolls us over her high waves.

Her unbridled strength plays.

Sweetwater mother’s waves

slap us…we tumble in her broad lap.

Risible whitecaps burst their mirth—

Yin’s laughter splashes the shore away.

I want to believe this lake

our mother will hold us forever—

that there is no such thing

as a ring of nuclear power plants

poised on the brink of melt

down to the core.

Surely yang unbalanced us.

Better by far were dragons breathing fire

than invisible death seeping through

air earth fire water.

Excerpted from Sophia's Lost and Found by Barbara Spring

Available from Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com and many other fine bookstores

Pacific Salmon in the Great Lakes

2011-10-28T11:21:00.000-07:00

Lattices of salmon ribs litter the banks of a stream. On cold autumn nights, frost flowers bloom reflecting star light. The stream babbles and unintelligible song as it rushes westward. It is the salmons’ place to be born, to spawn; it is their place to disintegrate and die. Salmon are anadromous fish, fish evolved to follow an elegant rhythm of always returning to their birth stream to spawn after maturing in a saltwater or sweet water seas.

For male and female salmon alike, the imprint of place is their obsession. As smolts they burst from their transparent eggs still wearing a yolk sac on their bulging bellies. Like their ancient ancestors who breathed glacial melt water through their gills, the newborns streak down stream to the freedom of the great inland sweet water seas known as the Great Lakes. In jade green waters they feed their voracious dream until their bodies grow heavy with it—until they resemble silver purses stuffed with treasure: slick coral beads and pearly white milt.

Summer sun dazzles down through the thermoclines—the layers of warm, cool, cold water—where it enters through the fishes’ pineal eyes—triangles on top of their heads—giving them sure knowledge of their place in the larger scheme of things. They bide their time drifting in schools, fanning their tails in repose, gorging on small fish. They dream of their place where clear water chortles over quartz and granite under shifting shadows of white pine and tamarack. It is their place and as their urgent need to return gathers force under a moon that grows heavy on the horizon, a moon the color of salmon eggs, a moon that must change to bone white, the salmon mill about in the harbor.

The fishes’ bellies grow heavy as the harvest moon. The dream becomes reality as celestial cues, the sun, the moon, the stars enter each cellule and each dancing atom of their bodies. Then they begin. The fish return to their stream and nothing will stop them: they ignore hunger, snares, treble hooks. On their silvery sides their lateral lines carry everything they need to know; their maps and compasses imbedded in the circuitry of their bodies…the hereditary wisdom of their species carried in a network of circuits from pineal to tail. It is a sure knowledge of the west Michigan river system linked to the Great Lakes, or in other places, other river systems and other fresh or salt water oceans. It is also the wisdom of the constellations and the way their light glaces from silvery skinned fish, sparkling a wisdom older than mankind. To a salmon obsessed with its sense of place, failure means nothing. They defy high dams, leaping, leaping, leaping again and again until they hurl themselves over the top.

Home at last, the female hollows out a nest on the stream bed with her tail then cascades hundreds of coral bead like eggs into it. The male waits driving away his rivals with fierce charges. It is time. The male salmon releases a small galaxy of milt that will begin the life/death cycle again. Male and female have spent their silver purses in the stream. They are finished. In the next few days their flesh will fall away while they linger, easy prey for the raccoons, bears, ospreys and eagles. With their bones picked clean and their young curled in sleep on the stream bed, the transformation begins again. An osprey shadow glides over the shining stream. The sun rises as the moon glows faintly in the West.

Previously published in The Grand Valley Review, a publication of Grand Valley State University.
copyright by Barbara Spring

*Pacific salmon were planted in the Great Lakes as predator fish to control an invasive species, the alewife. Fishermen have been delighted with these sporty fish. Read more about this phenomenon in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes available on Amazon's Kindle reader and widely available in paperback.

Climate Change affects the Great Lakes as reported by the AP

2011-10-24T10:57:00.000-07:00

Al Gore, who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his campaign to awaken people to the climate change threat, said warmer temperatures could nullify much of the progress made in recent decades to heal the battered Great Lakes. Increasingly, severe storms made worse by greater volumes of water vapor in the atmosphere are causing wastewater treatment system overflows that dump raw sewage into the lakes, he said. That forces beach closures and promotes growth of algae blooms that create oxygen-deprived zones where fish can’t survive.

“We’re still acting as if it’s perfectly OK to use this thin-shelled atmosphere as an open sewer. It’s not
Gore said. “We need to listen to the scientists. We need to use the tried and true method of using the best evidence, debating and discussing it, but not pretending that facts are not facts.”
Gore, who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his campaign to awaken people to the climate change threat, said warmer temperatures could nullify much of the progress made in recent decades to heal the battered Great Lakes.
Increasingly, severe storms made worse by greater volumes of water vapor in the atmosphere are causing wastewater treatment system overflows that dump raw sewage into the lakes, he said. That forces beach closures and promotes growth of algae blooms that create oxygen-deprived zones where fish can’t survive.
After largely disappearing as phosphorus discharges into the lakes were reduced decades ago, the algae problem has returned and is worse than ever in some places, primarily on Lake Erie. Smelly clumps of algae are fouling beaches on Lakes Michigan and Huron.
Gore’s critics have accused him of making exaggerated claims about climate change and cashing in on his activism through investments in green technology. But leaders of the International Joint Commission said his comments about the Great Lakes were based on findings of scientists in the region.
“He’s quoting what the researchers are saying,” said Ted Yuzyk, the Canadian co-chairman of an IJC group that plans to release a report next spring on how climate change is affecting the lakes. Researchers have found that heavy storms promote algae growth not only through sewage overflows, but also by washing greater amounts of nutrient-rich soils into the lakes, Yuzyk said.
Lana Pollack, who was appointed by President Barack Obama as the U.S. chairwoman of the commission, said: “There’s absolutely no doubt the challenges we face are greater and more confounding because of climate change.”

A Salmon Poem

2011-10-21T10:30:00.000-07:00

http://www.publishamerica.net/product530.html The Wilderness Within

Circuits

Light from a star that died

shines out

from jade green eyes.

A salmon tail fans streambed stones

and dark silt swirls.

Millennia ago a star spurt fire and

now a constellation of eggs

and white milt spiral down

in black water.

Fishbone lattices litter the stream

that speaks of glaciers

and purls.

Frost flowers bloom on the cut bank

while embryos curl in sweet cold sleep below.

from The Wilderness Within by Barbara Spring

Lake Erie is in Trouble Again

2011-10-18T10:54:00.000-07:00

Lake Erie

Lake Erie is in Trouble Again
Editorial from the Detroit Free Press 10/18/2011

With Erie's health in jeopardy, years after herculean efforts to clean it up, there's a dire need to take action before it worsens -- and spreads.
In August, for example, the view from space showed algae spanning almost the entire western basin of Lake Erie. Well into this month, stringy swirls and vast nearshore swaths remained.
The algae can choke out other life. It creates even more problems -- and stink -- as it dies off. And the mass of algae in Lake Erie is increasingly dominated by more toxic varieties that already have been known to poison pets.
Research to date suggests the problem arises from a combination of agricultural practices and the weather.
But no one can do much about the weather, in this case the increase in major downpours that flush fertilizing phosphorus off fields rather than helping it soak in. Last spring was particularly rainy, almost certainly a factor in this summer's algae growth.
Another factor, tentatively identified by University of Michigan research Donald Scavia, is a trend toward fall fertilization on farms, rather than waiting to do it entirely in the spring each year.
Among the confounding factors: Back when Lake Erie was in trouble before, researchers knew that keeping soil on the fields would also help keep fertilizer on the fields. Farmers made dramatic improvements in reducing the sediments that got swept away -- only to find now that the phosphorus somehow escapes on its own to nourish the algae.
Continued agricultural research can presumably solve the riddle of timing and placement of fertilizer, but it must be done quickly and it must be well-funded.
Meanwhile, climate trends are hardly in Lake Erie's favor.
The frequency of heavy rains began increasing in the 1990s, Scavia said, and is expected to double by the end of the century. A longer growing season -- one of the potential pluses of climate change, in some people's view -- also gives algae more time to grow each year. At least one new type of algae has been found, and the mix of algae types runs heavily toward those that have toxic qualities.
The lake's dead zones also are growing. They occur when decaying material, such as from algae, takes up so much oxygen that none remains in the water for fish and other biological entities that need it.
And Toledo, whose water intake is perilously close to where major algae blooms can form, now spends an additional $3,000 to $4,000 a day on filtration to keep its drinking water safe, according to a University of Toledo researcher.
Scavia's research suggests that the arrival of zebra and quagga mussels in Lake Erie has not been a determining factor, although it's hard to believe they don't contribute at least a bit to the problem. As for fertilizer types, agricultural studies to date suggest the problems are just as severe in tributary basins where farmers don't use liquid manure as in those where they do. And since farmers would rather grow crops on their fields than algae in Lake Erie, they are very likely to follow whatever guidance they can get on fertilizing -- but someone has to figure it out first.
And the explosion of algae, in all its complexity, is only one of the problems facing the lakes.
Issues old and newSeveral groups joined together last week in Detroit for Great Lakes Week, making all of the serious issues highly visible. This unprecedented event offered the best opportunity yet for everyone involved with the lakes to mingle, to work toward maximum coordination of research, restoration and activism, and to speak with one voice in Washington and Ottawa, and in state and provincial capitals.
The problems are both new and old -- algae in Lake Erie being the best example of an old horror story spinning off an even more frightening sequel.
The other threats are equally large, and often as complex:
• Invasive species: A newer problem, the ongoing threat of invasive species continues to top most people's lists. There's no doubt they have upset, and perhaps decimated, the balance of food for fish in the lakes, in addition to other problems they cause.
• Overflows and runoff: After strong progress on upgrades to sewage treatment plants decades ago, storm-induced overflows increasingly put more waste into the water again. Combined with the effects of surface runoff, that impact shows most obviously on beaches that must be closed to swimmers after major rainstorms.
• Contaminants: The lakes face other, less visible threats, too. The ban on dioxins and PCBs led to a decline of their presence in the lakes, but they still show up in fish tissue. And so do many of the chemicals that replaced them. Pharmaceuticals and compounds used in personal care and cleaning products are detectable in the water, too. Dangerous substances such as mercury continue to drop into the big lakes and inland waterways, washed in by rain after they've risen from the smokestacks of sources such as coal-fired power plants.
Glimmers of hopeThe most encouraging news involves parts of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and other projects that have begun to take hold.
The Great Lakes Legacy Act, the result of a long campaign by former U.S. Rep. Vern Ehlers, R-Grand Rapids, has gathered enough steam that some of the region's biggest toxic hotspots are being dredged out and restored. Within a year, three of these spots will be ready for delisting from their Areas of Concern designation. Over the next two-year cycle, assuming consistent funding, five areas are to be cleaned and delisted.
Restoration activities appear to have exploded this summer. Wetlands have been restored, land-based invasive species have been cleared out, partners have worked together along shorelines and riverbanks all across the basin to improve water quality and wildlife habitat in areas that feed the lakes. Several of these projects got targeted to accompany work at Areas of Concern, so the newly cleaned spots will also be newly welcoming to wildlife -- and people.
And, as beautiful as the lakes are, people remain the bottom line. Beauty has little value if the water doesn't meet the three priorities for human use: drinkable, swimmable, fishable. Lake Erie is coming perilously close to being none of those things. As a harbinger, it is a call to action.

Wooded Dunes of West Michigan

2011-10-17T07:59:00.000-07:00

I painted this while at Hoffmaster State Park on the shore of Lake Michigan. Pictured are the trees on wooded sand dunes. Right now the colors are in their glory. It's wonderful to get out and see them.

To learn more about the Great Lakes and their wooded dunes, read The Dynamic Great Lakes. Available from Barnes & Noble, Schulerbooks, Amazon's Kindle and many other fine bookstores.

Birds in the Wooded Dunes on Lake Michigan

2011-10-12T12:59:00.000-07:00

In the wooded dunes along Lake Michigan some birds are preparing for winter. The tufted titmouse hammers seeds into the bark of trees for times when they will be hard to find. Woodpeckers fatten on insects found in the bark of trees.

I painted this watercolor of a woods near my home. We see pileated woodpeckers that remind me of the cartoon Woody Woodpecker. When I was a kid, I loved that cartoon. A dead tree recently fell and it was filled with large holes made by the pileated woodpeckers. When they are at work on a tree their loud hammering resounds through the woods. Their calls sound like tropical birds. But I did not paint that sort of woodpecker. Pictured is the downy woodpecker that we often see and the tufted titmouse that often hangs out with chickadees. These birds will stay with us for the winter.

The Dynamic Great Lakes & The Wilderness Within & Sophia's Lost and Found

2011-10-07T14:39:00.000-07:00

http://www.amazon.com/The-Dynamic-Great-Lakes-ebook/dp/B005HM9BGU/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1314292440&sr=1-1 $7.95 when ordered for Amazon.com's Kindle.

$9.95 when ordered from publisher

http://www.publishamerica.net/product23502.html

http://www.publishamerica.net/product530.html The Wilderness Within

http://www.publishamerica.net/product4614.html $9.95
Sophia's Lost and Found: Poems of Above and Below

Kite Boarding on Lake Michigan

2011-09-30T16:42:00.000-07:00

Lake Michigan is up to its old tricks again: the waves are very high and kite boarders are loving it. It is dangerous, but that must be part of the appeal. I took this video a year ago. The lake is even wilder today. http://youtu.be/MZwLo-x_k8Y Click the link to see kite boarding.

The Circle of Life: Salmon

2011-09-25T10:49:00.000-07:00

Circuits

Light from a star that died

shines out

from jade green eyes.

A salmon tail fans streambed stones

and dark silt swirls.

Millennia ago a star spurt fire and

now a constellation of eggs

and white milt spiral down

in black water.

Fishbone lattices litter the stream

that speaks of glaciers

and purls.

Frost flowers bloom on the cut bank

while embryos curl in sweet cold sleep below.

___Barbara Spring

An excerpt from my book of poetry and essays: The Wilderness Within.

The Dynamic Great Lakes on Kindle

2011-08-28T11:26:00.000-07:00

http://www.amazon.com/Barbara-Spring/e/B002PI5IQQ The Dynamic Great Lakes is $7.95 when ordered for Amazon's Kindle. The link goes to my Amazon page.

There is a bumper crop of salmon and trout this year since their food base, alewives, is abundant. The Great Lakes are dynamic. Everything changes all the time. In my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes I show how this happens.

The Dynamic Great Lakes now sells for $9.95 in paperback and for &7.95 on Kindle from Amazon. I have a free app on my computer for Kindle. How cool is that?

EPA Research Vessel Lake Guardian

2011-08-25T12:02:00.000-07:00

Research conducted on the Great Lakes is very important. With the knowledge gained, lets hope that our government has the will to do what is necessary for the sake of our freshwater seas.

The Lake Guardian is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) largest Great Lakes' research and monitoring vessel. It is the only self-contained, non-polluting research vessel on the Great Lakes. The Lake Guardian, operated by the EPAs Chicago-based Great Lakes National Program Office (GLNPO, conducts monitoring programs that sample the water, aquatic life, sediments, and air in order to assess the health of the Great Lakes ecosystem by using state-of-the-art data collection techniques and instruments during the biannual spring and summer surveys. It is also used to support research activities conducted by Federal, State, and, local agencies, and universities. R/V Lake Guardian has been operating on the waters of the Great Lakes for the past 12 years. The ship is offshore, collecting data, for approximately 7 months a year

Tern Rides the Wind

2011-08-24T07:01:00.000-07:00

A tern rides the wind over Lake Michigan. People fly kites on the beach, sail, surf and kiteboard taking their cues from the birds. Regattas, sunset sails and all such pleasures are found on the Great Lakes.

Price now $9.95 + s&h for all of my books

2011-08-22T09:05:00.000-07:00

http://www.publishamerica.net/product4614.html

Sophia’s Lost and Found:Poems of Above and Below

My other books are The Dynamic Great Lakes non fiction

The Wilderness Within poems and essays from wild places in the world.

National Parks and Lakeshore areas on Lake Superior and Lake Michigan

2011-08-20T07:23:00.000-07:00

This is a wonderful time of year to visit national parks on the Great Lakes. Pictured are Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. Each place is unique. On Isle Royale there are wolves, moose and hiking trails that go through thimbleberry bushes. At the Pictured Rocks there are boats that can take you past the beautiful rock formations.

Sleeping Bear Dunes on Lake Michigan is a wonder with its high dune and trails. And the Indiana dunes are not quite as high, but both of these areas have been built by waves and the prevailing west winds.

In Grand Haven MI There will be a Salmon Festival

2011-08-19T13:59:00.000-07:00

Grand Haven Salmon Festival
Friday, September 16th is the Fresh Catch Fish Boil from 4:30pm to 7:30pm. Enjoy a traditional Salmon Fish Boil, live music, and more. $10 for Adults & $5 children. It's a great family event put on by the Grand Haven Sons of American Legion!

Grand Haven Salmon Festival - Grand Haven CVB

www.visitgrandhaven.com

Grand Haven Salmon Festival September 16-18, 2011 21+ID Required for Wine/Beer Tasting Events

King Salmon Caught in Lake Ontario

2011-08-12T07:23:00.000-07:00

Fishing for Trout and Salmon in the Great Lakes

2011-08-11T03:50:00.000-07:00

The fishing boats are out today. Read about how the Great Lakes became a mecca for trout and salmon fishing in The Dynamic Great Lakes, a critically acclaimed non-fiction book.

The book is widely available in bookstores and on the net. Barnes & Noble offers a good price.

Fennville Winery and the Trace

2011-08-08T07:25:00.000-07:00

The Trace played at the Fennville Winery in Michigan to an appreciative crowd. It was one of their cookouts with three kinds of wine included and excellent food.

Because of the moderating effect of the Great Lakes, vineyards such as the one at Fennville grow beautiful grapes.

Sitting next to the vineyard, listening to wonderful music and drinking wine with excellent food is the essence of summer time fun.

In the photo are Steve Damstra, Robin Spring and Mark Lamm of the Trace.

2011-08-03T10:06:00.000-07:00

A tern takes flight over the Great Lakes above a welter of waves.

The Dynamic Great Lakes is a book about the nature of life in, above and around the five Great Lakes. It is available in Michigan from Schuler books in Lansing and Grand Rapids, The Bookman in Grand Haven, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com plus many other fine bookstores.

The Great Lakes inspire many artists and writers alike. I am both. I painted this watercolor and many other works both visual and written.

Fun in the Summer Time Great Lakes

2011-08-01T11:22:00.000-07:00

Catching a wave on Lake Michigan. The Great Lakes are freshwater seas where people frolic on the beach, kiteboard, paddleboard, surf, sailboard and fly kites on the beaches.

Fishing is good also for steelhead, lake run brown trout, coho and chinnok salmon.

Read more about the Great Lakes in The Dynamic Great Lakes available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, Schulerbooks and many other fine bookstores.

Satellite picture of the Great Lakes

2011-07-29T12:50:00.000-07:00

From a satellite the Great Lakes waters are easily seen from space.

These freshwater seas support an amazing array of life from the prehistoric looking sturgeon to recently planted fish such as Pacific salmon: chinook and coho.

Read more in The Dynamic Great Lakes available at Barnes and Noble as well as Amazon.com and many other online stores such as Schulerbooksand music.

Sports on the Great Lakes

2011-07-25T19:04:00.000-07:00

Fishing from the pier in Grand Haven that marks the Grand River that flows into Lake Michigan is popular as is fishing from boats. Charters take sports fishers out and often come back with a catch of coho and king salmon, Pacific salmon that were planted in the Great Lakes. Yesterday the governor caught a nice steelhead, a lake run rainbow trout, on a charter. Sometimes football sized brown trout are caught. The fish are biting now that cooler water has moved in.

Sailing, surf boarding, kite boarding, and paddle boarding are all popular sports on the Great Lakes. Some like to fly kites or play volley ball on the beach and some just like to gaze. Sunsets are spectacular.

Boating & Fishing on Lake Michigan

2011-07-16T05:33:00.000-07:00

All sorts of water sports make Grand Haven on Lake Michigan a lively place in the summer. People love to stroll on the pier where the Grand River flows into Lake Michigan. Fishing from the pier or from boats is popular as is sailing.

Read more about the Great Lakes and what lies under the water in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes.
I will be at the Norton Shores, Michigan Barnes & Noble store on July 23 at 11 a.m. to chat about our wonderful Great Lakes and sign books.

Lake Superior's Agawa Paintings

2011-07-15T04:39:00.000-07:00

Rock paintings found on Lake Superior's shore. I found this youtube video fascinating.
http://youtu.be/ShyHwMzEI_E

Beach Combing

2011-07-12T06:13:00.000-07:00

Beach combing

1 goose, 5 crows, 2 gulls

2 dead perch, 1 dead carp, 1 dead salmon

1 brown dog with yellow eyes.

1 blue heron with long toes

Walked miles in the sand.

I found a Waboba bobbing in the lake.

I found two long sticks to prop up

My big moonflowers.

Waves say hush, hush, hush.

Summer Storms: Summer's Horses

2011-07-11T05:57:00.000-07:00

Summer's Horses

Rain and hail shake my window pane

Summer’s horses in a dead heat

Slam dunk torrents of rain.

Black horses thunder again and again

From dark storms spawned in the west

Rain and hail shake my window pane.

Whinnies, heavy hooves beat--

And insane sums of rain

Summer’s horses in a dead heat.

Who could save us from the rain

And the cruel blasting hail?

Rain and hail shake my window pane.

If the weather man’s warning fail

Summer’s horses in a dead heat

Will destroy us with wind and hail.

Global warming envelopes the earth

Strange changes devastate life

Rain and hail shake my window pane

Summer’s horses in a dead heat.

--Barbara Spring

2011-07-06T14:08:00.000-07:00

Summer is in full swing on the Great Lakes. People are enjoying the sunshine, sandy beaches and fresh air. To learn more about the freshwater seas, their fishes, their features and their ecology, The Dynamic Great Lakes is informative, yet easy to read. Order from Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com or find it in your favorite bookstore.

watercolor by Barbara Spring

The Fourth of July at the Lake

2011-07-04T06:29:00.000-07:00

The Fourth of July

A songbird ripples still air

In still water salmon and trout lie deep

A skateboard boy rolls

down the steep road.

Mourning doves flutter

To the nest they built

under my window.

I guess I’ll get up.

It’s the fourth of July.

--Barbara Spring

2011-06-30T11:24:00.000-07:00

The Great Lakes Imprint In Us

Leave the Great Lakes?

Never.

We feel their pulse in our blood,

in our sinews, our bones.

vibrations in our bellies.

Their islands arise in waking dreams.

And even in sleep we know

moon, stars and planets float in their waters

until dawn.

The Great Lakes gulp the sun at noon

while diatom symphonies

dazzle green currents

and curious protozoa graze.

In silent depths below

lie burbot, sturgeon, lake trout.

White sailboats belly out in the breeze.

On the beach rare piping plovers

hide their nests among stones.

We walk through singing sands,

scoop pails of water,

build spirit castles of wet sand.

Then we brush sand from our feet

and our hands.

The lakes’ imprint is in us.

From The Wilderness Within

the watercolor is a piping plover

Poem and watercolor by Barbara Spring

2011-06-28T13:30:00.000-07:00

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore is located on the south shore of Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, between the communities of Munising (west) and Grand Marais (east).

Pictured are Grand Sable Dunes. The Pictured Rocks on Lake Superior are interesting, but these dunes are pretty spectacular too. There are also many waterfalls in the area. It's a great place to hike and enjoy the beauties of nature: sand, wildlife and freshwater. For more information about the Great Lakes, read The Dynamic Great Lakes, a critically acclaimed non fiction book about the Great Lakes systemavailable at Barnes & Noble, Amazon and many other fine bookstores.

Duluth, Minnesota to Kingston, Ontario

2011-06-23T15:12:00.000-07:00

Pictured is Duluth, Minnesota

On the Great Lakes, linked by connecting rivers and man made locks, a ship may navigate for 2,342 miles from Duluth, Minnesota

at the western tip of Lake Superior to Kingston, Ontario at the entrance of the St. Lawrence River and then down the Saint Lawrence River to the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the North Atlantic

Ocean making shipping to and from the Great Lakes worldwide.

Excerpt from the Dynamic Great Lakes

Oversight for Nuclear Power Plants

2011-06-21T07:57:00.000-07:00

Since there are numerous aging nuclear power plants in the Great Lakes Basin, 33 plus four that are not running, we should be aware of the loose regulations. Here is a link to an important AP article:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110620/ap_on_re_us/us_aging_nukes_part1

The Great Lakes Are Gifts of the Glaciers

2011-06-18T12:18:00.000-07:00

Imagine this if you can. Glaciers one to nearly two and a half miles high bulldozed their way through our continent four times. Slowly, ever so slowly they ground across the landscape scooping out old riverbeds and then slowly melted back north over thousands of years leaving freshwater of the Great Lakes in their wake. Since we do not expect another Ice Age any time soon, we need to care for the glacial water left to us in the Great Lakes and in the groundwater.

Invasive species: purple loosestrife

2011-06-15T06:01:00.000-07:00

Wetlands are very important. The native species of plants help prevent floods and filter out pollutants. They also are nurserys for birds and fish. Pictured is a wetland with an invasive species: purple loosestrife. This plant does not belong in Great Lakes wetlands because it takes over and native species are crowded out. Read more about invasive species in the Great Lakes in my book: The Dynamic Great Lakes. The book is widely available at bn.com, Amazon.com and many other fine bookstores.

Review of the Dynamic Great Lakes by Barbara Spring

2011-06-13T06:38:00.000-07:00

Reviewer: Norman Goldman Editor Bookpleasures

Many of us know very little about the five Great Lakes other than perhaps being able to name them. As Barbara Spring states in her introduction to her outstanding primer The Dynamic Great Lakes they are "a flowing river of seas left behind by Ice Age glaciers and are nearly twenty percent of the world's supply of fresh surface water; the world's greatest freshwater system." The ecosystem of this great body of water is very complex and unfortunately due to pollution and the fallout of modern industry and agriculture they have gone through a gradual transformation.

One of the unique characteristics of this compact book is that it is written in a language devoid of esoteric explanations. The eight chapters of the book reflect the author's teaching and journalistic aptitudes in knowing how to unravel the mystery of the Great Lakes and the many painful dangers it has faced and continues to face.

Each of the five Lakes is introduced with a brief synopsis of important elements distinguishing one from the other such as: elevation, length, breadth, average depth, maximum depth, volume, water area, retention time, population and outlet. From this point of departure the author deals with the various changes that have taken place as well as the various major issues affecting the Lakes. There are also brief descriptions of the various animal life found in each of the Lakes and how they have been affected by pollution and the appearance of harmful species, such as the Lamprey Eel.

However, we are also reminded throughout the reading of the book that "people power" can have an effect and if we band together and make our voices heard we could exert influence in reversing some of the harmful trends that have caused ecological disaster. For example we are apprised of the situation that occurred in relation to Lake Erie. In 1969 a tributary river of Lake Erie, the Cayahoga, caught on fire due to being heavily coated with oil and debris. As a result, the Federal Water Quality Administration launched a one and half billion dollar municipal sewage treatment program for the Erie Basin which included the five surrounding states: Michigan, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and Indiana.

The conclusion of the book most appropriately reminds us that: "we are all challenged to use our knowledge, creativity and common sense to keep the Great Lakes great. Can you think of ways to think globally and act locally?" We are also warned " life on earth is only possible as long as our limited life support system works.

Sturgeon to Imprint on the Kalamazoo River

2011-06-06T14:05:00.000-07:00

The Grand Rapids Press
Howard Myerson

NEW RICHMOND -- Dawn Petrowski was careful to use a long feather to gently stir the brew, the salt bath being given to a tankful of tiny Great Lakes sturgeon.

The salt would kill any fungus in the Kalamazoo River water. The feather was to assure the 9-day-old and fragile fish would not be injured. After bath time, it was feeding time. Brine shrimp was on the menu.

"When they (the sturgeon) get bigger, we’ll switch to blood worms, a bigger food. But now they are being fed brine shrimp," said Petrowski, a fisheries staffer with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources who had the morning shift at the state’s newest mobile sturgeon rearing facility located along the banks of the Kalamazoo River.

The tiny sturgeon, 140 in all, swam in plastic tanks enclosed in the small trailer parked at New Richmond Bridge Park. The inch-long fish were treated carefully, being the future hope for a dying river fishery where sturgeon were once abundant.

Archaeological evidence suggests sturgeon were a large part of the local tribal fish diet 500 years ago. Today, there are 60 mature sturgeon left in the river, according to state researchers who have been studying the population for past eight years.

The demise of sturgeon on this river follows a course seen elsewhere in the Great Lakes; a saga of overfishing, poaching and spawning habitat loss because of the damming of rivers.

Howard Meyerson | The Grand Rapids PressDNR staffer Dawn Petrowski gives the sturgeon larvae a salt bath to kill off fungus.

"What we are most interested in doing here is identifying the Kalamazoo River sturgeon as (genetically) different from those on the Manistee River or from Wisconsin," said Kregg Smith, a DNR fish biologist and sturgeon researcher who recently finished up the work of collecting Kalamazoo River sturgeon larvae for the rearing station.

"When we release these fish in September or October, hopefully, they will be 8-to-10 inches long. We’ll tag them with radio transmitters to monitor their over-winter survival. They will live in the river through January and then move out into Lake Michigan," he said.

That may be the last Kregg and other researchers see of them for years.

Female sturgeon can live to be 80 years old. Males can live to be 65. Males live in Lake Michigan until they are 12 years old. Then they return to their home river to spawn annually or every other year.

Females, however, are slower to mature They may be 18 or 20 before they spawn and then only reproduce every four to seven years.

"We have one female that is about 200 pounds," Smith said. "We see her every four years. We’ve captured her twice in eight years."

Between 50 and 100 young sturgeon are expected to be released this fall. Smith hopes to double that in future years. The Kalamazoo River sturgeon population declines about 2 percent a year, 30 percent every 15 years.

"We want to stock between 100 and 200 a year to stem the rate of loss," Smith said.

Howard Meyerson | The Grand Rapids PressThis is the first stream-side hatchery for sturgeon on the Kalamazoo River at New Richmond Bridge Park.

It is a worthy goal that may be difficult to attain.

Larvae netting this spring collected almost 700 quarter-inch sturgeon, according to Smith. But many died because of the stress of netting, handling and an initial problem with facility water temperatures. More are likely to die when their diet is changed to the larger blood-worm, Smith said. But so far things appear to be on track.

"Releasing 100 would be a good year for the first year of one of these trailers," Smith said. "The others have been (releasing) less than 50."

The New Richmond facility is the newest of six mobile sturgeon-rearing facilities parked around Lake Michigan. Two are located on the Milwaukee and Manitowoc rivers in Wisconsin. Two others are on the Cedar and Whitefish rivers in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and the other is on the Manistee River.

Kalamazoo River water is used exclusively in its tanks, so the young fish imprint on the river. It is filtered and disinfected to remove parasites or other diseases that could affect their health.

Smith said using river water is essential at this early stage to assure the fish imprint on the river and come back to spawn. Studies elsewhere have shown that adult sturgeon later introduced to rivers may not return. They may just wander up another river to spawn.

The Kalamazoo project is a cooperative partnership between the Michigan DNR, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Gun Lake Tribe, Allegan County and volunteers with Kalamazoo River Sturgeon for Tomorrow, among others.

The station cost $220,000 to build and was built by staff from the Genoa National Fish Hatchery in Wisconsin. Funding came from federal funds allocated to the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

Al Weener, president of the Kalamazoo River Sturgeon for Tomorrow, said his group has been hoping to see it get built. It has the capacity to handle 2,000 young sturgeon. Volunteers with Weener’s organization help by patrolling the river looking for sturgeon poachers during the spawning season.

"We had the feeling that if something wasn’t done in the next few years, this genetic strain would be gone," Weener said. "It’s been a lot of fun to be involved and this is pretty exciting."

Smith said project the was eight years in the making, time spent assessing the river’s population to make sure there was a viable reproducing sturgeon population. Poaching continues to be a problem, he said. Signs are being posted along the river to warn and advise anglers of the fines involved.

Sam Stafslien, the FWS fish biologist who helped to build the station and who works onsite, said most who have stopped by to see the operation approve of what is being done.

"There is a lot of support for this project," Stafslien said. "People come a long way to see it. We’ve had maybe two people complain, out of 100, They want their money to go to things like walleye and perch."

E-mail Howard Meyerson: hmeyerson@grpress.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/HMeyerson

2011-06-04T06:43:00.000-07:00

The sand dunes along Lake Michigan are gifts of the west wind.

It was here that the father of ecology, Henry Chandler Cowles, made observations about the rapidly changing plant life that led to the

science of ecology.

In 1899 he published

The Ecological Relation of the Vegetation on the Sand Dunes of Lake Michigan

In this paper he showed the mutual relationships between plants and their environment.

“Ecology is a study in dynamics,” he wrote.

The word dynamic means change. The Great Lakes are dynamic.

Sand dunes are dynamic, making them a living laboratory for the

study of ecology.

Excerpt from The Dynamic Great Lakes

Available from Barnes & Noble and many other fine bookstores.

Our Unique Great Lakes

2011-05-23T06:14:00.000-07:00

On Planet Earth, the Great Lakes are absolutely unique.

The decisions we make in our daily lives, and the choices we make in who represents us in our government may affect generations to come. The Great Lakes system is a treasure. Understanding their natural processes and understanding the dynamics of what we do is essential to these life giving waters.
The way to solve pollution problems is to think globally and to act locally.
Picture yourself as an astronaut looking down from a spacecraft at this beautiful planet, the Earth. From space, it is easy to see that everything is connected to everything else. The great masses of swirling clouds travel over the continents, drop rain, and sometimes along with the rain, pollutants. The lakes, rivers and seas are interconnected. In order to control global pollution problems they must be controlled at their source.
     In order to act locally, some communities, both adult groups and school age students have adopted a stream. They have observed the places where pollution might be occurring then they have spoken out against pollution in their communities, city councils or other government agencies. Local groups of people are in the best position to observe what is happening to their local stream.
Local citizens can help develop cleanup strategies and local pollution prevention programs. The problem is too important to leave to government officials and industries alone.

     Legislation to curb pollution needs to be on a global level as well as on national, state and local levels since everyone is a part of the global whole and flowing air, water and land ecosystems.
The view of planet Earth as seen from a satellite in outer space shows the continents, deep blue oceans and white swirling clouds of vapor. The five Great Lakes show their distinct, interconnected shapes; unique bodies of fresh water.
Of all the planets our satellite cameras and telescopes have probed, only Earth looks inviting or habitable. A famous photograph taken from the moon shows Earth rising against a barren moonscape where nothing lives. In the foreground we see jagged rock, but rising in the distance is Earth with its liquid medium: water. Water and life are inseparable. Where there is life, there is water; where there is water, there is life.
     All nations as well as all living things share the water and air supply that is the planet's life support system; therefore we all share a responsibility for the cleanliness of the air, water, land and its living webs of life. Air and water never stop to show a passport, but circulate freely around the globe. The great swirling airstreams and water systems we can see from a satellite circulate continually.
If we thought of the Earth as an apple, a layer of life- supporting air, soil and water would only be as thick as the appleâ€™s skin. Life on Earth is only possible as long as our limited life support system works.
     We are all challenged to use our knowledge, creativity and common sense to keep the Great Lakes great. Can you think of ways to think globally and act locally?

Excerpted from my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes

Grand Haven Pier Water Color

2011-05-18T07:37:00.000-07:00

The air is filled with bird song, the waters are alive with fish and the trees are showing their finest leaves.

People are strolling around enjoying May. Kite boards, surf boards, sailboats, fishing boats are enjoying the fine weather.

When May Flies Emerge

2011-05-17T16:29:00.000-07:00

When May flies, or fish flies as some call them, emerge from the water of the Great Lakes, the fishing heats up. These flies are an important part of the Great Lakes ecosystem. Read about may flies in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes, available from bn.com, Amazon.com and many other on line stores.

Mackinac Island and the Great Turtle

2011-05-13T10:39:00.000-07:00

Riding a bike or skating around Mackinac Island is a lot of fun. You don't just go there to eat fudge. On the way you may see wildflowers in bloom, the clear blue green water, and all sorts of birds. Some of the birds sound like they are in a singing school. One sings and then another tries the same notes. Out in the water the diving ducks suddenly disappear and then reappear with fish in their beaks. Right now the lilacs are in bloom.

Native Americans once used Mackinac Island as an important trading post and had a legend about how the island came to be. The story says the island is a great turtle that got frozen into the ice and is still there.

Reverand Wm. Ferry, a Presbyterian minister established a mission on the island and a school. Later with indian guides he made a journey around the Great Lakes and the Grand River. He finally settled in Grand Haven, Michigan and his church is still going strong.

The importance of wetlands and marshes

2011-05-09T04:56:00.000-07:00

Wetlands and marshes are vital to the health of rivers and lakes. They nurture small fish, birds and dragonflies. Dragonflies feed upon mosquitoes. Redwing blackbirds balance on cattails and call chirringly. Eagles and hawks survey from trees and the sky. Sand hill cranes do their dances then hatch young. The great blue heron calls from a tree where he has landed. Geese, swans and ducks play in the marsh. Turtles, snakes, frogs and toads may live partly on land and partly in water. We hardly know they are there until evening when the toads sing their whirligig songs and the frogs sing their love songs.

Pictured is a swan on her nest hidden among cat tails at Ludington State Park.

Some people may think wetlands are worthless but the plants in them filter pollution and help prevent floods by acting as a sponge.

Partridge in the Wooded Dunes.

2011-05-03T08:52:00.000-07:00

This partridge would not fly away but kept walking in front of our vehicle. She must have been protecting her nest. It's great to see new life around the wooded dunes of the Great Lakes.

2011-04-26T07:36:00.000-07:00

Barbara Spring is a former university professor, and journalist and environmental activist. I have published three books:
The Dynamic Great Lakes is about what lies below the waters of the five Great Lakes and the importance of their ecosystems. The book is for the general public and may be used in schools from middle school on up. Folks who like to fish, boat, kayak, and just beach comb are enjoying this book. It has a search inside feature on Amazon.com and it has been updated in a fourth critically acclaimed edtion. When ordered from this link, the price is $9,95 + s&h. http://www.publishamerica.net/product23502.html

My book of poems, The Wilderness Within has a look inside feature on Amazon.com. It received wonderful reviews. These are nature poems and a couple of essays. The poems are from many countries and about many peoples.

Sophia's Lost and Found: Poems of Above and Below is now available on line and in bookstores. Sophia personifies wisdom and sometimes she seems to be lost to humans.

Fly Under the Great Lakes with Google Earth

2011-04-25T05:43:00.000-07:00

If you’ve been using the recently released Google Earth 5.0 to check out what the oceans look like from beneath the water surface (tip: use the flight simulator to fly underwater), you’ll be happy to know that the company has extended that capability to the “Third Coast” of the U.S., meaning the five Great Lakes of North America (Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario) that form the largest group of freshwater lakes on the planet.

Through a cooperative effort with the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL) and the NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, Google Earth now incorporates detailed bathymetry for the five Great Lakes. Users will be able to explore features such as the canyons and shoals in eastern Lake Superior, the Lake Michigan mid-lake reef complex, and the old river channel, now Michigan and Huron at the Straits of Mackinac.
The NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory has assembled a narrated Google Earth tour, which you can download ...

Book Review of the Dynamic Great Lakes

2011-04-20T04:21:00.000-07:00

photo by Steve Damstra

Here is a review of The Dynamic Great Lakes.

It is a green book--perfect for Earth Day.

U.S. Water News - Peter Wild

Are dinosaurs cruising the benthic depths of the Great Lakes even while we go about our daily tasks? Not exactly. Yet sturgeon, fish weighing up to 300 pounds and similarly plated with armor,are nosing around down there. Occasionally you can see the monsters appear, making their spawning runs up rivers and surfacing like submarines in the pools beneath waterfalls... The five Great Lakes, holding nearly twenty percent of the earth's fresh water, are quite young. Gouged out by glaciers, they assumed their present shapes a mere 3,000 years ago. For that, they are a dynamic shifting system, still changing and exhibiting surprising differences. Lake Ontario, for example, the easternmost, although smallest of the bodies, holds more water than Lake Erie, its shallower nearby sister. Here's a handy primer for all such things, from the interaction of phytoplankton and calcium carbonate that gives a white cast to these inland oceans come August and helps clean the water to the charming ice volcanoes spouting chilly "lava" in the winter. This is intriguing stuff for adults, but the straightforward presentation also lends itself to use in schools, beginning about the sixth grade and up. And yes, we get the latest news on the zebra mussel, the tube nose goby, and other threats to the natural scheme of things. Also good news; how since the banning of DDT in the 1970's, the bald eagles have come back.

For an up to date copy, order from bn.com or from the publisher.

http://www.publishamerica.net/product23502.html

Wisconsin's Door Peninsula on Lake Michigan

2011-04-19T07:08:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed visiting the Door Peninsula and comparing it to the Bruce Peninsula. These are part of the Niagara Escarpment. Both have layers of limestone, evidence of ancient seas. I took this photo when the lake level was low exposing rocks, fossils and allowing plants to grow that are seldom seen. It's all part of the natural Great Lakes water cycle. The lakes are low again this year. The lakes rise and fall in cycles. This is normal.

There were so many shipwrecks off of the Door Peninsula that Great Lakes sailors called it Death's Door. Now it is simply the Door Peninsula, a place where you will see eagles soaring over Lake Michigan's waters and trees hanging onto the rock for dear life.

Alternative Energy a Success in Grand Haven, MI

2011-04-06T06:24:00.000-07:00

Grand Haven Tribune by Alex Doty

After a year-long study, Grand Haven Board of Light & Power officials are now looking at the results of the organic diesel fuel tests.

The BLP contracted with Muskegon-based Alternative Energy Solutions (AES) to produce and test an organic diesel created from local sources such as restaurant waste oils, soy, canola and algae. The project was made possible by a $66,680 Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant.

BLP Director of Production Dan Bush said the project, which was made possible by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, has proven its value.

“AES is now competing in the diesel fuel market as the cost of retail diesel fuel climbs to the $3.50 to $4 per gallon price,” Bush said. “The BLP and its employees are pleased to participate in this project and in helping America reduce its dependency on foreign oil.”

During the course of the grant period, AES delivered more than 8,000 gallons of fuel to the diesel plant.

“Advantages of this biofuel alternative energy product include low investment, on-demand electricity — and a community fuel source that is independent of fuel reserves, foreign oil volatility and weather variables,” Bush said.

Steelhead Fishing in a Great Lakes' Tributary

2011-04-01T05:12:00.000-07:00

One of the steelheads has the scar left by a lampry eel on its side. Pictured is Norm Spring holding the fish that were caught on the Grand River in downtown Grand Rapids Michigan. Their guide, Greg Knapp said he really enjoyed the day. They all caught their limits by 11 a.m. yesterday, not April Fools Day. So Norm and I had a fish dinner last night. Steelhead prepared with olive oil and broiled.

Norm is a founder of the Steelheaders organization.

Read more about Great Lakes fish and lots of facts about the Great Lakes in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes.

2011-03-31T12:57:00.000-07:00

I have always loved this sonnet:

                 Pied Beauty

GLORY be to God for dappled things—

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
                               --Gerard Manley Hopkins

Brown Trout stocked in Lake Michigan

2011-03-28T12:20:00.000-07:00

This just in from the Chicago Tribune:

MICHIGAN CITY, Ind.— The state of Indiana says it plans to stock Lake Michigan with 35,000 brown trout in hopes of improving the diversity of fishing along the state's 45 miles of shoreline.

Lake Michigan fisheries biologist Brian Breidert of the Department of Natural Resources says the fish are from Illinois and are roughly four months old and 3 to 4 inches long.

Breidert says Indiana would like to rear these fish to a larger size to increase survival rate once stocked but there is limited space within the state's hatchery program.

The DNR has been stocking Lake Michigan with trout since 2002. The trout are normally stocked in late June at four different locations along Lake Michigan.

Pictured is a fully mature brown trout. I took this photo a few years ago on a tributary to Lake Michigan.

2011-03-27T11:48:00.000-07:00

The photo is the Bruce Peninsula in Lake Huron. I took this picture and liked it so much that I asked my publisher to use it on the cover of my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes. The Bruce Peninsula in Ontario is similar to the Door Peninsula in Wisconsin. Thousands of years ago, these limestone fingers of land were joined. They are part of the Niagara escarpment. Limestone underlies much of the Great Lakes basin. It was built during the time when much of North America was covered by saltwater seas.

The Bruce Peninsula is built of limestone and there are beautiful hiking trails where rare flowers may be found. I visited in fall and collected a basket full of mushrooms. I thought their shapes and colors were so beautiful that I took them home with me to paint. Unfortunately, the mushrooms didn't last very long, so I never did paint them. Sigh.

Pictured is a rock formation on Lake Huron called an alvar.

Rain Barrel: Rain Gardens Good Ideas

2011-03-19T12:35:00.000-07:00

By catching rain in a barrel, you will have soft water for your rain garden or anything else you would like to use it for. This may prevent soil from washing away.

A rain garden should be located where runoff can be diverted into it away from building foundations and utilities. Plant perennial plants native to the Great Lakes region. Mulch of shredded hardwood will keep the soil moist.

For more information about how to make a rain garden go to http://www.raingardens.org/

Rain gardens replenish groundwater supplies and when the water is filtered by plants it will be clean when it enters lakes and streams.

At Palisades Nuclear Power Plant

2011-03-16T10:25:00.000-07:00

Since there is no place to store spent fuel rods, nuclear power plants must bury their plutonium on site. I wrote the poem to protest. At Palisades, the fuel rod is buried on the sandy shore of Lake Michigan encased in cement. Not a good solution.

Read more about this in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes.

Steelhead Fishing in the Great Lakes' Tributaries

2011-03-09T13:43:00.000-08:00

In March and April, It's not necessary to fish for steelhead trout on Michigan's Little Manistee River. Some people, myself for one, like to watch the river flow, the grass grow, and to witness the ancient ritual of return the anadramous rainbow trout perform each year. When the rainbow trout moves out into the Great Lakes, it grows large and steely on mayflies and smaller fish, and when it returns to the stream where it hatched from its egg, it takes on the characteristic pink rainbow and dappled greens to better conceal it in the river.

Unlike some types of salmon that may die after spawning, the steelhead lives to return and spawn year after year guided by their uncanny senses. Their particular place of birth is imprinted in their bodies and nothing short of death can keep them from returning to it. Their senses, especially their senses of taste and smell and extra senses located in lateral lines, lines that run along both sides of their body from the tail to the head, guide them to their traditional place for spawning. Beneath their lateral lines are a system of pores, canals and sense organs linked to the brain. With their lateral lines, fish are able to detect unseen enemies or prey. They sense currents, obstacles with the lateral line's sixth sense, in an intermediate area between hearing and touch; it allows the fish to remember low frequency vibrations and pressure waves built up as the fish passes rocks or other fish. Experiments have shown that fish use their keen sense of smell to help them home in on their traditional spawning grounds imprinted in their memories.

Great strength, speed and endurance make trout and their close relatives the salmon, the champions of fish. Their strength propels them over dams and through swift currents.

One could do worse than be a steelhead watcher in April. New sweet grass, a grayed green, pikes out of matted river bend grass while the clear, golden river rushes sorting rounded stones, polishing grains of fallen timber, dimpling right and left. A steelhead arcs over the riffle less green than the newborn moss while the sun warms my back through the ragg wool sweater I thought ugly at first. Many things seem ugly at first: babies, newts, birch bark that peels off like old wallpaper in empty farm houses. The river with its histories of hails and aggregations of rains and snows speaks ceaselessly while undercutting its banks. A few caught steelhead lie tethered to the bank by their jawbones—by their gills and jawbones--to a willow. The willows in their tender first fuzz move in April's breath from the west.

I watch a steelie come up from the depths to follow a fly with its inevitable hook. I watch others fishing with red spawn bags...little bundles of eggs tied into salmon colored nylon net.

I wander downstream to observe fishermen and fisherwomen guarding each spawn bed as jealously as male trout. I jump across hummocks and carefully cross a little tributary to the Manistee on a slippery log. I'd like to see a black bear with her cubs eating the new pikes of grass, turning over rotten logs, standing in the stream cuffing fish toward her cubs.

After a long white Michigan winter, the March and April greens dance before my eyes: the yellow-green of arbor vitae and dark greens of white pine with silver sun sliding on each breeze blown needle and the green sound of a tree frog singing in the forest. For relief of green, a purple finch with citrus colored birds--yellow pine grosbeaks with lime colored bills.

The cattails are not green yet. They stand fuzzy-headed on one wet leg. The swans build their nests of reedy material like this, not green, but later green springs up round them like bliss as they bend their necks and ruffle their cream-rich wing feathers.

The bubbles of foam that flow around the half submerged log are white on the dark amber water. The river is curly. It turns and rolls in complicated patterns--now this way--now that--now shallow--now deep filling in here with silt, trenching out gullies and leaving stones in sorted piles in various safety deposit boxes underwater, to later be deposited in other underwater vaults.

Then all around me are the ancient, cool dragon greens of lichens--a little celebration of scales on dead wood. A dead steelhead lies in the silt, still and white as the moon except for the eye--curiously alive as I write sitting under a wormy apple tree.

As I watch, slick coral eggs in their stony nests are growing embryos.

The Singing Sands

2011-03-08T05:41:00.000-08:00

Singing Sands in Michigan

Barbara Spring

Build sand castles or lie on the beach, boogie board, kite board or sun bathe. Sand beaches in other parts of the world are o.k., but sand beaches in Michigan are of an especially fine quality. Why? someone asks.

This sand is composed of quartz granules, dark colored magnetite and other fine grains of rock. People love to walk in the so called singing sands…it feels good underfoot. When a toe or shoe is dragged across the sand, there is a high pitched sound or singing. This is due to the high quartz content of the sand.

At any time of year, you may find people enjoying the cool wooded dunes at Hoffmaster State Park on the shore of Lake Michigan in Norton Shores near Muskegon. Some of the best sand dunes in the world are found here and along the coasts of the Great Lakes. At Hoffmaster State Park, there are beaches and places to camp, trails through the wooded dunes, and stairways to climb over the dunes to breathtaking views of Lake Michigan. Naturalists take visitors and school groups through the park and point out owls, song birds and plants.

But to really learn about the dunes, you must visit Gillette Nature Center at the center of the park where there are displays explaining how the dunes were formed by actions of the glaciers and the west wind. The displays show dynamic dune succession: that is how dune plants and animals change over time. It was in dunes such as these that Henry Chandler Cowles studied botany and then wrote “ The Ecological Relation of the Sand Dunes of Lake Michigan” in 1899. The discipline of ecology was born in dunes like this.

There are hands on displays, kids really go for this, on the lower level and a collection of creatures…mammals, reptiles and fish found in and near the dunes.

In the fall, the changing colors of leaves are worth a walk in the dunes and in winter, people like to cross country ski on an old logging trail that hugs the side of a dune. In spring, wild flowers bloom under the trees. Bird migrations pass through here.

Many beautiful and unique dunes were leveled in the past and their intricate ecosystems destroyed by mining the sand for industry and building subdivisions. We still have some dunes left to enjoy on the Great Lakes. They are well worth preserving. After all, they were created over thousands of years. Once gone, dunes with their intricate ecosystems, can never be resurrected by humans.

Read more about dunes in The Dynamic Great Lakes available at Schuler Books in downtown Grand Rapids, the Bookman in Grand Haven or order from the publisher http://www.publishamerica.net/product23502.html.

Great Lakes Bears

2011-03-06T15:36:00.000-08:00

When bears emerge from hibernation, they will be very hungry. And if a female bear has a cub, beware. She will protect it from perceived danger. It is best not to surprise bears. Bears are found around the Great Lakes and they feed upon spring flowers, grasses, animals, fish and later in the season, berries. If camping, keep food where bears can't smell it or find it. They are omnivores. They have always been part of the Great Lakes ecosystems.

Copepod

2011-02-28T06:16:00.000-08:00

Pictured is a copepod one of various types of zooplankton that sustain life in the Great Lakes. This photo was taken through a microscope.

Plankton, phytoplankton and zooplankton feed small fish and are at the base of food pyramids in water. Read more about food pyramids in the Great Lakes in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes. Available at bn.com in a new edition.

2011-02-25T08:24:00.000-08:00

We see a lot of American bald eagles on the shore of Lake Michigan. Eagles are at the top of the food chain so their return to our shores means that economic poisons such as DDT have purged from the ecosystem since these pesticides were banned.

Eagles are an indicator species and their return indicates a healthier environment for all species.

This is my watercolor of an eagle as it stoops for prey.

It's That Time of Year. Coast Guard Ice Rescue video

2011-02-18T15:16:00.000-08:00

Here is a video of an ice rescue by the Coast Guard. It is dangerous to go out on the ice this time of year on the Great Lakes.

So Be Careful. Watch Out for the Ice Trolls

2011-02-15T10:50:00.000-08:00

It’s a typical February day at the beach in West Michigan. Blown in by northwest winds, wave after wave smashes against ice ridges on the shore of Lake Michigan. Ice balls bounce and roll—their clattering sound mingles with the swoosh of the spray and the roar of wind and waves. Children who built sand castles on this beach in the summer now look in wonder at the fantastic shapes wind and waves have carved. It looks as though a giant ice troll had been playing there, heaping mounds of ice, gouging out ice caverns, grottos and deep crevices then smoothing off ice shelves. Perhaps another troll came along and smashed some of the ice into huge shards that clink together in the water like pieces of a broken plate glass window.

Quirks of wind, waves and the configuration of the lake bottom cause the shore ice to change from day to day and even change from minute to minute. It seems as if a sleight of hand magician were playing tricks with water, wind and ice.

One of these tricks is to strand wildlife, dogs or people on a floating cake of ice. This happens when pack ice, floating pieces of ice compacted against the solid ice ridge, is blown out in the lake again by an east wind. So be careful if you are going to the beach.

Feed the Birds

2011-02-11T12:40:00.000-08:00

Feeding the birds is a good thing to do this time of year. Pictured is my watercolor of a chickadee on a sunflower. Sunflower seeds are a favorite of birds here in West Michigan.

The Eagles Have Landed.

2011-02-07T14:28:00.000-08:00

Photo by Steve Damstra

Today I saw ten eagles on the beach on the shore of Lake Michigan.

Through the efforts of people who worked to ban DDT, the eagle has returned to the shores of the Great Lakes. We nearly lost the eagle, the peregrine falcon and the osprey, due to economic poisons that magnified in food pyramids. This was an unintended consequence of widepread spraying for insects. Once the widespread spraying stopped, the lakes began to purge the poisons. But this took many years. Read about the return of the American bald eagle in The Dynamic Great Lakes.

http://www.publishamerica.net/product23502.html

Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant on Lake Erie

2011-02-05T05:41:00.000-08:00

Just outside of Toledo, Ohio on Lake Erie stands the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant. Right now the question of whether it should get a new license is being considered. Below is a newspaper article and below that is a link to more information about this plant. There have been serious incidents at this plant.

Akron Beacon Journal 2/4/2011

Eco-groups fight license renewal

Environmentalists oppose 20 more years of operation for Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station near Toledo

Published on Friday, Feb 04, 2011

Beacon Journal staff report

Four environmental groups are fighting the renewal of the federal operating license for FirstEnergy Corp.'s Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station on Lake Erie in northwest Ohio.

The groups — Beyond Nuclear, the Green Party of Ohio, Don't Waste Michigan and Citizens Environmental Alliance of Southwestern Ontario — are seeking to intervene in the case.

Their efforts have been opposed by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff and FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co.

A hearing is scheduled March 1 before the NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis-Besse_Nuclear_Power_Station

Sundown over Lake Michigan

2011-02-04T06:08:00.000-08:00

After sundown last night, the wind picked up and threw chunks of ice at us. On Lake Michigan's beach the ice continues to build. It is treacherous to walk here since it is difficult to tell whether you have sand or water underneath you.

Epiphany

2011-02-01T06:13:00.000-08:00

Epiphany

I intended a peregrine—

it arrived at Godspeed.

There had been a dearth of peregrines you see.

I longed for eagles

and after many years, they returned to us

in abundance,

dancing on air streams,

spiraling courtships high in the air

then talons clasped

plummeting then

nesting in white pines.

After a dry season

our mountain ash bows with orange fruit

whereupon flocks of eager waxwings

gorge on orange berries this cold winter day.

I intended for the Holy Spirit to descend

in this season of epiphany

and its fire entered me and surrounded me

as a haze around Saturn in the

evening sky just above the horizon line.

It glowed unearthly bright that night.

On epiphany, my wishes and intentions are

for peregrines, eagles, waxwings

and the little Holy Child to stay with me

as eagles play in the airstreams,

as trees burst with nurture

and brightness forms our days.

Excerpted from my book, Sophia's Lost and Found: Poems of Above and Below

Seven Eagles on the Lake Michigan shore this morning

2011-01-31T10:12:00.000-08:00

In the pale blue morning light I saw seven American bald eagles playing on the frozen ice and in the air.

A couple of them were perched on an ice foot (ice that extends into the water) and the others seemed to be playing tag before they sat down together on the frozen beach like poker players at a table.

There were ducks out in the open water.

The eagle pictured is carrying a fish, its favorite food.

Photo by Steve Damstra

Cross Country Skiing

2011-01-27T06:18:00.000-08:00

Pigeon Creek County Park
A great place to ski
The woods were very quiet and all I could hear was the shush shush shush of my cross country skis. Usually the chickadees will follow me in the tree tops. The trees were swathed in heavy white fox fur capes and hats and a few dark blue berries were still clinging to their stalks. At Pigeon Creek Park, the groomed trails are for skiers and are marked easy or difficult. I stayed on an easy trail that led me to the creek. Its dark waters ran between snowy banks and the silent trees were reflected in their waters.

I saw the hoof prints of deer, rabbits and a few other small mammals. Squirrels had dropped some shells onto the snow from the treetops but I saw nary one squirrel.

Pigeon Creek is a tributary to Lake Michigan. It could not be more peaceful as I skied over the beautiful forested terrain.

American Bald Eagle Eyeballs Ducks

2011-01-26T11:08:00.000-08:00

We are seeing eagles and lots of ducks lately. This photo was taken on the Grand River near Lake Michigan.

The birds are attracted to open water.

Photo by Steve Damstra.

Beach Scene on Lake Michigan: Winter

2011-01-25T11:28:00.000-08:00

Grand Haven beach on Lake Michigan covered with ice and snow. In the background is the pier.

Wave and wind action creates ice ridges when the weather is as cold as it has been the past few days.

Today I saw three American bald eagles. They have their courtship rituals in February. In the Middle Ages people thought February 14 (Valentine's Day) is the day the birds get married.

Let Them Eat Carp Milwaukee Journal Sentinal + map

2011-01-19T06:58:00.000-08:00

Expanding the commercial Asian carp export market to China is among several measures outlined in the Obama administration's "2011 Asian Carp Control Strategy Framework," a $47 million plan to prevent the jumbo carp from infesting the Great Lakes. China already has a taste and demand for the mild, flaky, white fish, which is considered a delicacy.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn announced a $2 million program last July to boost commercial fishing for Asian carp on stretches of the Illinois River and sell them in China. The state contracted with a Chinese meat processing company and an Illinois commercial fishing company to harvest 30 million pounds from Illinois rivers.

Asian carp can jump across the length of a boat. Fishermen literally herd them into nets or shock them out of the water. The fish don't take bait off hooks. They eat plankton, not other fish.
The Asian grass carp was introduced deliberately into the U.S. in 1963 for aquatic weed control. Another species, silver carp, was imported from Asia in the 1970s to control algae growth in aquaculture and municipal wastewater treatment facilities, but it quickly escaped captivity.
Chapman acknowledges they can be delicious. He has youtube.com/watch?v=T1NVUV8yhmU">a three-part video series on YouTube that takes viewers from a boat, with Asian carp leaping all around, to the kitchen, where he explains how to debone and cook the fish.

The major downsides of cooking Asian carp are their low meat yield - 20% to 25% - and their heavy bone structure, he says.
They're filter feeders, and don't look or taste like common carp, which are bottom feeders.

Asian carp feed extremely low on the food chain, where contaminants aren't much of an issue, Chapman says. That makes them better eating fish - low in contaminants and fat, with mild meat that tastes like cod, he says.

Making Asian carp menu-worthy in the U.S. probably would require changing its name, as "carp" is considered an unappetizing four-letter word. Some have suggested calling it Kentucky carp or silverfin.

Wade isn't planning to change the name on his invasivore menu. But he will offer plenty of other tapas options for those not interested in Asian carp, which will be priced in the $8 to $12 range for the Feb. 1 reservations-only dinner.
Marc Gaden, spokesman for the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, is all for the entrepreneurial spirit.

"One of the great things about North Americans is when they're dealt lemons, they make lemonade," Gaden said. "But very often, they forget that they weren't drinking lemonade in the first place, and don't even like it."

If policy makers "don't focus on prevention like a laser beam, then you have to learn to live with what comes into the Great Lakes, and ultimately you will disrupt what you enjoy," Gaden said. "It never will be as good as what Mother Nature gave you, which is suited to the environment you have."
Creating a market here for Asian carp would be "surrendering and making do with what you've been dealt - not what Mother Nature intended," said Gaden.

excerpted from a longer article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal

Letter from Senator Sabenow: re Trash from Canada

2011-01-17T13:44:00.000-08:00

Dear Barbara,

I am writing today with some very good news regarding our fight to stop shipments of Canadian trash into Michigan.

We all remember when, in 2003, Toronto shut down its landfill and began shipping all of their trash to Michigan. For them, it was a matter of simple economics. Michigan's trash dumping charge is the lowest in the region, which turned our Great Lakes State into a magnet for garbage from Toronto and other Ontario cities. Instead of using their own landfills, Ontario cities started filling up ours. Although these dumping charges are set by the state, we took the fight to stop the trash to Congress. Legislative efforts in the U.S. House and Senate got the attention of the Canadians.

In the fall of 2005, our efforts brought Ontario officials to the negotiating table and Senator Carl Levin and I hammered out an agreement that Ontario would stop sending their city trash to Michigan by the end of 2010.

I am pleased to report that the agreement worked. As of December 31, 2010, Toronto and three other municipalities stopped sending their city trash to Michigan.

Of all the proposed solutions to deal with Canadian trash, this is the only one that has shown a real, measurable reduction in waste coming into our state. In fact, more than 40,000 truckloads of trash would be entering Michigan each year had we not reached this agreement.

Many legal experts feel that if proposed federal legislation to simply ban Canadian trash passes, it will be subject to lengthy court challenges under international laws for many years. One of the reasons our agreement has been successful is because it could not be challenged in court.

Canada has always been a great neighbor and we want to thank the Ontario officials and citizens who worked with us over the last four years to honor their agreement with our state. While this is an important victory, the fight is not over.

In the coming months we will turn our attention to stopping the remaining trash coming into our state from private companies that was not covered by this agreement. We won't give up until all trash trucks coming into our great state from Canada are stopped.

Thank you for your ongoing interest and support for our efforts to stop Canadian trash. With your help, we have stopped approx 1.5 million tons of waste from coming into Michigan landfills every year!

Sincerely,
Debbie Stabenow

United States Senator

Ice on Lake Michigan

2011-01-15T12:50:00.000-08:00

On the Beach in Grand Haven, MI: January 15, 2011

Confessions of an Ice Watcher

As I walk out on the icy shoreline on a cold January day, the wind blows through my wool balaclava and my foot slips on glazed patches on the sand.

My leather gloves are not warm enough to keep the wind from freezing my fingers.

My long down coat though is keeping me warm enough to hike along the shoreline.

I pull my Canon (camera that is) out of my pocket. I didn’t want my camera to freeze. Ice fascinates me. My distant relative, Roald Amundsen was a polar explorer from the north of Norway who studied ice and figured out how to reach the South Pole with dog sleds. Maybe that explains my fascination. Maybe. Or it may be that the way the wind and waves change the ice patterns every day is the fascination. From my perch on the dunes, I watch.

In mid-February of 1979, four of the five Great Lakes froze all the way across. This was the first year this had happened in the recorded history of the National Weather Service. For years the harbor has not had fast ice where the Coast Guard Ice breaker had to try and break through.

I watch. I walk and I watch some more. There is information about ice on the Great Lakes in the Dynamic Great Lakes.

2011-01-14T13:58:00.000-08:00

The best price for a new, updated copy of The Dynamic Great Lakes is here: http://www.publishamerica.net/product23502 $9.95 + shipping.

I wrote this book about the Great Lakes as a system. The five Great Lakes are connected and hold an array of life in their freshwaters as nowhere else.

Palisades Nuclear Power Plant: a poem

2011-01-09T13:26:00.000-08:00

This poem is from my book, The Wilderness Within available from Amazon.com and bn.com. It is a protest poem, but it protests gently.

Lake Michigan Ice

2011-01-06T06:22:00.000-08:00

Lake Michigan Ice

All the long night west winds roar

boom icy shrapnel on the shores:

cannonballs fly, bounce, roll, clatter

ice on ice crunch, bash, shatter.

Curled green walls of glassy jade

smash on pack ice wave on wave

tremble out high icy plumes

fans of white peacock

collapse, resume.

Waves slap hands, gleeful high fives

slam dance back—twist, leap, dive.

Hard daggers dazzle caves of ice—

a crevice opens then

closes like a vice.

Wind waves ice in wild dance.

Lake Michigan ice packs

on a spree.

Angels dressed in red and green

walk the shores

on days like these.

This poem is an excerpt from my book, Sophia's Lost and Found: Poems of Above and Below. It may be ordered from Amazon.com or bn.com.

Lake Michigan Shore Ice

2011-01-05T13:55:00.000-08:00

What a difference a couple of weeks make. With the cold weather shore ice is forming along West Michigan again. Read about how ice forms along the shore in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes.

Like a Slurpee on a Summer Day

2010-12-29T11:31:00.000-08:00

The shore ice I saw forming on Lake Michigan has melted like a slurpie on a summer day. The sun is shining. This is the way the beach looks now with a seagul reflected in the wet sand. Read more about ice formation on the Great Lakes in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes.

Niagara Falls

2010-12-18T03:53:00.000-08:00

A Brief History of the Falls

Information below graciously provided courtesy of Niagara Parks

Ice Age History of the Niagara River and Whirlpool Rapids

The Niagara River, as is the entire Great Lakes Basin of which the river is an integral part, is a legacy of the last Ice Age. 18,000 years ago southern Ontario was covered by ice sheets 2-3 kilometers thick. As they advanced southward the ice sheets gouged out the basins of the Great Lakes. Then as they melted northward for the last time they released vast quantities of meltwater into these basins. Our water is "fossil water"; less than one percent of it is renewable on an annual basis, the rest leftover from the ice sheets.

The Niagara Peninsula became free of the ice about 12,500 years ago. As the ice retreated northward, its meltwaters began to flow down through what became Lake Erie, the Niagara River and Lake Ontario, down to the St. Lawrence River, and, finally, down to the sea. There were originally 5 spillways from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. Eventually these were reduced to one, the original Niagara Falls, at Queenston-Lewiston. From here the Falls began its steady erosion through the bedrock.

However, about 10,500 years ago, through an interplay of geological effects including alternating retreats and re-advances of the ice, and rebounding of the land when released from the intense pressure of the ice (isostatic rebound), this process was interrupted. The glacial meltwaters were rerouted through northern Ontario, bypassing the southern route. For the next 5,000 years Lake Erie remained only half the size of today, the Niagara River was reduced to about 10% of its current flow, and a much-reduced Falls stalled in the area of the Niagara Glen.

About 5,500 years ago the meltwaters were once again routed through southern Ontario, restoring the river and Falls to their full power. Then the Falls reached the Whirlpool.

It was a brief and violent encounter, a geological moment lasting only weeks, maybe even only days. In this moment the Falls of the youthful Niagara River intersected an old riverbed, one that had been buried and sealed during the last Ice Age. The Falls turned into this buried gorge, tore out the glacial debris that filled it, and scoured the old river bottom clean. It was probably not a falls at all now but a huge, churning rapids. When it was all over it left behind a 90-degree turn in the river we know today as the Whirlpool, and North America's largest series of standing waves we know today as the Whirlpool Rapids.

The Falls then re-established at about the area of the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge upriver to our right, and resumed carving its way through solid rock to its present location.

Straddling the Canadian-United States International Border and both in the Province of Ontario

and the State of New York, Niagara Falls attracts some 12 Million tourists to her majestic

awesome beauty each year.

The Niagara is a fairly young river, only 12,000 years old!, a microsecond in geological time. The

Niagara Escarpment, which was created by erosion is much older. The glaciers pressed down on

the land during the last ice age and laid down layers of sediment, then the slow process of erosion

of ice and water ate at the surface of the escarpment

.

The mighty river plunges over a cliff of dolostone and shale. Niagara Falls is the second largest

falls on the globe next to Victoria Falls in southern Africa.

One fifth of all the fresh water in the world lies in the four Upper Great Lakes-Michigan, Huron,

Superior and Erie. All the outflow empties into the Niagara river and eventually cascades over

the falls.

At the bottom of the falls, the water travels 15 miles over many gorges until it reaches the fifth

Great Lake-Ontario. The land between the lakes does not slope at an even grade, but forms a

spectacular drop approximately the same height as a 20 story building and this is known as the

"Niagara Escarpment" Two billion years ago it was buried under a blanket of ice.

As the years past, the process of erosion took place, (and still does) five distinct 'gorges' were

formed-Lewiston Brange Gorge, Old Narrow Gorge, Upper & Lower Great Gorges and the

Whirlpool Narrow Gorge.

Approximately 500 years ago the river encountered an obstacle that caused it to 'split into two

channels', thus Goat Island was formed named after John Stedman whose goat herds froze to

death in the winter of 1780). This was the original sediment left from a vanished Lake Tonawanda

(an Indian name).

On the eastern part of the island, the American Falls took shape, the Horseshoe Falls, is on the

western side, where the river angles some 90 degrees.

The water flow on the American side of the falls is much less in strength because of Goat Island,

whereas Horseshoe Falls has no obstruction to divert it.

It should be noted that a third much narrower falls exists. Over the years these falls have been

called at different times; Luna Falls, Iris Falls and is currently named Bridal Veil Falls.

Man has not been able to completely control the flow of the water over the falls, even modern

engineers have tried. Much of the water today is fed through underground channels and pipes to

nearby hydro electric power stations.

Niagara Falls are Part of the Great Lakes Ecosystem

2010-12-16T18:46:00.000-08:00

What would Niagara Falls look like without water? These photos will show you.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1338793/Niagara-Falls-ran-dry-Photos-moment-iconic-waterfall-came-standstilll.html?ITO=1490

2010-12-04T12:08:00.000-08:00

Steelhead catch along with a northern pike that was released and a coho salmon (in back). It was cold yesterday when these fish were caught in the Pere Marquette River.

Pictured is Norm Spring who was one of the founders of the Michigan Steelheaders and Salmon Organization.

The Answer is Blowing in the Wind

2010-11-23T06:55:00.000-08:00

Here is an excellent explanation of wind power in the Great Lakes. It's 12 minutes long and well worth watching.

The Dynamic Great Lakes

2010-11-19T11:10:00.000-08:00

I am a lake watcher. Yesterday there was snow on Lake Michigan here in West Michigan. Today people should stay off of piers because of the high waves. Usually, ice begins to form on the shore by Thanksgiving. I am watching to see if it does this year.

The title of my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes, is about how and why the five Great Lakes change. They are always changing. There is a new edition out for 2010 with updates.

Here is the best place to order a new copy online: http://www.publishamerica.net/product23502.html

Milkweed

2010-11-15T11:32:00.000-08:00

Milkweed seeds blow in the wind. Monarch butterflies need milkweed to carry out their life cycles. We often see them migrating along the shores of the Great Lakes.

9&10 News - Alpena's Amazing Sinkholes

2010-11-15T07:20:00.000-08:00

9&10 News - Alpena's Amazing Sinkholes Here is a link to a video and story about what lies under Lake Huron near Alpena, Michigan.

Herring Gull Reflected on the Beach

2010-11-13T05:43:00.000-08:00

A herring gull stands reflected in the water. Breakers roll in and in the distance is the pier with its lighthouse and foghorn. This is the place where the Grand River enters Lake Michigan. Sometimes, with a little luck, fishermen catch whitefish this time of year or anything else that swims by. Some use salmon eggs as bait.

Dynamic Great Lakes

Ice on Lake Michigan: An Eagle Flew Over

Great Lakes Areas of Concern: Map by Great Lakes Commission

Palisades Nuclear Power Plant Detroit Free Press

Palisades nuclear plant accident investigated

Color-coded dangers

Equipment issues

Wolves and Moose on Isle Royale Lake Superior.

The Steelhead are Running Now

The Work of Ice Age Glaciers

This Should Not Happen

Books By Barbara Spring

Sand Sculptured by Mother Nature

The Great Yin Mother

Pacific Salmon in the Great Lakes

Climate Change affects the Great Lakes as reported by the AP

A Salmon Poem

Lake Erie is in Trouble Again

Wooded Dunes of West Michigan

Birds in the Wooded Dunes on Lake Michigan

The Dynamic Great Lakes & The Wilderness Within & Sophia's Lost and Found

Kite Boarding on Lake Michigan

The Circle of Life: Salmon

The Dynamic Great Lakes on Kindle

EPA Research Vessel Lake Guardian

Tern Rides the Wind

Price now $9.95 + s&h for all of my books

National Parks and Lakeshore areas on Lake Superior and Lake Michigan

In Grand Haven MI There will be a Salmon Festival

Grand Haven Salmon FestivalFriday, September 16th is the Fresh Catch Fish Boil from 4:30pm to 7:30pm. Enjoy a traditional Salmon Fish Boil, live music, and more. $10 for Adults & $5 children. It's a great family event put on by the Grand Haven Sons of American Legion!

King Salmon Caught in Lake Ontario

Fishing for Trout and Salmon in the Great Lakes

Fennville Winery and the Trace

Fun in the Summer Time Great Lakes

Satellite picture of the Great Lakes

Sports on the Great Lakes

Boating & Fishing on Lake Michigan

Lake Superior's Agawa Paintings

Beach Combing

Summer Storms: Summer's Horses

The Fourth of July at the Lake

Duluth, Minnesota to Kingston, Ontario

Oversight for Nuclear Power Plants

The Great Lakes Are Gifts of the Glaciers

Invasive species: purple loosestrife

Review of the Dynamic Great Lakes by Barbara Spring

Sturgeon to Imprint on the Kalamazoo River

Our Unique Great Lakes

Grand Haven Pier Water Color

When May Flies Emerge

Mackinac Island and the Great Turtle

The importance of wetlands and marshes

Partridge in the Wooded Dunes.

Fly Under the Great Lakes with Google Earth

Book Review of the Dynamic Great Lakes

Wisconsin's Door Peninsula on Lake Michigan

Alternative Energy a Success in Grand Haven, MI

Steelhead Fishing in a Great Lakes' Tributary

Brown Trout stocked in Lake Michigan

Rain Barrel: Rain Gardens Good Ideas

At Palisades Nuclear Power Plant

Steelhead Fishing in the Great Lakes' Tributaries

The Singing Sands

Great Lakes Bears

Copepod

It's That Time of Year. Coast Guard Ice Rescue video

So Be Careful. Watch Out for the Ice Trolls

Feed the Birds

The Eagles Have Landed.

Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant on Lake Erie

Sundown over Lake Michigan

Epiphany

Seven Eagles on the Lake Michigan shore this morning

Cross Country Skiing

American Bald Eagle Eyeballs Ducks

Beach Scene on Lake Michigan: Winter

Let Them Eat Carp Milwaukee Journal Sentinal + map

Letter from Senator Sabenow: re Trash from Canada

Ice on Lake Michigan

Palisades Nuclear Power Plant: a poem

Grand Haven Salmon Festival
Friday, September 16th is the Fresh Catch Fish Boil from 4:30pm to 7:30pm. Enjoy a traditional Salmon Fish Boil, live music, and more. $10 for Adults & $5 children. It's a great family event put on by the Grand Haven Sons of American Legion!