Interview with the author of The Dynamic Great Lakes

as published in the Michigan Environmental Report, vol 20, number 3

Interview of Barbara Spring by Dave Dempsey

What prompted you to write The Dynamic Great Lakes?
I was inspired by a speech I heard while at a writer’s conference in Aspen, Colorado. N. Scott Momaday, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The House Made of Dawn, gave a speech on the importance of landscape. When I came home, it occurred to me that my landscape is a waterscape–the Great Lakes system. With this thought, I began to work on The Dynamic Great Lakes. The importance of the Great Lakes is not always appreciated. I wanted people to appreciate them.

Who is the intended audience for the book and who might enjoy reading it?
I wrote The Dynamic Great Lakes with a general audience in mind. I spent a lot of time searching for and up-to-date book about the Great Lakes and I could not find one. I believe my book is important because it shows the Great Lakes and their connecting waters in relation to each other; it shows the lakes in relation to their unique dunes and wetlands and to their biota. The Great Lakes are about 20% of all the fresh surface water on this planet. I wanted to make people aware of how precious this freshwater is and how vulnerable. I want people to feel concerned about how these lakes and their web of life is faring.

Do you think Michiganians generally are knowledgeable about the Great Lakes?
Someone who has lived by Lake Michigan all of his life read my book and said, “I have been taking these lakes for granted.” I believe that people in Michigan and the other Great Lakes states and provinces need to know more about the Great Lakes so they will be in a better position to make good decisions about them. The Great Lakes will become more and more important as our population grows and the people are asked to vote for candidates who will either understand the issues and care for the lakes with future generations in mind, or those who would exploit them for short term gains.

What are your earliest memories of the Lakes?
My earliest memory of the Great Lakes–I must have been about 7–was a trip with my family around Lake Superior’s rocky shore. I still remember how awed I felt when I first viewed the largest of the Great Lakes and felt its icy water. My father woke us all up one morning proudly displaying a string of brook trout he had caught from a tributary stream to Lake Superior. We had them for breakfast. Just delicious.

If you were czar(ina) of the Great Lakes, what is the single most important thing you would do for them?
I would develop energy sources that do not threaten the environment. I would phase out the 37 aging nuclear power plants in the Great Lakes watershed and find a way to store atomic wastes in a place where it has no chance of getting into water. That would be my decree. I would hire the best minds to work on this daunting problem and I would tell them to do it will all haste. 

Pinook a hybrid in the Upper Great Lakes

The Pinook is a hybrid crossing of pink salmon with female Chinook salmon on the St. Mary's River in the Great Lakes system.  The Pinook does not die after spawning.

Pink Salmon you may ask?  

Pink salmon, a relative of the lake trout, are from the saltwater

Pacific Ocean. Some of these fish were accidentally washed down

the drain at an experiment station on Lake Superior in 1955 and to

everyone’s surprise, the fish returned to the drain two years later to

spawn. They established themselves in the cold freshwater of Lake

Superior then reached Lake Michigan and Lake Huron via the St.

Mary’s River, which is a freeway for fish. Pink salmon weigh from

three to five pounds at maturity and sometimes reach ten pounds.

The adult male develops a large hump on his back and a hooked jaw.

Read more about Great Lakes fish in my book: The Dynamic Great Lakes available on the Kindle reader.

https://www.amazon.com/Dynamic-Great-Lakes-Barbara-Spring-ebook/dp/B005HM9BGU

The Great Lakes System and The Dynamic Great Lakes

The Great Lakes System  click the link

the link is to wikipedia.  Below is The Dynamic Great Lakes with what lies beneath the freshwater seas.

Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act.

By Superior Telegram
The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative is pleased the United States Congress passed and President Obama signed into law the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act.

WIIN includes many provisions that are critically important to the Great Lakes. It includes authorization of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative for five years at $300 million per year, provides support for shipping, addresses the algal bloom problem, allocates funding to solve the drinking water crisis in Flint, Mich., and strengthens programs to improve fish and wildlife in the Great Lakes.

"The passage of this law is critically important to the future of the tremendous freshwater resource we share between Canada and the United States and to our communities, and ensures that the momentum developed over the past five years in protecting and restoring the resource will be maintained," Mayor Paul Dyster of Niagara Falls, current vice chairman of the Cities Initiative.

"Many of our member cities have received funding under GLRI, which has allowed them to complete restoration projects that otherwise would not have been possible," said David Ullrich, Cities Initiative executive director. "These projects contribute to the economic well- being and quality of life in our communities, and make them more attractive for locating a new business and as a destination for visitors."

The actions by this Congress and the president are essential to the future of many programs that are important to the Great Lakes, and it will be important for the next Congress to fund these programs at levels that will ensure their success.

The legislation includes the following Great Lakes provisions:

* Authorizes the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a successful and popular program that is helping states and local communities clean up degraded toxic hotspots, restore habitat for fish and wildlife, thwart Asian carp and other invasive species, and prevent polluted runoff across the eight-state Great Lakes region.

* Makes permanent the allocation of priority funds from the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund for the Great Lakes Navigation System, sets a minimum appropriations level from the fund and requires the Army Corps of Engineers to complete guidance on managing the Great Lakes as a single, comprehensive navigation system.

* Establishes a Great Lakes Harmful Algal Bloom coordinator to work with federal, state and local agencies to coordinate actions to address harmful algal blooms in the Great Lakes.

* Includes a variety of provisions that respond to the drinking water crisis in Flint, Mich., and support the work of states and local communities to repair, upgrade and monitor water infrastructure.

* Reauthorizes and strengthens the Great Lakes Fish and Wildlife Restoration Act and the Great Lakes Fishery and Ecosystem Restoration Program, which support fish and wildlife restoration, conservation and management projects in the Great Lakes region.

The Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative is a binational coalition of 127 mayors representing over 17 million people, that works to advance the protection and restoration of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River. For more information, go to www.glslcities.org.

Oil and Water Do not mix

Oil Pipelines that threaten our drinking water  click the link

An oil spill in the Straits of Mackinac would be a disaster for our fresh water and for the fish and wild life around the Great Lakes. 

Pacific Salmon in the Great Lakes

                                               

   Pacific Salmon Spawning

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 embedded 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.

Lake Huron's Whitefish

By Ian Wendrow

Lake Huron whitefish are suffering from ecosystem changes caused by invasive quagga and zebra mussels, according to a new study.

“It’s the same decline in whitefish as has been found previously in the other Great Lakes where the mussels become established,” Jenilee Gobin, a co-author of the report from

Trent University in Ontario, explained in an email.

Other emerging research shows the source of food for the whitefish in these locations

has changed because of the mussels.

Gobin and her team proved that Lake Huron is going through what researchers have been seeing in the other Great Lakes for years: invasive species like the zebra and quagga mussels working in tandem with other key events to contribute to a decline in profitable fish species, including whitefish.

“Our study represents the first that we are aware of to build a life history simulation model that explicitly addresses how the ecosystem changes have impacted harvest of a Great Lakes population of lake whitefish,” Gobin said.

These ecosystem changes have been ongoing for several decades. The study found that whitefish growth and recruitment in Lake Huron may have been reduced by up to 50 percent since the 1990s.

The study doesn’t say that the mussels are the only culprits. The invasive spiny water flea holds a portion of the blame for Lake Huron’s recent environmental mutations, according to the study.

But much of it ties back to the mussels, starting with the near-complete disappearance of alewives in 2003, said David Fielder, a fisheries biologist at the Michigan Department of Natural Resource’s Alpena Fisheries Research Center.

Alewives are small fish that are an important food source for larger fish such as Chinook salmon or lake whitefish within Lake Huron.

Those fish suffered when the mussels ate up the diporeia, a tiny macroinvertebrate that was an important source of food for the alewives that these larger fish ate.

Diporeia populations diminished significantly with the arrival of the mussels. Both the mussels and the diporeia are filter feeders, which most fishery researchers argue led to a competition for food between the two.

The mussels won that competition.

Another mussel-related food chain alteration may have harmed recruitment, or the number of new whitefish added to the population each year, Fielder said.

“Some other recent research has illustrated that part of the food web changes has included less nearshore productivity, at least in the form of zooplankton,” he said.

Zooplankton are microscopic organisms that are food for newly hatched fish. However, zooplankton have to eat as well. Their food is phytoplankton, microscopic organisms that feed through photosynthesis like plants.

“We used to see nice blooms of zooplankton in the spring just as fish were hatching, but they have disappeared in recent years, Fielder said. Researchers theorize that the phytoplankton that zooplankton eat have been filtered out by the abundant mussels.

“So without ample spring zooplankton, newly hatched whitefish quickly starve and never produce much of a year class,” he said.

The Ontario study acknowledges Fielder’s assessment in their research, while also pointing a finger at the predacious spiny water flea as another reason for zooplankton decline, thus further limiting food supply for larval fish.

In spite of these observed changes, not all fish sellers and anglers see the situation the same way.

“Whitefish produce lots of eggs and their survival rate is high,” said Mike Donlan, a fourth-generation fishmonger and general manager at Donlan’s Fish and Seafood in Flint, Michigan.

Donlan doesn’t exclusively stock from Lake Huron, his supply comes from all over the Great Lakes. Like most other species of fish, supply changes year to year, Donlan said. This year has been a trying year when it came to whitefish.

“There hasn’t been as much availability as prior years. For instance this year it was a real, real hot summer,” he said.

In hotter temperatures, whitefish and other species will migratei nto deeper water where it’s cooler, which puts them out of range of most commercial fishing boats.

“Sometimes the fish are not where the fishermen want them to be,” Donlan said.

Looking long term, however, Donlan says he’s unconcerned by the findings in the study

“We haven’t heard of anything mentioned that there’s an alert that we’re gonna run out of white fish in the Great Lakes.”

Jerry and David Serafin, the owners of Pinconning, Michigan’s, Serafin Fishery, daid they are incredulous about a whitefish decline in Lake Huron.

“They’re in better shape than they were a few years ago,” Jerry Serafin said.

DNR fishery researchers took some of Serafin’s whitefish to assess the health of the population last fall. According to what they told Serafin, his whitefish had significantly higher fat content than 10, 15 years ago.

David Serafin says he is more concerned about the planting of lake trout and the ever- growing walleye population.

“My concern with the whitefish is that the DNR want to plant herring in Lake Huron to feed the walleyes,” David Serafin said.

“Well walleyes eat whitefish, they eat anything. They’re cannibals, they eat each other, and these things are so overpopulated that we catch a lot of whitefish but there’s gonna come a time when the population goes down,” he said.

While the causes of and proposed solutions to these fishery population changes remain varied, Gobin said he’s certain on one point:

“What is clear is that we need to continue to study and monitor these valuable populations to ensure that there is good quality data on which to base management decisions and that we are harvesting within the safe biological limits that are appropriate for the present set of environmental conditions.”

Energy Solutions and the Dynamic Great Lakes

Energy and the Great Lakes  
Click the link

This link has important information about new ways to create energy that is good for Planet Earth including the Great Lakes.

Nuclear Power is NOT the way to go.  On Lake Erie

Read more about this in The Dynamic Great Lakes a critically accalaimed non-ficiton book.
Available wherever books are sold.

A Good Book for Earth Day: The Dynamic Great Lakes

Interview with the Author: Barbara Spring and The Dynamic Great Lakes

I was born in New York City, spent some growing up years in Columbia, Missouri, then my family moved to East Lansing, Michigan when I was 10. After high school I graduated from Michigan State University with a major in English. I always liked to write. I became an English major after taking a poetry class at Michigan State from the Poet Laureate of Canada, A.J.M. Smith. I have taken many post graduate courses in outdoor education, art, photography, and I have studied writing with Wm. Stafford, Robert Bly, Nancy Willard, N. Scott Momaday and many other notable writers

 Lisa:Why did you write The Dynamic Great Lakes? Barbara:I could not find an up to date book on the five Great Lakes and their connecting waters, dunes, wetlands and other features. I could not find any book for the general public about the interconnected Great Lakes. So I wrote one.

Lisa:Who were your mentors?

Barbara:My first mentor was my father, E. P. Reineke, a research scientist at M.S.U. in the physiology dept. He did some important original research there. I learned to love and appreciate nature from him. My husband, Norm Spring has been a long time outdoorsman and conservationist. I have learned a great deal about nature and the democratic process from him.

Lisa:What are some books that have changed your life?

Barbara:Silent Spring by Rachel Carson opened my eyes to what we are doing to the environment. After reading the book and recommending it to my husband, we both became activists on behalf of the environment before the first Earth Day in 1970. I also loved A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. I required my students to read it when I taught writing classes at Grand Valley State University.

Lisa:Who do you think would enjoy reading this book?

Barbara:I wrote The Dynamic Great Lakes for a general audience.

I spoke to school children this week. I opened my talk with a space photo of Planet Earth and explained that the water they saw was 98% salt water-only about 2% is freshwater. "Dang!" said a kid in surprise.

The audience for my book is really adults, but school age kids will find it interesting, too. It is an up to date reference to the five Great Lakes and their connecting waters: their fishes, dunes, wetlands, seasonal changes and changes caused by people. The Dynamic Great Lakes will be an eye-opener for anyone.

Lisa:Why is the Dynamic Great Lakes an important book?

Barbara:The Great Lakes are important but often misunderstood. They are about 20% of all the fresh surface water on this planet. People need to understand their dynamics in order to make sound decisions about them. Recently a grassroots movement in Michigan blocked oil companies from further oil exploration under Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. The risk of polluting the lakes with oil and noxious gases was intolerable. There will be more schemes that threaten the health of the Great Lakes. Armed with knowledge, people will demand the right thing of their government. They will also be careful of what they do in their personal decisions. The lakes' water is low this year, but it will rise again. People who know this is a natural cycle will not build too close to the water.

Lisa:Why is this book a good choice for Earth Day?

Barbara:The book encourages people to think globally and act locally. Everything is connected to everything else. This means that what we burn, what we release in the water and land and what we eat are all connected. We often forget that we are part of the whole and flowing web of life. Our actions will affect us now and in the future.

Lisa:How is your book different from other books about the Great Lakes?

Barbara:I limited my topic to changes in the Great Lakes, both through natural forces and through changes caused by people. There have been a great many changes and I believe people will be interested in learning about the Pacific salmon planted in the lakes to feed on the pesky alewives that invaded them through the canals around Niagara Falls. They will be interested in other exotic species such as the zebra mussels and how they got into all five Great Lakes Lisa: How did you research the book? Barbara:I began with observations. We live within view of Lake Michigan. I can observe the change of seasons and what kinds of fish are being caught. I have also observed all the other lakes and their connecting waters. I then set out to find out authoritative information about the lakes by interviewing experts. The book is interdisciplinary. I interviewed a geologist, fish biologists, and naturalists. I asked them for good sources in print. I went out on Grand Valley State University's research vessel, Angus to see what research was being done. I enjoyed working on the Dynamic Great Lakes because there was always something new. Lisa:What else have you written? Barbara:As a journalist, I have written articles for the Grand Rapids Press, a major newspaper in West Michigan. These articles were about travels, profiles of interesting people, and outdoor subjects. I also have had articles published in Michigan Out of Doors magazine, Michigan Natural Resources magazine, Muskegon Magazine, Field & Stream and many others. 

My Author's Den 

Pileated Woodpecker near Lake Michigan

The pileated woodpecker does not mind cold snowy weather and so we see them year around near the Great Lakes.  They have a loud raucus call that reminds me of the cartoon character Woody Woodpecker.  Here he is getting at grubs deep inside of a tree.  The holes these woodpeckers make can be huge.

Great Lakes Education

People need to know about the Great Lakes

 

In Touch with the World through the www

 

People who live around the Great Lakes often take them for granted.  I wrote The Dynamic Great Lakes, to give people enough information to make intelligent choices in their every day lives about the world’s greatest freshwater system.  The Dynamic Great Lakes is a book about their ecology and the mistakes people have made when altering the landscape by making locks for shipping, destroying wetlands or introducing new species both intentionally and unintentionally.  It was my aim in writing this book to make people appreciate these lakes and understand what they might do for their betterment.

 

Most people do not understand the significance of the Great Lakes.  They are twenty per cent of the world’s fresh surface water and need to be protected.  These lakes’ freshwater will be hotly contested as more and more industries and people in arid parts of the world would like to exploit them. It is indeed happening now.   Some large freshwater lakes in the world have been destroyed—drawn down to nothing through a lack of understanding.

 

Bottling plants have their eyes on the Great Lakes.  Bottling water and shipping it out of the watershed will destroy the integrity of the lakes and their unique ecosystems.  People in the Great Lakes watershed argue that the water belongs to the commons and should not be sold for private profit.  There are many more issues the book addresses: directional drilling for oil, nuclear power plants, exotic species, wetlands, sand dunes and pollution from industries and municipalities. 

 

  

I wrote the book and created this website so that people might find the information they need about the Great Lakes. It gives the basics and yet limnologists have told me they learned things about the Great Lakes they did not know, while general readers have told me that they never appreciated the Great Lakes until they read my book.  Another motive in writing the book was to raise consciousness about the greatest freshwater system on the surface of Earth and the need to protect what we have.  Armed with such knowledge, people are in a good position to make good decisions about the lakes.

 

One of the first educational websites and newsletters that featured The Dynamic Great Lakes website was www.Spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk  in the U.K.  I have had responses from around the globe: Germany, France, USSR, Scandinavia, China, and many other places.  I believe the world wants to know about the Great Lakes.

 

The Dynamic Great Lakes has been added to the National Clearinghouse of Math and Science, The Eisenhower Regional Consoritia (enc online)  a database for math and science, a resource widely used by schools.

 I  have given talks about the ever-changing Great Lakes at several bookstores, libraries and museums as well as schools.

 

Several public radio stations, and several public television stations have interviewed me and prominently displayed my book cover and URL as the program was aired, or in the case of radio, repeated the URL of my website over the air several times. 

 

The Dynamic Great Lakes, the book, will be listed as a resource in an educational program under development for the Great Lakes in Michigan.  The book is also listed as a resource in a book published by Michigan State University 

 

Because of a great many favorable reviews, the book has been critically acclaimed and re released by Independence Books.  It has also been updated with new material.  The Dynamic Great Lakes is in its fourth printing.  I believe that having a website has helped get the word out and this led to the book being chosen by the publisher to be re released. 

 If we do not work to conserve our life giving freshwater, we may find that the integrity of the lakes is damaged beyond repair.  My website allows people to see satellite views of the Great Lakes as well as places around the Great Lakes of interest: Chicago, Cleveland, Lake Michigan with its singing sands, the Door Peninsula in Canada and the Bruce Peninsula in Canada with their limestone formations, population centers, invasive species, fish, both endemic and planted or accidentally released into the lakes.

 

A website can be a valuable adjunct to a book.    To keep the website fresh, I change it from time to time.  I have published other books, The Wilderness Within, a book of poems and a few essays. It is about wild places in the world and within the self; Sophia's Lost and Found, poems of above and below, and Between Sweetwater and Sand.  Although different genres, these books were  written with a deep appreciation of nature.

 

My poems are published on other websites that appreciate my work, the PW Review, Artvilla, Prairie Poetry, Wise Women’s Web, Betsie’s Literary Page, Creative Women’s Network UK.; Care2  These websites can be accessed around the globe.   In this way I can publish new work until I decide to publish another collection of poetry.  There is a community of poets who support and appreciate one another.

 

There is a community of people who are involved in the work of educating about the environment, and groups whose aim is to make a difference in improving the environment.  I can be in touch with these groups with a few keystrokes.  They let me know what is new and often send good feedback about my website.  Often we trade links.
 

These websites are Environmental Education on the internet (EE link); National Science Teachers Association (nst); Planeta.com; http://www.nalms.org; Teachers.net; Presbyterians for Restoring Nature; www.ecoiq.com; eco-portal; getCited; Book Sense; Care2 Environment Supersite; Michigan Authors and Illustrators Search Page; waterwebring; www.ideacog.net, a clever literary website; Creative Womens Network; A Celebration of Women Writers; Snakeskin; Teacher Talk Earth and Sky; 2River.org, a literary website and Poets House in New York City, www.poetshouse.org.

 

Some of the most ardent conservationists are outdoorsmen and women.  I won an award from Water and Woods for my website.  I contribute articles to websites and sometimes they review my book:  Lakeland Boating has such a website as does Great Lakes Boating; www.great-lakes.org; Fishing With Rod, a website in British Columbia where my book was reviewed; Float Fishing, a website in Toronto.

                                 

I can be in touch with communities in far-flung places with my website.  My book is available to purchase in other countries such as Canada, Japan, Germany, England, and France, Australia through various on-line stores.

One Thousand Sturgeon

1000 sturgeon planted  follow the link to the latest news about sturgeon.

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

This book is available in paperback and on Kindle.  Amazon.com, bn.com etc.

the 5 Great Lakes as seen from space.

Native Fish in Great Lakes Make a Comeback

Steelhead, perch and lake trout are making a comeback due to the decline of the alewife.  For more information about fishing in the five Great Lakes, here is a link: The latest fishing information

Lamprey Eels in Canada and the Great Lakes

The so-called “vampire of the lakes” has been found for the first time in a creek west of London, Canada.
Sea lamprey are a blood-sucking scourge that once threatened to ruin the multibillion-dollar fish industry in the Great Lakes.
Now, with a $22-million annual program to monitor lakes and treat tributaries for lamprey and their larvae, they number “about 10% of what they (once) were,” says Brian Stephens, who heads the sea lamprey control program for the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans. “They almost decimated the populations of lake trout in the upper Great Lakes in the 1950s.”
But lamprey larvae keep popping up in new places. And the newest location to be treated with a lampricide will be a tiny tributary of the Thames River, in Komoka Creek west of London.
“This is the first time Komoka Creek is scheduled for treatment,” Stevens said.
Adult lamprey swim from lakes to spawn in clean, gravelly tributaries. The adults then die but their larvae stay in the stream-bed for about five years until they’re large enough to float downstream to the lakes.
There, they attach themselves to native fish and literally suck the life out of them.
The Komoka Creek larvae were found during survey efforts in 2013.
The population estimate is there are 730 larvae longer than 100 millimetres, or the width of a human hand.
At that stage, they’re ideal for chemical treatment to prevent them from growing into adults.
In the oceans, sea lamprey are parasites that live off large saltwater fish.
But as an invasive species in fresh water here, they threaten a $7-billion fishing industry.
“Unfortunately, in the Great Lakes, the fish aren’t as big as the host they feed on and they kill the host,” Stephens said.
Before the U.S. and Canada began a joint program in the mid-1950s to monitor, trap and apply lampricide, commercial fish populations had plummeted to just 2% of their previous average.
The lamprey larvae have low levels of an enzyme that would allow their systems to break down the species-specific lampricide, Stephens said. Fish have higher levels of that enzyme and are not harmed in the treatment.
A trout hatchery set up on the creek by Thames River Anglers Association wouldn’t be harmed by the lampricide.
Monitoring takes place continuously through the Great Lakes basin.
In the London region, Big Creek and Big Otter Creek — which feed into Lake Erie — have also been treated with lampricide in past years. This week, a team has also been treating creeks near Oshawa.
Komoka Creek was originally to have been treated this spring, but heavy rains have tentatively postponed that to August.
debora.vanbrenk@sunmedia.ca 

Read more about invasive species in The Dynamic Great Lakes: available on a Kindle reader and also in paperback.

Snow: Lake Michigan

                                            photo by Barbara Spring

On the Beach in Grand Haven, MI: February 

Confessions of an Ice Watcher

As I walk out on the icy shoreline on a cold February 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.  Link to my author page on Amazon

I watch. I walk and I watch some more.

Ice Forms in Lake Michigan

My Amazon Page with books and more    Click the link for more information

Ice ridges are forming on the Great Lakes.  Read how this happens in my non-fiction book, The Dynamic Great Lakes.

 I took this photo on the sandy beach in Grand Haven, Michigan.

Cook Nuclear Plant Leaking oil into Lake Michigan

Cook Nuclear Plant in Bridgman has been leaking oil into Lake Michigan

By Julie Mack | jmack1@mlive.com 
on January 04, 2015 at 12:38 PM, updated January 04, 2015 at 1:13 PM

Reddit

BRIDGMAN, MI -- Donald C. Cook Nuclear Plant in Bridgman has leaked an estimated 2,000 gallons of oil into Lake Michigan since Oct. 25, according to an event notification posted on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission website.

Plant officials notified the NRC, plus state and local officials, on Dec. 20 about the leak, which is from the Unit 2 main turbine lube oil cooler.
The notification said that "no visible oil or oil sheen is present on Lake Michigan or the shore line."
The leak was isolated as of 10:30 a.m. Dec. 20, the notice said. "Leak repairs will be made to the cooler prior to placing back in service."
Bill Schalk, the spokesman for Cook, could not be immediately reached by the Kalamazoo Gazette for comment Sunday.
However, he told the Detroit Free Press that the leak involved an oil cooling system on the two-turbine plant's Unit 2 main turbine. The series of tubes runs in a heat exchanger where hot oil is cooled by water from Lake Michigan. It's believed the oil leaked into a tube or tubes and was mixed into the cooling water, Schalk told the Free Press.
The turbine system is separate from the plant's radioactive facilities, so the leaked oil is not contaminated with radiation, the Free Press reported.
Schalk told the Free Press that it took awhile for plant officials to realize that a leak was occurring because it was a small leak and the plant discharges 1.5 million gallons of water a minute.
In August, plant officials issued a report that 8,700 gallons of diesel fuel were suspected to have been released from a buried fuel oil tank, but later said there was no leak and the report resulted from "instrumentation error."
Both Unit 1 and Unit 2 were shut down for two days in early November after excessive debris from large waves from Lake Michigan damaged several water screens.
The plant is located near Bridgman, 11 miles south of St. Joseph in Southwest Michigan's Berrien County along the Lake Michigan shoreline. Unit 2 went into operation in 1978.
The plant is owned by American Electric Power and operated by Indiana Michigan Power, an AEP subsidiary.
Julie Mack covers K-12 education and writes a column for Kalamazoo Gazette. Email her at jmack1@mlive.com, call her at 269-350-0277 or follow her on Twitter at @kzjuliemack.