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Your June Update

Bima’azh project applies a two-eyed seeing approach to study dikameg or lake whitefish

Collective Environmental Intern Ruth Duncan works on a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) used to observe underwater habitat. Photo by Mary-Claire Buell

Lake whitefish or dikameg are native to the Great Lakes and have been important to the people of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON) since time immemorial. But in recent years, fish harvesters from the SON, who rely on dikameg for food and income, noticed a change in populations in Lake Huron.

“There really isn’t a lot of food left for the larval lake whitefish to eat, so the theory is that they’re basically starving to death and there’s no new fish to able to enter the fishery,” said Ryan Lauzon, a fisheries biologist, also citing recreational fish stocking, climate change, and shoreline development as possible strains on whitefish. “There are just so many things going on that we believe are having a negative effect on the fishery.”

So in 2021, Lauzon, along with Smart Great Lakes partner Mary-Claire Buell, and other researchers applied for a Smart Great Lakes Mini-grant from GLOS and kicked off the Bima’azh Project. The team applied a two-eyed seeing approach equally values and utilizes both indigenous knowledge and western science, they’re beginning to unravel some mysteries of the dikameg.

Read the Story

Seagull’s first summer is off to a strong start

People are discovering NOAA models on Seagull. Right now, wind speed, water currents, and surface water temperature are available, with more on the way.

GLOS publicly launched Seagull in April and we’re happy to report there have been over 30,000 visitors so far! Plus,

Hundreds of people have created accounts.
Dozens have reached out using the orange feedback bar to inform us of bugs and enhancement ideas.
The development team has fixed several bugs and implemented many new improvements.

“We built Seagull to serve our users, and the reception since launch has been great.” said Tim Kearns, GLOS CIO. “We take user feedback very seriously, it helps educate us on how to make improvements for the platform.”

Frequently requested features since launch include:

Customizing units for parameters like wind and current speed.
Integrating additional historical data.
Improving line graph visualizations.

To create a free account on Seagull, simply click the Log in button.

Make a Seagull Account

Lakebed 2030 Conference is now accepting abstracts, sponsorship, and registrations

This image shows the contours of an area of the lakebed in Thunder Bay in Lake Huron. Image by Ocean Exploration Trust/University of New Hampshire-Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping

Let's map the Great Lakes!

The Lakebed 2030 Conference is back Sept. 28-30 and will bring together professionals from science and research, policy, government, and industry to:

Focus on high-resolution mapping and bathymetry data in the Great lakes.
Develop a strategy to catalog new and existing lakebed information for shared use.
Share the latest technology advancements with the Great Lakes community.

Abstracts and sponsorship applications are due July 1.

Learn More

Great Lakes glider operators contribute to upcoming webinar

The Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research (CIGLR) launches GLOS’ Joesephine glider during a mission in 2021. CIGLR helps run collaborative glider missions with other research organizations. Photo from Hayden Henderson.

On June 23, from 2-3:30 PM EST, the Underwater Gliders User Group is holding a "Coordinated and Collaborative Gliders" webinar.

See the original announcement.

Smart Great Lakes Initiative Partner Marguerite Xenopulos will be presenting on her work related to HABs and hypoxia. She is part of the recently-formed Consortium of Great Lakes Gliders that has been generously supporting each other, collaborating across organizations and international borders.

Read Maggie’s 2021 piece about the consortium.

Add to Your Calendar

Dozens of platforms connected to GLOS in recent weeks

A crew from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee deploys the new Salmon Unlimited Buoy in Lake Michigan. Photo by Angelo Trentadue

New platforms are being added to Seagull each week, thanks to generous observers invested in collecting and sharing Great Lakes data: free, easily accessible, and open to all.

Here are a few dozen recently added platforms. Note: Although these stations are connected, not all are actively transmitting data yet and will be marked “Unavailable” on Seagull.

glos.org

P.S. NOAA is always working to refine lakewide models to better reflect what’s happening on these complex waters, and the models go far beyond wind and waves. Check out this tweet about how NOAA is working to better forecast the biology of the lakes.