Before leaving dock yesterday afternoon at the Coast Guard Station in Youngstown, NY, teachers aboard the R/V Peter L. Wise Lake Guardian welcomed guest speaker Rene’ Rickard, Tuscarora Environment Office Administrator, who augmented her informative talk about Tuscarora environmental beliefs with artifacts including porcupine quills and a feathered headpiece that are used in cultural activities.

The teachers were impressed by the genuine concern and appreciation that the Tuscarora have concerning the plants and animals in the environment. Rickard encouraged the group to empower their students to become better stewards, through concepts such as “reduce, reuse, recycle” and minimizing our carbon footprint. “Be thankful that our natural world still provides for us,” Rickard said, “and think about what we are leaving for future generations.” As a Tuscarora, part of New York’s Oneida territory since around 1722, she added, “We are very thankful that Mother Earth still provides for us.”

From Mother Earth to Google Earth, visitors to our blog can now follow the Guardian as it charts a course around Lake Ontario. Click the map image below to launch a real-time Google Map outlining the Guardian’s route. (Courtesy of Lisa Matthies, GIS Instructor in Social Sciences at New York’s Erie Community College’s North Campus)

Also included on the map are the numerous field stations where water, mud and bottom sediment samples are being drawn by teachers with assistance from SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry researcher Dr. Greg Boyer and NYSG’s Coastal Education Specialist Helen Domske. Stations range from offshore to nearshore locales including Toronto, Oswego and Rochester. Samples drawn at the variety of stops will help the team of teachers and investigators to make some assessments, such as: What is the difference between the eastern and western Lake Ontario basin? And, how does the nearshore compare with offshore waters?

Water samples are drawn (using a Rosette sampler, as seen, below, in images 1-6) at the various “stations” along the lake (and at different depths - surface, thermocline and one meter off the lake bottom) to analyze chemistry and water quality - factors such as surface temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, and fluorescence (a measure of algae abundance). Biological studies of the water column involve counts of microscopic phytoplankton - photosynthetic organisms like green algae, cyanobacteria, diatoms and dinoflagellates - and zooplankton, a primary food source for Great Lake sportfish such as walleye and yellow perch.

A Secchi disc, pictured below, is used to determine the water’s turbidity, a measure of clarity.

A Ponar grab (below, in pictures 1-4) helps to pull up mud samples for biologial studies of the Lake’s benthic animals, including worms, snails, crustaceans (shrimp-like creatures) and chironomids (midge fly larvae). But, as you’ll also see below, in pictures 5-8, what comes up most are Zebra and Quagga mussels. SUNY ESF researcher Boyer is seen holding a tray of mussels from just one site sample (picture 5). Back in the classroom, Domske inspects the tray (picture 6) and looks to determine, with the help of Wisconsin Sea Grant’s Jim Lubner (picture 7), which are which - Quagga or Zebra mussels (left to right, picture 8).

While filter-feeder activities of these exotic Quagga and Zebra mussel have helped to increase the Lakes’ water clarity, that in itself has introduced more concerns. For example, clearer water allows more light to penetrate, which in turn makes it more conducive for algae, like the pervasive Cladophora, to thrive, especially in warmer temperatures.

“The problem with Cladophora in Lake Ontario and other coastal waters,” says Domske, “is that when storms cause it to break off, dead sections of the plant pile up near the shore, where they rot and give off an offensive odor.” While the sight of Cladophora may not be pleasant to visitors of the shoreline, it is not harmful to humans.

In the pictures below, (1) Boyer points to Michelle Tabone, a teacher, holding a glass jar with Cladophora and Zebra mussels. The sample was collected during a 6 a.m. field station sample. (2) Cladophora, a common filamentous algae, as illustrated by Cynthia Armstrong for NYSG’s Coastlines.

At some of the field stations, Boyer and the teachers are also gathering box core samples, which provide a more in-depth study of Lake Ontario’s bottom sediments. Boyer is seen below, right, with Domske, showing an example of a recently drawn core sample.

After our departure from the Erie Canal and Buffalo River, we found our way early last night to the Welland Ship Canal. Now in its fourth configuration, the canal runs, in its entirety, 27 miles from Port Colborne, Ontario on Lake Erie to Port Weller, Ontario on Lake Ontario. As part of the St. Lawrence Seaway, the canal allows ships to avoid Niagara Falls by navigating the Niagara Escarpment.

While the first configuration - which opened for a trial run in November 1829 - contained at least 40 locks, this newest one, completed in 1932, consists of eight locks, seven at the Niagara Escarpment and the eighth, a control lock, at Port Colborne to control the depth of the canal.

The Guardian entered into the system from Lake Erie, passing through locks 8-1, in that order. From the first to the last lock in the system (between Lakes Erie and Ontario), there is an elevation change of about 327 feet.

If you’ve never experienced going through a lock before, here’s a visual snapshot of how it looks – think of it as going from the top to the bottom of a ladder, except with a lot of water in between.

And here are some video clips of the doors of a lock opening to let the Guardian through …

After finishing with the canal’s locks late last evening, we made our way to Youngstown, NY. We moored at the Coast Guard Station, home to Old Fort Niagara, which played a significant part in the French and Indian War, and fell to the British in a 19 day siege in July 1759, called the Battle of Fort Niagara.

Today, the teachers briefly leave the Guardian to catch and study live fish, including bass, perch and carp. But, before they do, they were the students for a “Geology and the Niagara River” 101 crash course lead by Susan Diachun and Carol Rodgers from New York State Parks at a nearby Nature Center. The hope is that they’ll later pass along this information to their own students via science curricula.

In addition to learning about the various sedimentary layers that make up the rock beds of the Niagara area (dolomites, sandstones and shale), many were surprised to hear that up to 75% of the Niagara River’s natural flow is used to produce hydro-electric power. Some teachers learned for the first time an array of interesting facts about the Great Lakes, incuding: Lake Ontario, the smallest in shoreline miles, is where all the other Great Lakes waters drain into. In fact, in the interconnected Great Lakes system, it takes an average of seven years for water from Lake Superior (which holds the largest and most volume of all the Lakes) to get to Niagara Falls. Lake Michigan is the only of the Great Lakes that’s located fully in the U.S. And Lake Erie, the shallowest of the bunch, is connected to Lake Ontario via the Niagara River.

After the brief lesson on lakes and rivers, the group met with U.S. Fish and Wildlife (USFWS) biologists (lead by Dr. Kofi Fynn-Aikins and Mike Goehle) at the docks at Youngstown’s Coast Guard Station for an electro-shocking display and discussion on Great Lakes contaminants. First, Goehle and other USFWS technicians used equipment to shock fish species - including, pictured below, (1) red horse suckers, (2) small mouth bass and (3) yellow perch - then scoop them up in nets. Fish were placed in a cooler aboard a boat and identified for teachers and reporters from the Buffalo News and Niagara Gazette before being released back into the Niagara River.

During the demonstation, Michelle Tabone, a seventh-grade science teacher at Buffalo Public School No. 197, told the Buffalo News reporter that she was taking the program “to give my students a first-hand experience on [the study of the lake’s environment] through me. I want to show them all the work the government does” to study and help preserve the lake.

Finally, USFWS’s Fynn-Aikins (pictured below, left, with NYSG’s Helen Domske) addressed the group of teachers to discuss how contaminants affect fish and wildlife in the Great Lakes. “What do you do with your unwanted pharmaceuticals?” he asked. “Most people pour them down the drain.” Proper disposal of unwanted medicines is a growing concern that a number of Sea Grant programs, led by Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, are raising the profile on (click here for more). Toxins like mercury and flame-retardant products are not the only ones that can have some noticable, severe impacts on fish species. Remnants from birth control products can reverse the sex of some fish. And that’s just one example. Says Fynn-Aikins, “It’s really an alphabet soup out there in these waters. And so, it’s a constant challenge to understand what’s exactly happening.”

For the next week, teachers aboard the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 180-foot R/V Peter L. Wise Lake Guardian will have a rare opportunity to study with researchers on Lake Ontario. The Guardian, the only self-contained non-polluting vessel on the Great Lakes, won’t be back on the lake for about another five years, as it will rotate through the other Great Lakes, including Lakes Huron and Superior next summer. These and the U.S.’s other two “inland seas” - Lakes Michigan and Erie - form the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth.

Around noon today, the Guardian began its week-long voyage at the Erie Canal Harbor’s marina in downtown Buffalo. Just about a week and a half ago, on July 2, this harbor was the site of a press conference to spotlight recent restoration efforts. To commemorate the event, politicians, including Buffalo Mayor Byron W. Brown and New York Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer, lined up along the Harbor’s “bowstring” pedestrian bridge, each carrying a little pail filled with a history-making brew of water from Gateway Harbor in North Tonawanda and the murky waters that flowed below their feet.

As the Buffalo News reported, Brown cheered at the event, saying, “We can finally proclaim that the 12-year, $53 million Erie Canal Harbor development project is finally complete,” as he gestured with his hands to coax audience members into applauding, which they obliged.

And so, it seems fitting that the 16 fourth - tenth grade teachers aboard the Guardian today begin their own journeys of learning here, at the harborfront. They will hopefully come away with more effective methods to coax (or, perhaps, entice) their students and colleagues to respect and enjoy downtown Buffalo’s waterfront as well other points along Lake Ontario’s shoreline.

This Center for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (COSEE) Great Lakes cruise includes teachers from New York schools in Appleton, Buffalo, Chittenango, East Aurora, Silver Creek, Sodus, Syracuse and Williamsville, as well as from schools in Chicago, Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio.

Heading the educational expedition is New York Sea Grant (NYSG) Education Specialist Helen Domske, who has conducted similar workshops on Lake Erie as well as an excursion on Lake Ontario several years ago. Domske is working with teachers to develop journals and teaching tools to bring back to their classrooms. And teachers will have plenty of hands-on experience to draw from this week - from collecting and analyzing data to learning about the interactions of water, weather, aquatic life and parallels between Lake Ontario and the world’s oceans.

Throughout the week, we’ll be docking at ports in Youngstown, Clayton and Oswego, each with its own set of stops and experiences to share. We’ll see you on the Lake and on shore as the week progresses. Fresh from our emergency safety lessons on deck of the Lake Guardian in my immersion suit, this is NYSG’s Web Content Manager, Paul Focazio, signing off until tomorrow.