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.

View the Lake Huron Exploration Workshop Event Page

Buoyed by last night’s festivities, our energy registered high as we shared projects that reflected what we learned. We have been inspired to maintain professional relationships with scientists and each other, and inspired to carry our experiences to classrooms and colleagues.

Travel time home provides us with echoes of reflections from our rich COSEE experiences. We will arrive back in our schools as changed educators.

The COSEE experiences will continue along the shores of Lake Michigan in 2008. Good bye, Alpeana. You were a great host. Hello, Chicago!

Plug into Wetlands

Don Uzarski, biologist at Central Michigan University, presented extensive research on wetlands: their components and their ever-changing make-up due to natural and human influences. His cutting-edge presentations found an audience not only with us, but in testimony to the EPA.

In our visit to a wetland, we checked fyke nets previously set up by Do, and Brandon Schroeder. The first one was almost high and dry, evidence of a seiche in progress (Hey, seiche happens!). Our captures in the second fyke net were largemouth bass, a few sunfish, and bluntnose minnows. Our trail to the shoreline took us through some alien invasive plants: purple loosestrife and phragmites.

In his presentation on regional Native American culture, Nick Reo of Michigan State University extension emphasized a traditional land ethic which considers people as an integral part of natural ecosystems.

In a reflective evening, we relived the highlights and “special” moments of the past week. An abundance of appreciation to Alpena’s own Jennifer Poli for her efforts to publicize the workshop. We enjoyed the lead story about the COSEE program on the 11 p.m. newscast. Accolades to Doug Damery for his high-tech whiz-dom with the blog and for his closing Powerpoint!

Humor Corner
It’s dig-up-able. (Brandon)
…too special to include. (Howard)
You can remediate stupid. (Randy)

The Shocking Truth!

Today’s themes were Aquatic Invasive Species, and Fisheries Sampling and Research.

Anjanette Bowen from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service kicked off the day with an introduction of a few of the more than 180 plant and animal aquatic invasive species residing in the Great Lakes region. In the following session, entitled “Don’t Stop for Hitchhikers,” Illinois Sea Grant educator Robin Goettel continued the invasives strand with an introduction to an engaging website “Nab the Aquatic Invader! Be a Sea Grant Super Sleuth.” (www.sgnis.org/kids). Check it out! Find out more about aquatic bad guys and the ranks of investigators hot on their trails.

Trekking north to the top of Grand Lake, we stopped at a spillway to investigate aquatic life there. Brandon Schroeder, a Michigan State Fisheries Extension education agent, led us through “most excellent” activities.

Within moments of arrival, he had turned over a seine to Bruce Szczechowski (MI), Heidi Igo (MN), and Kim Swanson (MN) with which they gathered a fine assortment of candidates for examination. The prize specimen was an 18” northern pike. Jennifer Fleck remarked, “It was so fun to play with fish again. We found a lot of turtles, frogs, and crayfish too, and a very cool, non-parasitic, fat, green-speckled leech!”

The rock hounds among us discovered more fossil treasures [again] at the site.

Just up the road from our waterside experience, we met Roger Bergstedt, USGS sea lamprey biologist, at the Hammond Bay Biological Station.

Roger shared research about sea lampreys: when they came into the Great Lakes, the harms they caused to fisheries, and successful efforts to limit their damage. He followed his presentation with an opportunity to get up close to these creatures. Anyone game for the experience offered a hand or forearm for sea lamprey attachment. Those suckers can really get a grip!

Fisherman Albert LaBlance told us a story about commercial fishing in Lake Huron. His family had been fishing the region since 1860, and he said that the last 15 years brought more negative changes to the area than the previous 500 years. He decried that ship carriers have brought terrible influences to the Great Lakes in the form of hitchhiking aquatic invasive species, costing millions of intervention/remediation dollars.

“What is cyanobacteria, and can I eat it?” (evaluator Howard Walters, referring to the purple bacteria found in area sinkhole settings)

“When I’m on the loose, which is often, I cause strife – loosestrife. Get it? (participant Bruce Szczechowski commenting on the invasive purple loosestrife plant)

“My wife’s never going to believe I was in Alpena – I’m so tan!” (participant Dwight Sieggreen)

“You can’t fix stupid.” (presenter Howard Walters)