TOTAL PACKAGE
Stone Laboratory much more than just a science center on Lake Erie
PUT- IN- BAY, Ohio — You’ve gotta have a lab for your HAB.
Good thing Lake Erie has Stone Laboratory, the oldest freshwater biological field station in the United States ( 1929).
What first caught my attention about Stone Lab had nothing to do with science. While fishing for smallmouth bass about 15 years ago off South Bass Island, I was drawn to a small island ( Gibraltar) with a barely visible mansion ( Jay Cooke Mansion). Small islands pull at me.
But Stone Lab is more than scenic, though it is that. As a campus for Ohio State University and a site for Ohio Sea Grant studies, Stone Lab has been central to much Great Lakes research.
That research assumed more than scholarly importance when harmful algal blooms ( HAB) rocketed into international news in 2014, with toxins shutting off drinking water to 400,000 in the Toledo area.
I jumped at the chance to attend a two- day conference, which focused on HAB, this month.
One reason was for background about what impact HAB might have on sportfishing. Lake Erie’s western basin is a top destination for Chicago- area fishermen for walleye and yellow perch.
The early bottom line, according to Stone Lab interim director Chris Winslow, is that fish contamination from HAB isn’t even close to the warning stage. He also said the studies most focused on sportfishing impact are in their early stages, so more information will come as the studies build. I will touch on the broader impact of HAB on sportfishing another day.
Just as an aside, if you’re a high school or college student with interests in marine or aquatic studies, I urge you to try your damnedest to get to Stone Lab.
We stayed in the student dormitories, and the room and mattresses were as spartan as I remember from college. It’s quite the juxtaposition to have Stone Lab by Put- in- Bay, an epic party center on the Great Lakes. Cars were lined up with at least an hour wait when I got off Miller’s Ferry leaving on a Friday evening.
The 6 ½ acres of Gibraltar were as stunning as I had imagined, and Cooke’s castle was even spookier than I expected.
One morning, we did surveys
fishing is also connected to HAB.
Capt. Craig Genheimer took us to Schoolhouse Bay on the open- deck, 42- foot Gibraltar III. By his wheel, he has Garmin electronics, including sonar, GPS, radar ( for water surface) and a Lake Erie chip.
Winslow started with a Secchi disk, which alternates black and white quadrants to measure turbidity. In this technological age, I’m struck that we still use a device designed by Italian astrophysicist Angelo Secchi in 1865.
We had 1.66 meters of clarity. Winslow said the rule of thumb for light penetration on Lake Erie is to multiple by three, so light would reach about 5 meters down.
Two sizes of plankton nets showed just how much life is in the western basin of Lake Erie. The difference in the three samples, including the surface water, was remarkable.
Then Winslow pulled out the Ekman Dredge — what he called ‘‘ jaws of death’’ — for sampling the bottom. Among the things brought up were mayfly larvae.
‘‘ Their presence indicates we have healthy water and good oxygen,’’ Winslow said.
Then came the pièce de résistance: dragging a bottom trawl. It is real work pulling the nets through. It produced as much cool stuff as I hoped: yellow perch, white perch, freshwater drum, trout perch, a young- of- the- year walleye, round gobies and gizzard shad.
‘‘ Good day at the office,’’ Winslow said. It was time. But on the way back to Miller’s Ferry, several of us did a couple of other tours. One was of the lab on shore, where water samples are checked with high- tech machinery.
And Kristin ‘‘ Snake Lady’’ Stanford, featured on Discovery Channel’s ‘‘ Dirty Jobs,’’ does her work there. She is restoring the Lake Erie watersnake, a subspecies of the northern watersnake.
Winslow noted that 98 percent of its diet are the invasive round gobies.
‘‘ They are mowing them down,’’ he said.
Said Stanford, who was planning to bring in the pregnant snakes, which give live birth to an average of 26 babies, the next week: ‘‘ When they come out, there is no maternal care.’’
Then it was touring and climbing the South Bass Island Lighthouse and Keeper’s Dwelling ( first lit in 1897) and spotting multiple monarch butterflies in the butterfly garden outside.
It was the perfect merging of water’s edge, science and history to end a packed two days on Lake Erie. Follow me on Twitter @ bowmanoutside.