EPA’s Lake Guardian vessel has set sail
The Lake Guardian has set sail.
After a year in lockdown due to COVID-19, the United States’ Environmental Protection Agency’s largest research vessel left the harbor in Chicago. As of press time, the vessel was expected to reach the St. Clair River and Lake St. Clair by Wednesday afternoon, according to a news release from the EPA.
Serving aboard the ship bound for the Great Lakes are nearly a dozen scientists supported by a 15-member crew that will live and work aboard the ship that exemplifies EPA science at its best this month. Activities conducted by this group of scientific sailors will include
lowering nets, bottles and other equipment into the Great Lakes for the purposes of collecting samples of water, sediment, and lower food web organisms. Scientists examining and evaluating the collected samples will have the use of
three on-board state-of-theart laboratories that will aid in their research of pressing and urgent issues affecting the Great Lakes region.
Water quality surveys conducted by the EPA’s Great Lakes National Program Office have been conducted every spring and summer since 1983, with the exception of the 2020 surveys which were canceled due to COVID-19. These surveys help EPA fulfill environmental monitoring and assessment commitments specified in the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between Canada and the United States and in the U.S. Clean Water Act.
The work aboard the Lake Guardian is made possible through funding by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, launched in 2010 to accelerate efforts to protect and restore the world’s largest system of fresh surface water.
Among the discoveries that have been made recently through the EPA monitoring programs were the first detections of three additional non-native zooplankton species in the Great Lakes.
The EPA said these species are still considered rare and, thus far, are not demonstrating a threat to the Great Lakes. On this survey, scientists are monitoring the long-term changes in phytoplankton at offshore stations where the conditions are shallower and closer to nearshore regions of Lake Michigan and Superior. Nearshore data is closer to the stress associated with human activities on land and may tell a story that directly reflects human-Great Lakes interaction.
In the past two centuries, more than 180 species of aquatic plants and animals not native to the area have been introduced into the Great Lakes resulting in significant changes to the ecosystem, which can impact the economy, health, and well-being of the people that rely on the system for food, water, and recreation.
Zebra and quagga mussels were first discovered more than 30 years ago and have coincided with major changes to the Great Lakes water quality and food health, especially in Lakes Huron, Ontario, and Michigan. The mussels eat up the offshore algae which leaves less food for the lower food web. EPA Lake Guardian scientists use these surveys to study these effects.
When scientists on the Lake Guardian are not learning about new species or evaluating the lower food web, they can be found promoting STEM education on videocalls with students in a program called “Students Ask Scientists.” Through the program, classrooms get an inside look into the daily life of the scientists onboard. Among the lessons is an activity in which scientists demonstrate to the students the impacts of water pressure in a fun and visible way by shrinking styrofoam cups in the depths of the Great Lakes. Students participating in the program send decorated cups to the Lake Guardian scientists, who drop them into the deepest reaches of the Great Lakes, retrieve the much smaller but un-deformed cups, and send them back to the students. This program was developed in partnership with the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant.
The EPA’s Lake Guardian is 180 feet in length, with a gross tonnage of 283 tons, a displaced tonnage of 850 tons, and a cruising speed of 11 knots. It has a berthing capacity of 41 people.