Tag: underwater

Diving for Cures

  • Researchers are hoping to find cures underwater in corals and sponges. (Photo courtesy of NOAA)

Making medicine from things
found in nature isn’t a new
idea. Think, aspirin – which
originally came from the bark
of willow trees. Now drugs
derived from ocean animals are
slowly making their way onto
shelves. Samara Freemark talks to a researcher
who helps get them there:

Transcript

Making medicine from things
found in nature isn’t a new
idea. Think, aspirin – which
originally came from the bark
of willow trees. Now drugs
derived from ocean animals are
slowly making their way onto
shelves. Samara Freemark talks to a researcher
who helps get them there:

Mark Slattery is trying to find a cure for cancer. Slattery is a pharmacology professor at the University of Mississippi. But he doesn’t really spend much time in the lab. Instead, he’s usually in a wetsuit, scuba diving off the coasts of places like Guam and Antarctica.

He’s taking samples from tens of thousands of corals and sponges. He’s looking for that one special species that might make a chemical that could cure disease. He calls it, ‘diving for cures.’

“In many ways, it’s like going out and playing your super lotto or whatever. You pick your eight numbers and you see if you hit or not.”

The idea is pretty simple. A third of the medicines on shelves today were derived from plants and animals that live on land. So ocean researchers got to thinking that the organisms they studied probably also produced a lot of useful chemicals.

Take corals and sponges. They can’t run away from predators, so instead they squirt out chemicals that poison the fish that try to take a bite out of them. Marc Slattery says those toxins are bad for the fish – but they could be good for people.

“Those particular compounds that tell a fish “not today” are the same ones that might tell the AIDS virus “you can’t replicate” or tell a cancer cell “you’re dead” or those kinds of things.”

So Slattery and other researchers like him clip off bits of sponges and corals. When they get back to the lab they extract the chemicals, which is a nice way of saying…

“Stick it in a blender with methanol and ethyl acetate and hexanes and all those sorts of things you used in organic chemistry lab, and you throw away the dead sponge, and the tarry residue that’s left is sort of the biochemistry that came out of that sponge.”

“So you make a sponge smoothie?”

“Exactly.”

Once they’ve extracted the chemicals, researchers test to see if they have any human application. If a compound looks promising, it moves on to clinical trials. Those trials can take decades, which is why ocean-derived drugs are only now starting to hit the market. So far only two have been approved for use in the United States: a painkiller, and a cancer drug marketed by Johnson and Johnson.

I wondered how ocean conservationists felt about diving for cures. So I called up Sandra Brooke. She studies corals at the Marine Conservation Biology Institute. Brooke says she does worry that diving for cures could lead to over-harvesting.

“Once something becomes valuable to people, there’s a resistance to closing access to it. It becomes harder to regulate it.”

But she says corals are under much greater and much more immediate threats. The biggest culprit is industrial trawling. That’s when fisherman scrape reefs off the ocean floor so they can get to the fish.

“It’s just like the clear cutting of the forest, but on a much vaster scale. They are deliberately mowing down these deepwater coral ecosystems that are thousands and thousands of years old – some of the oldest animals ever measured. And that’s not going to come back – not in our lifetimes, not in many lifetimes.”

There’s also the fact that oceans are changing as the climate does. Those changes mean corals are becoming weaker. Marc Slattery thinks he might be seeing that in a Pacific reef he’s been studying for fifteen years.

“When we went back and started looking at it, we noticed that there was a change in the chemistry through time. As things have heated up on the reefs, there’s a physiological effect that has cascaded down into their ability to produce the chemistry we’re used to seeing. Early on it was so apparent, it was always there, and now they seem to be able to produce less of it.”

That’s means that today the cure for cancer might be out there in some coral reef, but it could be gone tomorrow.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

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Native Americans Lose Land to Climate Change

  • Choctaw Chief Albert Naquin has watched his tribe's island - the Isle de Jean Charles - go from four miles across to a quarter mile across. (Photo by Samara Freemark)

Over the next century, rising
sea levels will change coastlines
all over the world. But the impact
might be most dramatic in South
Louisiana. A study out last month
predicts the state will lose up to
5000 square miles in the next
century – a chunk of land the size
of Connecticut. If the report’s
authors are right, that means a
lot of people in Louisiana are
going to have to relocate – become
climate refugees. Samara Freemark has the story of one of
the first communities to be displaced:

Transcript

Over the next century, rising sea levels will change coastlines all over the world. But the impact might be most dramatic in South Louisiana. A study out last month predicts the state will lose up to 5000 square miles in the next century – a chunk of land the size of Connecticut. If the report’s authors are right, that means a lot of people in Louisiana are going to have to relocate – become climate refugees. Samara Freemark has the story of one of the first communities to be displaced:

It was sometime in the mid-1970s that Albert Naquin first realized that Isle de Jean Charles was sinking. Naquin had grown up on the island. He’s the chief of a group of Choctaws who have lived there since the 19th century – and when he was a kid, it was a pretty good community: it had stores, a couple of churches, horse pastures and fields. But those are all gone now.

“Salt water kept coming in, faster and faster, and now it’s basically just beach.”

Isle de Jean Charles is sinking into the Gulf of Mexico.

The list of reasons why is long. There’s subsidence- that’s the natural phenomenon where delta regions kind of settle down on themselves. There are the dams that block the sediment that used to wash down and build the land back up. There are oil company canals that slice through the wetlands, hurricanes that tear up the island’s coastline, and, of course, there’s rising sea levels.

All together they explain why Isle de Jean Charles used to be about 4 miles across and now has shrunk to a quarter mile.

“Now, we see the disaster that is Isle de Jean.”

We’re in Naquin’s pickup truck, and he’s driving me out to the island.

“See this little house moved across the way, this house. These 1, 2, 3 are deserted.”

Naquin himself moved off the island awhile ago. But for years he was happy to support families who chose to stay. In fact, when the US government came to him in 2002 and offered to pay to help people move off the island, he resisted.

“So, I said, ‘what they gonna do, tell us they’re gonna move us there and then next thing send us a bill for the house?’ You know, so I said, ‘no, that’s just a modern day Trail of Tears. We’re not moving.’”

But lately Naquin has just gotten tired. Tired of evacuating people before storms, tired of helping them rebuild after, tired of watching the sea nibble away at the island.

And so he decided – enough. For the past year he’s been on a mission to convince the 25 families still living on the island to abandon it.

“They’re not going to save the island. It’s going to be gone. Either we move now or we move later, ‘cause we will move.”

But not everyone is ready to leave.

(sound of greeting and talking)

Naquin pulls over to talk to Dominique Dardar.

Dardar’s house was leveled by Hurricane Gustav last summer. He’s rebuilding it with pieces of other houses he’s found blowing around the island- bits of roof and siding. Dardar says he’s not moving.

“I ain’t never gonna move. I’m gonna stay over here. That’s my territory.”

Across the street Wenselas Billiot lives in a house raised 13 feet in the air.

Billiot is Naquin’s brother in law. He’s in his 80s and has lived on the island his whole life. I ask him what he’ll do if the island shrinks any more.

“That’s going to be rough. But, as long as I can stay, I’ll stay. I was born and raised on the island. As long as I can stay here I’m going to stay.”

Albert Naquin hasn’t given up. He thinks if he can get everyone to agree, the government will help the tribe get a big piece of land where they can all relocate as a group. He’s already thinking of names for the new town.

“We could say, Island Number Two, or Isle de Jean Charles New Beginning, or something like that. But I think we just name it Isle de Jean Charles 2. I think that has a good sound to it.”

In short, Naquin is trying to figure out how to keep the idea of Isle de Jean Charles alive, even when the island itself no longer exists.

It’s a challenge many Louisiana communities could soon face.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

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Saving Underwater Forests From a Prickly Pest

  • A few years ago, urchins had mowed this huge kelp forest down to just a few square feet (Photo by Ann Dornfeld)

Most of the world’s forests are on dry land. But in a few special places on earth, forests grow underwater. They’re kelp forests. And they’re home to an astounding array of marine life. Trouble is, these underwater forests are vanishing. Ann Dornfeld reports on efforts to turn the tide:

Transcript

Most of the world’s forests are on dry land. But in a few special places on earth, forests grow underwater. They’re kelp forests. And they’re home to an astounding array of marine life. Trouble is, these underwater forests are vanishing. Ann Dornfeld reports on efforts to turn the tide:

A healthy kelp forest is so thick with fish and invertebrates that you’d swear you were looking at an aquarium exhibit.

They’re biodiversity hotspots – places that feed and protect an extraordinary number of species.

Brian Meux of Santa Monica Baykeeper standing on the deck of a boat in his wetsuit. He’s looking proudly at a thriving kelp forest along a rocky coastline near Los Angeles.

“This is our little jewel on this coast. Not only does the kelp forest have over 800 species dependent on it, but more than a quarter of all California marine species are dependent upon the kelp forest during some part of their life cycle.”

Since the 1960s, Southern California has lost 90% of its kelp forests. The culprit looks like a small purple pin cushion.

It’s a sea urchin!

Urchins love to eat kelp, and their populations have gone out of control. That’s because overfishing has removed most of the large fish and lobsters that eat urchins.

A few years ago, urchins had mowed this kelp forest down to just a few square feet. So Meux and a team of Baykeeper volunteers are trying to restore the balance.

They’re licensed by the state to do “urchin relocation.”

“what we do is go down, collect urchins by hand, get them on the boat and relocate them to areas where they will no longer harm the kelp forest.”

Sounds easy enough.

“Some of them you’ll want to just pull off the reef – they’ll look like they just can come off – I recommend using the tool. Urchin spines in your fingers… just not fun. ”

Or maybe not.

Either way, it’s time for the us to gear up and jump in.

(sound of diving in and scuba breathing)

Twenty-five feet underwater, the ocean surges so violently that the divers cling to rocks so they won’t be swept away.

It’s tricky to find a safe rock to grab because most of them are covered in urchins that have moved in on this young kelp forest.

But urchins aren’t the only migrants.

Huge purple sheephead and fire-orange Garibaldi fish swim by. A small octopus sits curled in a crevice. Pastel sea stars are everywhere.

Four years ago, this site was pretty much just rocks and urchins.

Two dives later, the divers are back on the boat.

Diver 1: “That was a workout!”

Diver 2: “That was a workout. I’m tired.”

After the team hauls up bag after bags of purple and red urchins, we try unsuccessfully to extract a spine from one volunteer’s finger.

Next, we move to deeper water a mile away. This will be the urchins’ new home.

The divers count the prickly balls as they throw them overboard.

Diver: “Purple!”

Each time a diver counts ten urchins of a particular color, they call it out.

Divers: “Purple! Purple.”

Similar kelp restoration efforts have revived kelp forests along other stretches of the California coast. But while those projects involved reseeding of the kelp forest, Meux says Baykeeper focuses on urchin relocation.

“We’ve found that mostly just get rid of the urchins and natural kelp spores will seed the reef and the return of kelp will ensue.”

Diver: “Purple!”

In all today, the team has relocated about 1500 urchins.

Between weekly trips like these and giant kelp’s ability to grow as fast as two feet a day, kelp restoration is a
heartening environmental success story.

In order for Southern California’s kelp forests to make a widespread comeback, Brian Meux says the state will need to limit the fishing that caused this problem in the first place.

And that issue’s as prickly as an urchin.

For The Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

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Zebra Mussels Mend Hearts

Zebra mussels continue to plague many of the nation’s waterways,
crowding out native aquatic life and aggravating fishermen and
engineers. But Brian Bull reports that the invasive species might play
a key part in the surgery room:

Transcript

Zebra mussels continue to plague many of the nation’s waterways,
crowding out native aquatic life and aggravating fishermen and
engineers. But Brian Bull reports that the invasive species might play
a key part in the surgery room:


The Nerites Corporation specializes in bio-degradable, waterproof
tissue adhesives. The concept is familiar if you’ve ever superglued
your fingers together.


The Madison, Wisconsin company is currently developing an adhesive that
could be used in complex heart surgeries, to seal, attach, or re-join
blood vessels. CEO Thomas Mozer says they’ve based their research on
zebra mussels, which attach themselves to surfaces like ship’s hulls
and water intake pipes.


“They adhere to surfaces underwater in the rather messy environment of
the ocean or lakeshore. Where the zebra mussels attach to surfaces.
The kind of environment where synthetic adhesives made by man – prior
to ours coming along – wouldn’t work.”


Mozer predicts it’ll be about three years before the tissue adhesive is
perfected for use in hospitals and clinics.


For the Environment Report, I’m Brian Bull.

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Carp Barrier Works Out Another Snag

  • Some worry that the carp barrier could pose a safety hazard to watercraft. (Photo by Louis Rock)

Two federal agencies say they’ve worked out safety problems that might’ve caused delays at a new electric barrier designed to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Two federal agencies say they’ve worked out safety problems that might’ve caused delays at a new electric barrier designed to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


There’s already one underwater barrier at a canal south of Chicago and a second set of electrical cables is being installed. The shipping industry has been worried about the barriers causing safety problems like electrical arcing between vessels. The Army Corps of Engineers and Coast Guard have been working with the private firms and have come up with recommendations to reduce the risk of danger. The suggestions include no mooring, passing, or stopping near the barriers and using wire rope to prevent barges from separating. Coast Guard commander David Fish says the plan should work.


“We think we have something. You get enough people… working on a project… get enough people all wanting the same solution and engineering-wise, we’re able to find a solution.”


But Fish says there are no firm guarantees the second carp barrier will be ready this spring, before the first barrier wears out.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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Lobbying for a Second Carp Barrier

A new barrier is being constructed to prevent the Asian carp
from getting into the Great Lakes. But this year, a Congresswoman
will seek money to keep an existing barrier in operation, as well. The
Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

A new barrier is being constructed to prevent the Asian carp
from getting into the Great Lakes. But this year, a Congresswoman
will seek money to keep an existing barrier in operation, as well. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


The permanent underwater electronic barrier that’s being built in a canal near
Chicago is close to a temporary barrier that’s wearing out. But Illinois Republican
Judy Biggert
contends the new electronic fence will not be enough to keep out the voracious
invasive species
known as the Asian carp.


“Now I wish that I could say that with the construction of this permanent barrier
that our work
would be finished and the carp would never again threaten the Great Lakes, but I
cannot.”


Biggert wants to make the temporary barrier permanent, too. She also wants to make
sure there’s
federal money to operate and maintain both underwater fences over the long term.
So, Biggert is
seeking co-sponsors for a barrier bill that she says she plans to introduce early
this session of
Congress.


Her aides say she may also try to get the several million dollars needed for the
project put in the
budget for the Army Corps of Engineers. But many new domestic spending proposals
could face
a tough time in Congress, if conservatives try to reduce the federal budget deficit.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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Major Dock Corrosion Stumps Officials

  • The Duluth Seaway Port Authority's bulk cargo dock is typical of many in the port. Officials are troubled by corrosion appearing on the docks in the harbor - the steel is corroding much faster than normal. (Photo by Bob Kelleher)

Corrosion is eating away at the steel walls that hold one of the Great Lakes’ busiest harbors together. The corrosion is unlike anything known to be happening in any other Great Lakes port. But other port officials are being encouraged to take a closer look at their own underwater steel. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bob Kelleher reports:

Transcript

Corrosion is eating away at the steel walls that hold
one of the Great Lakes’ busy harbors together. The
corrosion is unlike anything known to be happening in
any other Great Lakes port. But other port officials
are being encouraged to take a closer look at their own
underwater steel. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Bob Kelleher reports:


Some kind of corrosion is eating away at the Duluth
Seaway port’s docks. The docks are those long
earth-filled metal rectangles where ships from around
the world tie up to load and unload. Those docks are
lined with sheets of steel, and the steel is rusting
away. Jim Sharrow is the Duluth
Seaway Port Authorities Facilities Manager.


“It’s corroding quickly – much faster than people expect
in fresh water. And our main concern is that we’ll lose
the integrity and the strength of the dock long before
expected, and have to do steel replacement at $1,500 or
more per lineal foot, much earlier than ever would have
been expected.”


Corrosion should be a slow process in Duluth’s cold
fresh water. But, Sharrow says, there’s evidence it’s
been happening remarkably quickly for about thirty years.


“What we seem to see here is corrosion that started in
the mid 1970s. We have steel that’s 100 years olds
that’s about as similarly corroded to steel that is 25
to 30 years old.”


It’s a big problem. There’s about thirteen miles of
steel walls lining docks in the harbor that serves
Duluth, Minnesota and Superior, Wisconsin. There’s half
again as many feet of wooden docks, held together with
steel pins. There’s corrosion on the legs of highway
bridges and the giant
steel ore docks that ship millions of tons of taconite
– a type of iron shipped to steel mills in Gary,
Indiana and Cleveland, Ohio.


“We characterize this as a 100-million dollar problem in
the harbor. It’s a huge problem, and what is so odd
about this is that we only see it happening in the
navigational area of the Duluth-Superior Harbor.”


The harbor links the St Louis River with Lake Superior.
Go a few miles up the river and there’s little corrosion
. So it doesn’t seem like the problem’s there. But, back
in the harbor, at the current rate of corrosion, Sharrow
says, the steel will fail quickly.


“I figure that in about 10 years at the current rate,
we will have to start replacing steel.”


“Particularly marginal operators could decide rather
than repair their docks it would be better for them to
go out of business, and we’re hoping that that isn’t
the case here.”


While the cause is a mystery, there’s no shortage of
theories. It could have something to do with stray
electrical voltage; water acidity; or the kinds of
steel manufactured in recent years. Chad Scott
discovered the corrosion in the late 1990’s. He’s an
engineer and a diver. Scott suspects
a micro-biological connection. He says there might be
something growing in small round pits that form on the
steel.


“We cleaned up the water. That’s the main thing –
that’s one of the main changes that’s happened since
the 70s, is we’ve cleaned up our water. We’ve cleaned
up our harbor, which is a good thing. But, when we
cleaned things up we also induced more dissolved oxygen
and more sunlight can penetrate the water, which tends
to usually promote more growth – more marine
microbiology growth.”


A team of experts met in Duluth in September to share
ideas. They came from the U.S. Navy, The Army Corp of
Engineers, and Ohio State University. And they agreed
there’s something odd going on – possibly related to
microbes or water chemistry. They also recommend that
other Great Lakes ports take a closer look at their
underwater steel. Scott says they at least helped
narrow the focus.


“We have a large laundry list right now. We want to
narrow that down and try to decide what is the real
cause of this corrosion. And these experts, hopefully,
will be able to get us going on the right direction,
so we can start doing testing that will identify the
problem.”


With the experts recommendations in hand, port
officials are now planning a formal study. If they
do figure out the cause, then they’ve got to figure
out how to prevent it. They’re in a race with
something, and right now they don’t even know with
what.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bob Kelleher.

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Congress Approves Asian Carp Barrier Funding

  • U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service catch an Asian carp. This invasive species can grow up to four feet long, and the U.S. House and Senate have agreed to supply funds to try to keep them out of the Great Lakes. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildife Service)

The U.S. House and Senate recently passed a bill that will help keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports, the federal government will contribute nearly two and a half million dollars to help repel the fish:

Transcript

The U.S. House and Senate recently passed a bill that will help keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium Celeste Headlee reports, the federal government will contribute nearly two and a half million dollars to help repel the fish:


Asian carp are huge, often growing to be four feet long and weighing 80 pounds. They are also extremely prolific and voracious. Most Asian carp consume up to 40 percent of their body weight every day. There is currently an electric fish barrier strung across the bottom of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal to keep the fish out of the Great Lakes. The barrier creates an underwater field of electricity that repels the carp.


Andy Buchsbaum is the director of the National Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes Office. He says the current barrier is temporary and due to fail next year.


“Today the Great Lakes really dodged a bullet. Right now, the carp are poised 20 miles away from the failing barrier, which is just downstream from Lake Michigan. And if that barrier fails, then essentially the Great Lakes as we know them are over.”


The U.S. House and Senate passed a bill that will supply 75 percent of the funds for building a new barrier. The Great Lakes governors have agreed to supply the rest of the money. President Bush has said he will sign the bill when it reaches his desk. Buchsbaum says the new barrier can be completed within 60 to 90 days.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Celeste Headlee.

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FAMED EXPLORER SEARCHES FOR LAKES’ SHIPWRECKS

  • The bow of the Grecian, a shipwreck in Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

Underwater explorer Dr. Robert Ballard became a celebrity for finding the Titanic in mid 1980’s. But that ship is just one of his many underwater discoveries. He and his team of researchers travel from one far flung location to another, exploring and searching for lost shipwrecks, ancient coastlines, and unknown deep sea trenches. However, recently his team was at work in Lake Huron. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports:

Transcript

Underwater explorer Dr. Robert Ballard became a celebrity for
finding the Titanic in mid 1980’s. But that ship is just one of his
many underwater discoveries. He and his team of
researchers travel from one far flung location to another,
exploring and searching for lost shipwrecks, ancient
coastlines, and unknown deep sea trenches. However,
recently his team was at work in Lake Huron. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports:


On this fall day, the water’s calm, the sky blue, and the air warm. But Lake Huron isn’t always
this way. The Great Lakes’ legendary storms have left the bottom of Lake Huron’s Thunder Bay
littered with shipwrecks.


(Ship’s horn blast)


(engine noise, water drips and waves throughout piece)


Dr. Bob Ballard and his team from the Institute for Exploration have a research vessel hovering
above one of the shipwrecks in the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary near Alpena,
Michigan.


“I’ve become convinced and what brings me here to Thunder Bay is that the deep sea is probably
the largest museum in the world. There is more history in the deep sea than in all the museums of
the world combined.”


Ballard says the Great Lakes are home to thousands of shipwrecks that trace the evolution of
maritime trade in America, from Native American canoes to modern barges.


“What is really nice about the Great Lakes is because it is fresh water we don’t have wood borers
like we have in salt water. The ships I’ve found, the Titanic, for example, its deck was eaten and
the grand staircase was eaten but here in Great Lakes, because it’s fresh water, you have the best
preserved ships on the planet.”


This is the second year that Ballard and his team have come to the Thunder Bay National Marine
Sanctuary. The sanctuary was created two years ago to preserve the bay’s shipwrecks. According
to historical records, an estimated 116 ships sank here, but only about 40 have been found. And
that’s why Dr. Ballard and his team are here, searching for undiscovered shipwrecks and taking an
up-close look at the ones we already know about.


(ambient sound of man yelling, “Watch the A-Frame.”)


They’re exploring the sanctuary, using underwater robots that are equipped with high definition
video cameras and sonar systems. Dwight Coleman is the Chief Scientist on the expedition.
Earlier in the day they sent two of these robots, Argus and Little Hercules, down into the water
below the research boat.


“So all the data that’s coming up from the vehicles while it’s working on the shipwreck, all the
video data and other information, such as the altitude and the heading and the depth, is all coming
in through these cables and into this control room, and from here we can sit and operate the
vehicles.”


At the moment, Little Hercules’ cameras are focused on a wreck called the E.B. Allen. It’s a
schooner that hauled grain. It sank to the bottom of Thunder Bay after a collision with a ship
called “Newsboy” in 1871. Patrick Labadie is a Maritime Historian who is on board taking a look
at the images of the E.B. Allen.


“It’s a really good glimpse of the accident that took the ship down. The masts are down, the
rigging is all confused and laying on the deck. There is a neat circular hole in the side of the ship
where the other vessel struck it. You can see the evidence of a whole sequence of events:
a collision, the ship’s rigging coming down, sinking, striking the bottom and damaging its bow as
it struck. It’s really fascinating.”


In addition to gathering information, pictures, and video from known wrecks like the E.B. Allen,
Ballard’s team is making some new discoveries here. And Dwight Coleman says they’ve found
two new wrecks in Thunder Bay, including a three-masted schooner from the 1800’s.


“I think the best thing for me is really the exploration, is finding the unknown, and to look into
places that have never been looked at before. And we did that yesterday with this new schooner
ship.”


It’s this excitement of discovery that inspired Dr. Bob Ballard to become an underwater explorer.
Now he’s hoping to give the general public a little taste of what he does and let them explore
underwater sanctuaries without getting cold or wet.


“Well, Thunder Bay is one of 13 marine sanctuaries and if you look around right now, we are the
only people out here. Isn’t that odd? If you go to Yellowstone you’d see thousands of people. So
what we want to do is bring thousands of people here but most people won’t be sophisticated
divers, and go down 100, 200, 300 feet. So a very, very small club of people can actually reach the
shipwrecks, the cultural resources here. And what we’re trying to do is to change that, and we’ve
been in here for two years, surveying the sanctuary, finding all of the ships that are here and then
trying to pick one or two of them and wire them up.”


The idea is to allow people in the sanctuary’s visitor center to go on their own remote controlled
underwater exploration using a system of underwater cameras and robots like Little Hercules. But
even before such a system is in place, the videos and pictures they’re taking will open up the
sanctuary for the general public. For the first time, the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary
visitor’s center will have high quality pictures and videos to show people what the wrecks in
Thunder Bay actually look like.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.

Rushing to Save Native Mussels

  • Michigan researchers are searching rivers and lakes for evidence of the native Purple Lilliput (pictured above). Photo by Doug Sweet.

In recent years, a great deal of attention has been focused on zebra mussels. They’re not native to the Great Lakes region and they’re pushing native mussels out of local lakes and streams. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports, one scientist at a Detroit Aquarium has taken on the daunting task of trying to save a small, rare native mussel from disappearing in the state:

Transcript

In recent years, a great deal of attention has been focused on
zebra mussels. They’re not native to the Great Lakes region
and they’re pushing native mussels out of local lakes and streams.
As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste
Headlee reports, one scientist at a Detroit Aquarium has taken
on the daunting task of trying to save a small, rare native
mussel from disappearing in the state:


(ambient sound throughout – whenever Doug Sweet talks)


At a small pond near a highway, biologist Doug Sweet and his team put on waders and wet suits
and prepare to enter the sluggish brown water of Dawson’s Millpond Outlet in Pontiac. All
summer long, Sweet has made the trip from the Belle Isle Aquarium to this small pond looking
for a creature called the Purple Lilliput. These mussels, native to the Great Lakes area, have been
struggling to survive in Michigan, especially since the arrival of Zebra Mussels. Sweet’s made it
his mission to find out if there are any of these Lilliputs in Michigan still alive.


“I was very skeptical and didn’t know if we would find any live ones left because previous
surveyors were beginning to predict that they were gone. No one has found them for several
years.”


Zebra Mussels have been in the Clinton River for six or seven years. Zebras are very competitive
feeders. They strip the food out of the water before the native species can get it. Their presence
in domestic waters has had a catastrophic effect on many species. In fact, because of Zebra
Mussels and other factors like pollution, almost a third of North America’s freshwater mussels are
considered endangered or threatened with extinction.


Doug Sweet says Dawson’s Millpond Outlet is the last place to find Purple Lilliput mussels in
Michigan, and he’s afraid they will die out here, too.


“Looks like mostly all dead Purple Lilliputs. Yup.”


So far, Sweet and his team have found nine live Lilliputs. And that means there are probably
between 100 and 150 of them in that location. Though no one knows how long Purple Lilliputs
live, Sweet says other kinds of lilliput mussels live only about eight years.


“If the Purple Lilliputs are anything similar to that, then we’re running out of time because the
zebra mussels have been here for about six years now. And if they’re not reproducing, if there’s
too much competition, then we might be seeing the very last of the adult live Purple Lilliputs.”


When Sweet moved to the area, zebra mussels were starting to move into the Great Lakes region.
He’s a fish biologist, but he became so concerned about the plight of native mussels, he decided to
find out how they were faring. He contacted other biologists to ask what studies had been done.


Just a few years earlier, Oakland University Biology Professor Doug Hunter started looking for
the Purple Lilliput mussel in several lakes and streams around southeastern Michigan. During his
first few surveys, Hunter found more than 20 Lilliputs, but eventually he gave up hope and
assumed that the small creature was destined to die out in the state.


“Every year we went back after those first couple of fairly successful years, we got fewer and
fewer. The last time I went out there I think I got one or two. And I thought, “Well, this doesn’t
look good at all.” I wrote a report to the Wildlife Division in which I said, “I think this is an
imperiled population that may be on its way to local extinction.”


Doug Sweet picked up the research where Hunter left off and is now focusing his efforts on
trying to save the Purple Lilliput. Sweet says the number of lakes and streams in Michigan where
Zebra Mussels have taken hold is almost doubling every year. He says people should realize that
what they do with their boats affects an entire ecosystem.


“People are responsible for spreading the Zebra mussels all over the place. Everybody who has
Waverunners, boats, fishermen with bait buckets… they have to be conscientious that if they’re
fishing in one lake, you’ve got to clean your boat well before you transfer it to another lake or
stream.”


But even so, it may be too late for the Purple Lilliput. Sweet and his team snorkel through the
murky water, use glass bottom buckets, or dig their fingers into the black sediment, looking for
surviving buried mussels. Eventually, though, the hard work does pay off.


“A live one? Ooh, we think we have another live Purple Lilliput…
There we have it, another live one, ten, so this revises our population estimate right there, because
we found this in a quadrat excavation… This is excellent; it’s exciting. You know, who could say
that you’d get excited over a little critter like that.”


Later the same day, the team finds another live Purple Lilliput, a male, bringing the grand total up
to 11. Sweet hopes he can find a safe haven for the Lilliputs somewhere in southeastern
Michigan where the tiny population can slowly begin to recover. Doug Sweet is now finishing up
his fieldwork, and will soon begin studying his results for a report to the state.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Celeste Headlee.