Spring aboard our schooners welcomed not just a season of warmer breezes and budding landscapes, but also a vibrant classroom that is unlike any other. As we set sail on the glimmering waters of the Great Lakes this past season, each wave and gust of wind that hit our sails carried with it lessons of ecology and stewardship.
Hello there, I’m Kushi Sulabelle! I was able to join Inland Seas this past May as a Great Lakes Education Intern for the Spring and Summer season. I am currently a rising junior at Michigan State University where I’m majoring in Microbiology with a minor in Environment & Health. Coming from the suburbs of downstate Michigan, living and spending each day at the lake this summer has been nothing but a dream!
Howdy! My name is Lauren Sheffer and I am the Great Lakes Waterways Education Intern at Inland Seas for the spring/summer season. I am a recent graduate of the University of Michigan, where I studied Biology and Environment. I am a Traverse City-native, and having the opportunity to return home and spend the summer on the lake as my first post-grad experience has so far made me feel like one of the luckiest science nerds around.
Plankton Party:
Below deck, the plankton station tends to be a fan favorite. It’s incredible how much life exists below the surface that isn’t visible to the human eye. This often surprises students, especially when they realize they have been swimming alongside these creatures all along without knowing it. Seeing the wide eyes and disgusted expressions on the kids’ faces is always amusing after I tell them that every gulp of lake water they swallowed while swimming contained at least a couple of tiny drifting critters. There are hundreds of species of plankton, classified into various types including phytoplankton, the plant-like microorganisms, and zooplankton, the animal-like microorganisms. One species of zooplankton is asplanchna, asplanchna brightwellii, and these funky guys might be my favorite aquatic creatures! It was always wonderful hearing the “oohs” and “aahs” of the kiddos when our little Asplanchna buddy wiggled their way onto the screen with their spiral dance moves. Asplanchna are one of the 2,500 species of the Rotifera phylum. They can be easily identified by their transparent sac-like body. Because they lack a hind gut, asplanchna eat and excrete waste from the same part of their body!
Goofy Gobies:
Until joining ISEA this Spring, I had never held a fish with my bare hands and I was a bit unsettled the first time I did it. So when the young students stuck their hands into the tank to scoop up a round goby fish, Neogobius melanostomus, with far more gusto than I could’ve encouraged, I was beyond impressed! One student who had moved to the United States earlier this school year spoke limited English, and it was understandably difficult to keep him engaged in the material. However, once the fish aquarium was revealed, I guided him to hold his hand out so I could place a goby in his palm. His face lit up and after that, I had a hard time pulling him away from the fishes. Clearly, the appreciation of aquatic life is something that transcends language barriers. The round gobies are most notably identified by their large frog-like eyes that sit on top of their head, as well as a black dot on its first dorsal fin. These guys make up the majority of the fish we catch in the otter trawl as they are invasive and have taken over the fish population in Suttons Bay. One key element of survival is food, and the gobies have an unlimited supply from the invasive quagga mussels that cover the floor of Lake Michigan. Also, gobies reproduce 2-3 times more frequently than any other fish species in the bay and eat the eggs of those other fishes, all while maintaining an aggressive personality. While these gobies are harmful to the Great Lake ecosystem, I cannot help but commend them for their resilience. Not only can they survive for 30 minutes out of the water, but I’m sure each of the gobies we catch can tell a harrowing tale of their journey through countless students’ hands that ended with a toss overboard.
3,000 Alewives:
During the first part of the season, I also spent a vast majority of my time onboard hanging out at the fish station. My first time at the fish station, on our very first wet run sail back in April, we caught exactly 0 fish. I remember thinking, ‘How the heck am I going to teach kids about fish without any actual fish to look at?!’ Luckily, Lake Michigan can be quite the trickster. Not even two weeks later, during my first time teaching solo on a Diving Deeper program, the otter trawl came onboard bulging with thousands of smelly, little silver fishes. By some cruel and fascinating twist of fate, our trawl had hit a school of alewives (Alosa pseudoharengus), and now I had the job of rallying a group of high school boys just as shell-shocked as I was to count and tally every single one of them. The next hour of that sail is a blur for the fish team. We pulled alewives out of the bin first with nets but then by the handful, calling out to our tally recorder the number we had as we threw them overboard. Our heads were so buried in the alewives that before we knew it, the rest of the boat was ready to put up sails, and we had to briefly enlist additional help to finish our count and keep the program going. In all, our catch that day totaled 3,075 alewives, 7 gobies, 2 rock bass, and 1 native species of crayfish.
I will admit, on that fateful day of 3,000 alewives, I knew very little about the species. I was totally prepared and feeling good with my spiel on round gobies, but mother nature had different plans. I went home that day and decided that I needed to become an alewife expert if I was going to keep doing this boat thing. I learned that the alewife is an invasive species to the Great Lakes, introduced to the area by way of the Welland Canal. I learned that the species is primarily native to the eastern seaboard, typically only venturing into freshwater systems for the purpose of reproduction. I learned that the Great Lakes populations primarily feed on zooplankton, and their main predators are larger predator fish. In the 1950s/1960s, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron were intentionally stocked with Coho and Chinook salmon to help control the alewife population, and since then the alewife/salmon relationship has supported a robust recreational fishing industry. Most people know of alewives because of this relationship with the salmon, or because these dramatic little fish have a tendency to experience mass die-offs and litter the beaches with their corpses in the spring.
Sadly, though I am now more than prepared to do it all over again, after that day we never did catch many more alewives.
Benthos Buddies:
Oh, the benthos station. She and I also go way back to the very first sail. That first day, when we pulled that Ponar grab back on board, not once, not twice, but three times without results, I knew I was in for it. And boy I sure was. Many, many failed ponar attempts across many sails later, I was finally able to hone in the art of the scientific rope jiggle and the double crossed fingers and started having much more luck. That’s not to say it is all perfect now, as just last week a rough patch of waves sent both our benthic samples all over the freshly washed deck of the Alliance, and I have yet to work the station and not get mud on my jacket and shoes. But improvement is improvement, and the muddy reward and its inhabitants have been well worth the turmoils. Watching students sift through the benthos and squeal with excitement when they come across a bright red midge larva (chironomus plumosus) never gets old. Pointing out massive clouds of adult midge flies to the students and getting to tell them that they were the same organism as the one in their hands always got the best reactions. They couldn’t believe, and honestly I still can’t either, that the same little dudes that they had pulled up from 60-70 feet below the lake surface were also the ones swarming their jackets and getting in their noses. Making that connection, and learning that the adult flies had no mouths and were only around in that form for 24 hours, eased a lot of nerves for students who were not keen on insects. In the case of the benthos station, science can be demystifying for many, and this demystification allowed for a much greater appreciation of the sail and the lake as a whole.
It was also working the benthos station when I heard one of my favorite student quotes to date. Often, the students in my group and I like to liken the use of the Ponar grab to searching for lost treasure on the bottom of the lake. At the end of a sail, a girl in one such group came up to me with a huge smile on her face and said: “When I was younger, I wanted to be a pirate princess or a scientist, and today I got to be both!” Sharing enthusiasm for lake science with students like her has by far been the most rewarding part of my time at Inland Seas so far. Despite her quirks, the students love exploring the benthos, which has subsequently made me also fall in love with it. And one of these days, I’m going to teach benthos and not end up with it on my clothes.
Lizards on deck:
Above deck is never short of lounge spots. The cabin-tops is where I unleashed my inner lizard, basking in the warm sun nearly every lunch break and each spare moment. There are two native species of lizards in Michigan, the five-lined skink, Plestiodon fasciatus, and the six-lined racerunner, Aspidoscelis sexlineata. However, after this Schoolship season, the native Michigan lizard population grew, as we can add the rare intern species Somnus internious to the list. Similar to how phytoplankton use photosynthesis to obtain energy from the sun, we interns used our lunch time on the boat to bask in the sun to recharge from morning sails and ensure we were fully energized for the afternoon sail.
As the summer season nears its end, so many memories have been made. True, there was plenty of good science done, but I believe the best part of the season were the friendships crafted onboard! There’s nothing like learning and exploring what the Great Lakes has to offer alongside your buddies!
This blog post was written by ISEA interns Lauren (1st from left) and Kushi (3rd from left), two ISEA summer interns.
