Bruce feels a very strong connection to the bay of Green Bay, where he grew up and still lives today. That's why Bruce took the opportunity to join Ducks Unlimited, the world's largest wetlands conservation organization, and he never looked back. He rose through the ranks, eventually ending up on the national board of directors. Bruce and his family have been heavily involved in restoring the natural habitats unique to Green Bay.

Voices of the Coast is a Wisconsin Sea Grant series that highlights people who have shaped, and have been shaped by, Wisconsin's coasts.

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Fred Binkowski tells us about his work as the aquaculture specialist for the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute.

Milwaukee's Growing Power, a community-based urban food center, is using plants as natural water filters for raising yellow perch. Fred Binkowski, an aquaculture specialist with the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute, provides technical advice on the experimental effort.
www.growingpower.org
www.seagrant.wisc.edu

A project funded by Wisconsin Sea Grant is attempting to overcome some of the difficulties that have challenged the yellow perch aquaculture industry.

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Lake Michigan, the world’s fifth largest lake, has undergone many changes through the generations. Its current conditions are heavily influenced by the arrival of nonnative Dreissenid mussels known as zebra and quagga mussels. These filter feeders are altering the amount of phosphorus available for phytoplankton throughout the lake, which has an effect all the way up the food chain. Research aboard the Lake Express Ferry is taking the pulse of the lake and informing management decisions.

If you build water gardens or sell plants and animals for them, please watch this video. It will help you operate an environmentally sound business.

To look at it, the round goby doesn't seem like much. A small fish the approximate size of an average pickle, it seems like the sort of creature that'd be the dominated in the aquatic universe, not the dominator.

But like an ecological David in reverse, the voracious goby has used strength of numbers to wreak serious damage on the gentle Goliath that is the Great Lakes food web. Sometimes found in groups of several hundred or more, round gobies have made short work of the key food sources that sustain the young of a lengthy list of Great Lakes sport fish: bass, walleye, and yellow perch. Round gobies also dine on sport fish eggs when the opportunity arises. These species are fighting back, feeding heavily on gobies, but goby populations are usually too large to be affected.

Worse, in what some researchers have dubbed a "classic ecological surprise," the gobies haven't limited their invasive ways to the Great Lakes: Over the past decade, they've also migrated to Wisconsin's streams and rivers, where researchers are very concerned they could have a similar devastating effect on the ecosystem.

Beginning in 2007, using funding provided by University of Wisconsin Sea Grant, UW-Madison ecologist Jake Vander Zanden and UW graduate student Matt Kornis set out to discover just what kind of impact the gobies might be having. Using nets and a portable electro-fishing system, Kornis and a team of student researchers sampled and analyzed goby populations at 150 different stream locations along Wiscosins' Lake Michigan coast.

"When we discovered round goby in some small streams in Wisconsin, it made us start to ask the question, what kind of impacts are they going to have?" stated Vander Zanden, the project's principal investigator. "How many miles of stream in Wisconsin are going to be invaded, and is this something we need to be concerned about?"

Kornis and his team spent several months sampling from a variety of stream habitats—sandy, temperate and rocky—as well as areas where goby populations were either absent, low or prevalent. Of the 75 streams Kornis's team sampled, 26 contained gobies. In more than 80 percent of those sample sites, the goby population was deemed small, with the remaining 10 percent described as "superabundant."

The most surprising finding? At most of the sites, gobies have yet to devastate the ecosystem the way they have in the Great Lakes.

"Over the last three years, at most of our sites and streams, we haven't seen the population level declines in the native species we would have expected based on what we know from the Great Lakes," said Kornis.

That doesn't mean it couldn't eventually occur. Kornis and Vander Zanden remain focused on tracking the inevitable progress of the goby. They've identified and mapped 1300 kilometers of Wisconsin streams that are at risk for goby invasion, based on habitat suitability and natural migration projections from areas where the fish have already become established. Both researchers caution that if fishermen and boaters aren't cautious about preventing the spread of invasive species like the goby, the number of invaded streams in the Lake Michigan basin could expand dramatically.

"Streams are different enough from lakes in terms of the amount of habitat and type of food available that maybe round gobies can't reach the same densities as in the Great Lakes," said Kornis. "Nonetheless, goby populations are growing in most streams. Since 2007, we've observed at least a doubling of round goby abundance at 65 percent of our sites."

Vander Zanden agrees that further vigilance is critical to goby containment and habitat preservation. "This species is on the move, their inland spread is really rapid, and there is a lot of suitable habitat for them," he said. "We're worried about them making their way into inland lakes all around the state. We expect that they will have big impacts in these systems. Anglers and boaters need to be aware and not transport these fish into new waters."

By Aaron R. Conklin

An environmental food web is an intricate, organic and delicate thing. Eliminate a strand here or introduce a new one there, and the entire structure can collapse. That's why researchers have paid such close attention to the food webs in Lake Michigan, where the appearance of several aquatic invasive species has threatened to upset the natural balance.

Harvey Bootsma and John Janssen, Wisconsin Sea Grant-funded professors at UW--Milwaukee's School of Freshwater Sciences, have their sights on the waters close to shore.

"A lot of our work has focused on what role round gobies may be playing," Bootsma said. "Up until now, the near shore has been neglected. From what we're seeing, there are some unique things going on. We've had a lot of changes in the last five years."

He's referring to a massive influx of round gobies, one of several aquatic invasive species that have set up shop in Lake Michigan's waters. In the case of the goby, the impact seems tied to strength of numbers. In short—they're legion. And they eat copiously.

"When we dive to do our research, there are at least a hundred swimming around us, watching us work," said Bootsma. "Numerically, they're clearly dominant in the nearshore zone."

Bootsma and Janssen are performing their research in conjunction with similar research teams in Indiana and Illinois, to see if conditions in one state are being replicated in others.

Existing research suggests that one of the round goby's preferred entrees is the quagga mussel, which is not the first case of one aquatic invasive species noshing on another.

However, Bootsma and Jansen's research is revealing that round gobies don't actually feed on quagga mussels until they grow larger—between two to four inches long. By conducting a chemical analysis of stable isotopes and fatty acids found in the gobies' body tissue, they're able to determine what the gobies are really eating.

"The mussels are actually a side dish," said Bootsma. "Most gobies, and especially the younger ones, are actually subsisting on other types of food."

Those other types include oligochaetes and chironomids, tiny benthic organisms that live in the Cladophora algae that have come to clog the shallow shorelines of Lake Michigan.

The question then becomes whether the round gobies' trips to the invertebrates section of the Cladophora buffet are, in effect, swiping sustenance from other nearshore fish, including yellow perch and spot-tail shiner. It's also unclear whether other Lake Michigan species like trout and salmon may be able to use the plentiful gobies as a food source to replace offshore food web components that have been affected by other invaders.

"We know that lake trout and brown trout are eating lots of round gobies," says Janssen. "But we also know that more pelagic species, like Chinooks, cohos and steelhead are not."

After spending months analyzing data collected from hundreds of samples, Bootsma and Janssen (as well as the research teams in Indiana and Illinois) are ready to head back out onto Lake Michigan and begin examining other sites.

"We're interested in learning if the patterns around Milwaukee County are typical of the whole lake," explained Bootsma.

If they are, their work could help to determine how the carrying capacity of Lake Michigan may have changed, which would affect decisions related to fish stocking and nutrient management. Stay tuned.

By Aaron R. Conklin

This video, courtesy of the Illinois Natural History Survey, shows Asian carp, primarily silver carp on the Illinois River near Havana, Illinois. The fish jump in response to the noise of the motor or where the crew is shown on a boat with nets, the charge from the electrofishing boat.

Speeded up 10 times, this video emphasizes that quagga mussels are active animals--much more active than washed up shells on a beach would suggest.

Quagga mussels and zebra mussels feed by filtering tiny plant and animal plankton out of the water and extracting the nutrients they need. Material they don't digest is wrapped in mucus and expelled. This "pseudofeces" is rich in nutrients like phosphorus.

Each tiny mussel filters a quart of water each day. That vigorous activity, abetted by circulating water, has effectively filtered the entire volume of water in Lake Michigan and other Great Lakes.

In the Great Lakes, invasive quagga and zebra mussels deposit their waste in the relatively narrow bottom areas near shore, where the mussels live. This has caused two profound changes to the lakes: It has dramatically cleared the water, and it has concentrated nutrients like phosphorus near shore. As a result, phosphorus concentrations have decreased off-shore and increased near shore, and sunlight penetrates deeper into the water.

Among the many consequences to the lake's food web are a major shift of energy sources (phytoplankton) away from open waters, where they would ultimately support trout, salmon, and whitefish, and an increase in nutrients like phosphorus available to algae growing near shore.

A look at the "Exploration Station" hosted April 4 by the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute at Science Expeditions 2009.

The second part of the full Cladophora video.

The first part of the full Cladophora video.

This video is an abbreviated version. The full version is in two parts, each roughly nine minutes long.

Compared to Wisconsin's inland lakes, Lake Superior and Lake Michigan are prone to powerful, and sometimes dangerous, conditions. Adam Bechle, Wisconsin Sea Grant's coastal engineering outreach specialist, helps Wisconsin's communities and residents prepare for and respond to coastal hazards.

Find Wisconsin Sea Grant in all of the following places:
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New technical approaches help people understand how and why bluffs erode and slide away, threatening property and endangering lives. The work is supported by the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute.

A brief video of a spring in Wisconsin's Kettle Moraine State Forest. Springs are groundwater bubbling up to the surface.

Nitrate is a widespread contaminant of groundwater -- the water that 70 percent of Wisconsin's people drink. The University of Wisconsin Water Resources Institute is funding a project looking at how some of the nitrate in groundwater may be neutralized by bacteria in stream sediments.

Leaking septic systems or manure from adjacent rural properties are the two most common sources of fecal contamination of a well. The University of Wisconsin Water Resources Institute is funding a new research project to refine a methodology to determine the source of well water contamination.

About ten one-gallon jugs of water line the shelves in Wayne Stefan's garage, waiting to be used for drinking, cooking or mixing up a pitcher of lemonade. The water from his rural Fond du Lac well is contaminated with coliform bacteria, and he has to buy the family's water elsewhere. Their water has been considered unsafe to drink since the floods of 2008.

Sam Sibley, a UW-Madison post-doctoral research associate, attaches a series of hoses and a filter to the outside spigot connected to the Stefans' well, one of six wells with known contamination problems he is sampling around the state. Thirty gallons of water are run through Sibley's filtration system, which employs the same kind of dialysis device used for people with failing kidneys. The filter contains thousands of tiny straws that are capable of simultaneously trapping the three types of microorganisms that may contaminate groundwater—bacteria, viruses and parasites. After about 70 minutes, the filter, now potentially containing pathogens, is disconnected from the hose, the hose from the tap, and Sibley is on to the next home to start the process again.

Back at the State Laboratory of Hygiene, Sibley washes the microorganisms from the filter and pelletizes them for DNA purification and analysis. He is looking for the presence of adenoviruses and polyomaviruses, viruses that are considered source-specific fecal indicator organisms.

The technology of finding the source of fecal contamination has evolved rapidly over the past decade. Microbial source tracking has been used to identify the sources of bacterial contamination for several years. Now, viral source tracking is being used to differentiate human from bovine viral contaminants. Bacteria and viruses may both be present in the well, and they may have entered the system at different times.

Steve Ales is the regional manager for the drinking and groundwater program at the Department of Natural Resources' south central region office and has done field work with Sibley. "Once a well is contaminated with E. coli," said Ales, "you need to figure out why, because unless you know how the E. coli got into the well, the well is always going to be vulnerable to E. coli contamination in the future."

Long-term solutions can be implemented once the source is known. Analytical techniques used by Sibley revealed human viruses in a sample he took at a home in Rock County. Further investigation by Ales disclosed that the source was a break in a pipe between one of three homes that had contaminated water and the mound septic system. When the pipe was replaced, the bacteria numbers declined.

When the source is manure, it may be difficult to assess if it is from improperly spread manure on a nearby field, fractured bedrock, or poor casing in the well. Qualified homeowners may be compensated through Wisconsin's Well Compensation Fund for clean-up measures if it is demonstrated that the contamination is from manure.

Homeowners with private wells are encouraged to test their water for bacteria annually. The water may smell, look and taste fine but still be contaminated and pose a health risk.

--Written by Carolyn Betz

ROV footage courtesy of Crossman Consulting.

Adriatic

Our last video update from the Australasia shipwreck exploration. Several volunteers describe their work.

We're getting into the groove now. So much so, that John Karl tackles his first underwater drawing task. It's challenging!

Day 3 of mapping the Australasia shipwreck. We met some curious little fish -- and we found a shoe!

Our second day diving on the Australasia -- and the first one of drawing some sections. The weather was beautiful, and the visibility much improved over yesterday.

Day two on the Australasia shipwreck -- but our first day in the water. Things were less than ideal.

First day on the Australasia project. We check into the hotel, and take a refresher course for Emergency First Responders. Tomorrow, we dive on the wreck, making detailed sketches to record it for history.