All aboard the rolling robot! An autonomous electric bus will begin a monthlong deployment at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in northern Michigan as part of a grant-funded project by a self-driving software company. Read the full story by MLive.
Authorities have detected an oil spill in the St. Lawrence River in Montreal’s east end, less than two weeks after an oil spill in the same area. The root cause of the oil spill near Pointe-aux-Trembles on July 25 is unknown, but authorities say they found the pipe that led the contaminant to the river. Read the full story by CBC News.
Funded through grants and the Ohio Department of Education, the University of Toledo (UT) is conducting a study that will collect air from Lake Erie, where it will then be transported back to UT for testing. The study focuses on how algal blooms affect humans by analyzing the effect of the toxins on human cells in a lab. Read the full story by WTOL-TV – Toledo, OH.
A developer based in Holland, Michigan, attempting to build a marina and high-end housing at the Kalamazoo River mouth has sued the leader of the Saugatuck Dunes Coastal Alliance, a nonprofit organized in 2007 to oppose development at the river mouth. Read the full story by MLive.
Throughout the Michigan Brown Trout Festival, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service researchers were busy gathering vital data on the fish populations in Lake Huron. Festival participants helped with this research as some anglers offered their catches as samples. Read the full story by The Alpena News.
Two remote-controlled robotic devices are being deployed in Milwaukee to try and alleviate plastic pollution. The supermarket chain Meijer donated $250,000 to the Council of the Great Lakes Region Foundation for the technology, which was given to Milwaukee Riverkeeper. Read the full story by Wisconsin Public Radio.
The last wild clutch of Great Lakes piping plover eggs recently hatched, but the scientific details read more like a daytime soap opera script. It’s a tale of one female plover who bred this season with two males on two different Lake Michigan beaches – only the second time scientists documented that behavior. Read the full story by MLive.
The Lake Erie Waterkeepers will host various stakeholders and local press aboard a ferry boat on August 4 to mark the 10th anniversary of the 2014 Toledo Water Crisis. Other boaters are invited to join them while monitoring marine channel 68 as they lead a boat parade in a show of support for solving the HAB problem. Read the full story by the Sandusky Register.
More than a dozen Michigan beaches faced closures over the weekend due to increased bacteria levels. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality flagged the 14 Michigan beaches for increased bacteria levels, as of July 26. Read the full story by WDIV-TV – Detroit, MI.
With hundreds of shipwrecks sitting at the bottom of the Great Lakes, the state of Michigan works to prevent theft, damage and corrosion with legally protected locations known as underwater preserves which were established in 1980. Read the full story by WOOD-TV – Grand Rapids, MI.
Escanaba, Michigan, the small Upper Peninsula town on the northern shoreline of Lake Michigan, is expecting dozens of visits from Victory Cruise Lines in 2025. Escanaba welcomed cruise ships for the first time in 2023 from American Queen Voyages, which was the successor of Victory Cruise Lines after the owner retired. Read the full story by MLive.
The Apostle Islands could soon become Wisconsin’s first national park, thanks to an effort by several federal lawmakers. Becoming a national park would attract more people to the Apostle Islands, sharing the natural beauty of the islands and shores of Lake Superior. Read the full story the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.