Wisconsin Sea Grant Researchers Hone in on Walleye, Saugeye.

he Lake Superior National Estuarine Research Reserve and the Minnesota and Wisconsin Sea Grant programs are starting the fifth year of science café-type evening talks about the St. Louis River Estuary in October. Control of the invasive weed, phragmites, in the estuary is the topic of the first River Talk of the 2017-18 season. These informal public talks will be held monthly through May at the Reserve’s new Estuarium interpretive center on Barker’s Island in Superior.

A new summer program for youths in Milwaukee can boast of several “firsts” on a national and local level, plus it formed strong bonds between the instructors and the students.

Wisconsin Sea Grant provides support to the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Northern Aquaculture Demonstration Facility, which in turn has supported the work of a new $20 million aquaponics operation raising Atlantic salmon in the northwestern part of the state.

Gene Clark, Wisconsin Sea Grant’s coastal engineer, is included in a grant recently funded by the Wisconsin Coastal Management Program and led by the Ozaukee County Planning and Parks Department to design, construct and demonstrate floating staircase sections for a 130-foot bluff in Virmond County Park in Mequan, Wisconsin. If and when additional bluff movement or erosion happens, the staircases would not be destroyed, and could simply be repositioned so that they are level.

From 2013 to 2016, Lake Michigan water levels rose four feet. The high water levels affected — and still are affecting — the stability of coastal bluffs and beaches. Concerned residents in Mt. Pleasant, Wis., looked for help, and they needed it fast, before the next storm struck and waves did further damage. Learn how Sea Grant and other agencies responded to the crisis.

Wisconsin Sea Grant will contribute to a new three-year federally funded project to increase resiliency in the face of Lake Michigan water levels, erosion and coastal storms.

Contaminants can travel up to 40 kilometers up the Milwaukee shoreline.

A dozen educators from Minnesota and Wisconsin will set sail on a one-of-a-kind professional development workshop that includes time aboard the sailing vessel Denis Sullivan, August 13-19, 2017, from the Port of Milwaukee. The participants will study Lake Michigan’s food web by collecting, analyzing and interpreting water quality, sediment and zooplankton data.

The tiny quagga mussel has an outsize impact on Lake Michigan. What’s novel about the study team’s work is the exploration of the age-old biological truth: what goes in must come out. They found the invasive mussels’ sheer numbers and feeding efficiency are changing the lake’s ecosystem dynamics. Perhaps the climate, as well.