- [Host] Coming up on Great Lakes Now: visualizing the possible future of rising lake levels.

- Each passing year, the beach gets closer to adjoining homes, shrinks the public beach.

- [Host] Unearthing the secrets of Great Lakes shipwrecks.

- If we look at each individual shipwreck, they really tell this larger story of maritime history in this region.

- [Host] And revealing the hidden lives of fish.

(mellow techno music) - [Announcer] This program is brought to you by the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Richard C. Devereaux Foundation for Energy and Environmental Programs at Detroit PBS, Polk Family Fund, DTE Foundation, and contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

(mellow music) - Hi, I'm Anna Sysling.

Welcome to Great Lakes Now.

Experts tell us that climate change will make extreme conditions more likely and harder to predict, but it's difficult to envision unprecedented events.

Now though, a new tool is helping the public see what the future might bring.

We begin in Duluth, Minnesota.

(bright classical music) - [Narrator] Paul Treuer and Dawn Buck both live on Minnesota Point, a thin strip of land that protects the Port of Duluth from the powerful storms of Lake Superior.

(bright classical music) This is the largest inland port by tonnage in the United States.

The Port of Duluth is here entirely because of Minnesota Point.

It stops these storms that produce winds up to 100 miles an hour, waves that are enormous.

Without the Point, we wouldn't have the shipping, which is a multi-billion dollar industry for the whole region.

- It's unparalleled and it's a global treasure.

And so we're grouping together with our community club members to try to take care of it into the future.

(mellow music) - [Narrator] That future is a little uncertain because Minnesota Point has been eroding.

- And the erosion is progressive and it's eating away at all the sand material that's been put along the Point.

- [Narrator] For years, the US Army Corps of Engineers has used dredged material from the harbor to reinforce Minnesota Point's shoreline, but it's a temporary fix, and worried residents want a long-term solution.

- If nothing is done, both ends of Park Point may be breached, meaning the water will come over and go to the other side.

The dunes will wash away.

Homes will be in peril, infrastructure will be ruined.

(mellow music) - [Narrator] People around here have seen the threat posed by climate change, more precipitation, more powerful storms.

But in other shoreline areas around the Great Lakes, the threat isn't so visible.

That's something Brandon Krumwiede is trying to change.

- My name is Brandon Krumwiede.

I am a physical scientist with NOAA's office for Coastal Management.

You can now actually type in any location in the Great Lakes region and it will actually zoom to that particular location.

- [Narrator] Krumwiede is demonstrating how NOAA's Lake Level Viewer program works.

In this particular case, he zeroes in on the Traverse City, Michigan area.

(mellow music) - [Brandon] I'll just go over here for example, to the harbor, and so as you zoom in, you can then now actually adjust the water levels here on the left side.

- [Narrator] The program gives the general public a glimpse of a possible future and the potential impact of climate change.

- [Brandon] And you'll actually see what parts of the community become inundated as water levels rise up.

- [Narrator] NOAA's Lake Level Viewer covers the entire US shoreline of the Great Lakes, sorry, Canadian friends, and a new feature is a ground level view.

Currently there are 12 simulated views around the region, with more to come.

This is a view of St. Clair Metropark on Lake St. Clair, northeast of Detroit.

- [Brandon] You can actually see as water levels go up, right now, nothing's being impacted, but as we get far exceeding what we've ever recorded, this is the what if, which parts of the shoreline would be impacted.

But then you can actually see, you know, what does a plus 10 feet from low water datum actually look like for Lake St. Clair here and kind of this setting at the park.

- [Narrator] Another view shows a beach in northwest Indiana on the shore of Lake Michigan where a lifeguard tower gets swallowed up by rising lake levels.

The idea is that images like these will give the public and policymakers a more vivid picture of what conditions could look like in the future.

- So I don't think we wanna put this out as a scare tactic, but just being a little bit more mindful and open to understanding how dynamic our coastal environments really are here in the Great Lakes region.

- [Narrator] These visualizations show water levels several feet higher than have ever been recorded in real life.

But the aim is for these unlikely extremes to help waterfront communities plan for a worst case scenario.

- [Brandon] The hope here is empowering users to see the impacts so that they can work with their community leaders and think about the future and how we become resilient communities for the next generation.

(bright classical music) - [Narrator] Krumwiede has been working with several communities like these around the Great Lakes grappling with rising lake levels, including the city of Duluth where there is growing concern about Minnesota Point.

- On the north end of Minnesota Point, we have a problem of chronic cumulative land loss.

So we're losing beach.

- [Narrator] Jim Filby Williams manages green spaces and natural resources for the city of Duluth.

- [Jim] Each passing year, absent intervention, the beach gets closer to adjoining homes, shrinks the public beach, starts to encroach on public infrastructure, roads, and buried utility infrastructure.

- [Narrator] A major cause of the erosion is the channel carved through Minnesota Point.

That channel allows ships into the Port of Duluth, but it also cuts off the natural flow of sediment that formed the sandbar in the first place.

- Minnesota Point is the sandbar itself.

- [Narrator] Duluth Mayor Roger Reinert says climate change is adding to the erosion problem by producing powerful storms.

He remembers one in the fall of 2019 when he was living on Minnesota Point, - I couldn't get home.

I had been off the Point visiting friends, having dinner, my dog's at home in an empty house.

And you know, I can't get over the bridge 'cause both sides are under water.

(mellow music) This isn't the 500-year or 100-year, it's just becoming more frequent.

And with that increased frequency is increased power.

- [Narrator] The US Army Corps of Engineers has already conducted two studies of Minnesota Point, looking for a long-term solution, and now a third study is being launched.

- We and the corps and our partners badly want this to succeed.

We don't want to be back here 25 years with part four of this effort.

- [Narrator] Jim Filby Williams recently led a public meeting to discuss what to do about Minnesota Point.

The US Army Corps of Engineers has the authority to prevent or mitigate damages caused by federal navigation work, like the shipping channel that cuts through Minnesota Point.

- So the purpose of this project is to determine how much erosion is being caused by those federal structures, develop recommendations for how to correct that erosion and design those mitigating structures or efforts that can be implemented jointly by the corps and the city of Duluth - [Narrator] At the meeting, a few residents living along Minnesota Point had a chance to express their opinions.

- Doesn't make any sense at all.

You don't even need a computer to figure out that that sand's been blocked.

It's not going anywhere to come on to Park Point.

It's just being blocked.

- [Narrator] How to solve the problem at Minnesota Point is still in the early planning stages.

(bright classical music) - The corps is engaged in helping to define what those solutions are and to the corps's credit, I think they acknowledge that previous work has caused much of what now is a problem.

- [Narrator] Getting to the role that NOAA is playing in this effort, Treuer says the government agency has been extremely helpful.

- [Paul] NOAA, and Brandon in particular, has been our go-to person in terms of some of the technical tools that are available.

They've done the research that shows how the frequency is changing.

They have the tools to monitor the lake levels.

I check that every single day now.

- It really is a tool that's been developed with the user community in mind and making sure that the functions people have asked for, we're starting to incorporate more and more of those into the tools.

- [Narrator] The bottom line is that Minnesota Point is in jeopardy and tools like NOAA's Lake Level Viewer are helping residents and officials understand the threat and act.

- [Mayor] It is a place that Duluthians go to spend summer, to be at the beach, to enjoy everything summer has to offer.

So as we talk about this, just encouraging for all of those who have a place in their heart for Park Point and Lake Superior and the beach, to be thinking about this issue and seeing if there isn't an opportunity to participate in the solutions.

(mellow techno music) (mellow techno music continues) - Nobody knows exactly how many shipwrecks are at the bottom of the Great Lakes, but estimates range between six and 10,000, many of which have yet to be discovered.

But with more than 94,000 square miles of surface area and a maximum depth of more than 1300 feet, how do you find a shipwreck in all this?

This is a Great Lakes Now Deep Dive.

(bright techno music) If I wanna figure out how to find a shipwreck, I need to talk to a shipwreck hunter.

So, I reached out to Dan Fountain.

He's been searching for shipwrecks for more than 30 years.

I wonder when you start out looking for a shipwreck, where do you even begin?

- The hunting really begins in the library; nowadays on the computer to a great extent.

We're looking back for records of how the ship went down, newspaper articles, magazine articles.

There are wreck reports to various government agencies, which gives you anywhere from almost no information to a treasure trove of details.

- [Anna] In 2024, Dan made headlines with the discovery of the SS Arlington, a 244-foot ship that sank in Lake Superior in 1940.

But this discovery was a little different from how he usually finds a wreck.

- Back in the 20th century, there was a large body of data collected for a reason other than shipwreck hunting.

A friend of mine figured out how to analyze it and find shipwrecks with this data.

- Dan won't tell anyone where that data came from.

It's kind of his secret weapon and it helped him identify an anomaly in the middle of Lake Superior.

Lake Superior is massive and deep, and Dan's boat and equipment could only do so much.

So he called the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society.

They run the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Whitefish Point, Michigan, and they have a research vessel called the David Boyd.

Bruce Lynn is the society's executive director.

- Dan ended up giving us some coordinates of something that he was pretty sure was a shipwreck.

They got up there, put the sonar down, and voila, there's a shipwreck.

Doesn't normally work that way.

- Like I said before, the Arlington was a special case for both Dan and the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society.

Usually, the process is much more tedious.

Here's how it normally goes.

- So let's say we've researched one wreck.

We know it's gotta be in a certain general area.

We'll lay out a grid.

And then what we'll do is tow this sonar, which looks like a big torpedo, with a cable that has fiber optics in it.

And those sonar waves will bounce off the bottom of the lake, but they'll create a shadow if there's something sticking up off the bottom of the lake.

The reality of this type of searching is it could be as much as, you know, 10 hours, 12, 14 hours out on the lake, just looking at the bottom of the lake with the sonar.

- So, what happens with the wreck once you find it?

- We have what's called a remotely operated vehicle.

It's like a little robot.

It has a tether that goes up to the David Boyd, our research vessel.

And using that, we're putting cameras basically down on a shipwreck.

- [Anna] Once they have cameras on the wreck, they can work on identifying it.

Sometimes it's as easy as finding the ship's nameplate.

Other times it takes a lot more work, like comparing the wreck to historic images or illustrations.

They'll use all of this documentation for articles, presentations, and even exhibits at their museum.

But sonar isn't the only way that people find shipwrecks.

Tamara Thomsen is with the Wisconsin Historical Society and they track shipwreck discoveries throughout Wisconsin's waters.

- We are an agency of state government and we have a catalog of all of the shipwrecks in Wisconsin; actually, all of the archeological sites in Wisconsin.

- In 2023, a record number of shipwrecks were found in Wisconsin's waters.

13.

The previous record was four.

And it wasn't just dedicated shipwreck hunters finding these wrecks.

- We had last year a father and daughter that found a shipwreck while fishing.

We've had a number of shipwrecks that wash out of our beaches, and we've had a number of them also that have been discovered through a hydrographic survey.

And there were kayakers that went out and were just paddling along the islands and they discovered some wreckage.

- And if 2023 was a big year for Wisconsin shipwrecks, 2024 is shaping up to be even bigger.

As of August 2024, they've gotten reports of 30 new wrecks, and it falls on Tamara and the Wisconsin Historical Society to work out a plan to protect and preserve these sites.

- What we're worried about right now is quagga mussels.

So, the quagga mussels themselves will burrow into wooden shipwrecks.

And so people who may discover a shipwreck and with the best intention, brush off the mussels to see if there's paint or if there's carvings that are on the wood, are actually causing damage to the wrecks themselves.

- [Anna] People do sometimes move things around on the wrecks, which can damage the vessels even more, and that can impact their archeological value, especially when you consider that these vessels are often the final resting place of their crew.

- A lot of times, the sailors themselves were lost on these ships.

So, they are considered burial sites and we need to be respectful of that as well.

- What do you think we can learn from these wrecks, and what do they tell us about the region's history?

- So, if we look at each individual shipwreck, all of them are different, and they really tell this larger story of maritime history in this region and really the evolution of it.

So you can look at evolution of steam machinery.

You can look at various shipwrecks from individual builders and see how they've changed over time.

(mellow music) - If you couldn't tell by now, there is a lot of enthusiasm for Great Lakes shipwrecks.

When I asked Dan, Bruce and Tamara about why they think that is, they all talked about the knowledge and history that we can glean from these vessels, but they also mentioned something else.

There's a mysterious romance that shipwrecks evoke that plays into our fascination with our own cultural history.

- There's always a fascination with lost things, things that have been discovered again.

They give a snapshot of the way things were in those days.

- I think these are stories of history, that are a part of our collective history, at least in the Great Lakes.

People are curious and mystified and excited to learn more about shipwrecks.

- To sit there on the shoreline and to look out and to think about, you know, hundreds if not thousands of sailing ships and steam ships out on that lake and how what a different landscape it is.

It really just sparks your imagination.

(bright music) (mellow music) (mellow music continues) - If you want to study fish, you have to find them first and that can be a challenge.

So researchers across the Great Lakes are deploying a network of underwater devices to track the fish and their movements.

One of the challenges of studying fish is that they live in the water and well, we don't.

To find fish in the past, researchers relied on data from commercial or recreational fishers, or surveys they conducted, but that data only gave them a snapshot of one place at one point in time.

These days, researchers have better tools.

The Chicago River, with its hardened shorelines, frequent dredgings, and industrial history would not seem to offer a lot of opportunities from a fish's perspective.

Dr. Austin Happel, a research biologist at Chicago's Shedd Aquarium, is hoping the fish can tell him where the best spots are.

- The Chicago River is almost fully manmade and rather devoid of habitat.

So we're interested in trying to understand what habitats fish find important within the Chicago River and we can then use that information to better inform our restoration activities.

- [Anna] Happel has a number of ways to find out where the fish are, but the method that gives him the best data is acoustic telemetry.

- Throughout that Chicago River, we have 32 receivers out listening for our acoustic fish.

- [Anna] By acoustic fish, Happel means fish that carry a tag, like this one.

The tags send out a unique audio signal that identifies each fish, and a network of receivers listens for those signals 24/7.

When a tagged fish comes close enough to hear, the receivers record the time and date the signal was heard.

The result is a series of check-ins that show researchers where that fish has traveled, and when.

Thousands of underwater receivers have been deployed across the Great Lakes to enable researchers to track fish movements.

On Lake St. Clair and connecting waterways between Michigan and Ontario, Andrew Briggs, a fish biologist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, is using acoustic telemetry to track a range of fish.

- There's around 100 receivers in the area here.

This year, we've tagged Northern Pike, smallmouth bass, mooneye, and Juvenile Lake sturgeon.

Over the years, we've tagged walleye, yellow perch and muskie, too.

- [Anna] The data that comes back from all of those tagged fish is far richer than the data from fish surveys and it's easier to get.

- With most surveys, you're only gonna find fish where you look for them.

But with acoustic telemetry, we got receivers throughout the Great Lakes.

So now that allows us to look all over the Great Lakes more passively.

You don't have to actively be out there setting nets.

- [Anna] But Briggs can't just look at real-time data on his smartphone, at least not yet.

For now, to get the data, his team needs to collect the receivers they've placed, which can spend up to a year underwater.

- [Andrew] The data generally is maintained within the receiver itself.

Some receivers can float up to the surface when you send a signal to it.

Some, you have to physically go down and get.

- [Anna] The Great Lakes Acoustic Telemetry Observation System, GLATOS, is a collective effort.

More than 100 organizations maintain the receivers.

Altogether, there are more than 2,000 in all five lakes in both US and Canadian waters.

All those organizations are part of GLATOS, which itself is part of GLOS, the Great Lakes Observing System, which manages data collected through a range of techniques.

Shelby Brunner is the Science and Observations Manager at the Great Lakes Observing System.

- When you hear of really great examples of coordinated science, GLATOS is at the top of that list in many cases because they've done such a good job making this information shareable among their communities and applying it in thoughtful ways.

- [Anna] Researchers can request information for certain tags, and GLATOS will provide data gathered system-wide.

- When scientists tag fish, they can label the tag in this overarching database that manages all of the fish tags on the Great Lakes.

So, when the DNR sends you in that fish tag and says, "Hey, I wanna know what happened to Juvenile Sturgeon 36 nicknamed George," you can look up George.

- [Anna] Only a select number of fish are given acoustic tags each year as the units are expensive and require a surgical procedure to be implanted.

(bright music) The tags stay inside the fish for their lifetime, which often ends when they are caught by anglers.

State agencies like the Michigan Department of Natural Resources have a variety of tag reward programs for anglers.

- There's a phone number where an angler can report that they recaptured a fish.

We'll get that information back from them and we can give them information on the fish, like when we've tagged it and how long it's been at large.

- [Anna] Acoustic tracking data is already rewriting many long-standing fisheries beliefs.

For a long time, it was thought that muskellunge tend to stay in a relatively small area, but that idea was shattered by one muskie with a tag number double-oh-seven.

- So it was tagged in the Detroit River, migrated all the way to Buffalo, New York, and then came back.

It took it about two months to get to Buffalo, New York.

It stayed over there for three to four months, came back to Detroit River in about a month's time, and then it repeated that movement pattern again in 2018.

- [Anna] In Chicago, Austin hoped tracking would reveal sunfish spawning sites and found that one bluegill was a traveler, much like double-oh-seven.

- We were able to tag about a dozen or so bluegill or sunfish.

We have one that really likes to go all the way up and down our river multiple times.

We've tracked him making a six-mile journey about a dozen times, and he'll do that six miles in about a day.

So we're interested if we tag other bluegill, how many of them are doing these, like marathons versus how many of them are more homebodies.

- [Anna] Tracking also showed largemouth bass hanging out in barge slips, suggesting that these remnants of Chicago industry contain minnows and other food for predatory bass to feed on.

Sometimes knowing where the fish don't go is also helpful.

- Here on Lake St. Clair, we've seen a couple different species now where they seem to avoid crossing the shipping channel.

We started tagging fish on the Canadian side.

It'll be interesting once we download receivers, whether we see those smallmouth bass coming over into the US side of the shipping channel.

- [Anna] The absence of common carp in an area can likewise raise questions.

- If a common carp can't withstand being in an area, that means nothing can withstand being in that area.

- [Anna] Understanding how fish can use large urban cities like Chicago, how far they are traveling, and where they are finding refuge are just a few of the questions researchers are trying to unlock.

- It also shows you how, "Oh, I had no idea that was happening."

And it leads to more questions, and hopefully you can get more answers through acoustic telemetry.

(mellow techno music) - Thanks for watching.

To learn more about any of our stories, visit GreatLakesNow.org.

When you get there, you can follow us on social media or subscribe to our newsletter to get updates about our work.

See you out on the lakes.

(mellow techno music) (mellow techno music continues) (mellow techno music continues) (mellow techno music continues) (mellow techno music continues) - [Announcer] This program is brought to you by the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Richard C. Devereaux Foundation for Energy and Environmental Programs at Detroit PBS, Polk Family Fund, DTE Foundation, and contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

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