New Restrictions Prohibiting Ballast Water Discharges

Emergency restrictions go into effect today prohibiting ballast water discharges and exchanges in the waters of Isle Royale National Park by freighters and recreational boaters. The move is aimed at preventing the spread of viral hemorrhagic septicemia to fish communities in and surrounding the park. Isle Royale National Park’s waters extend four and a half miles from the island’s shore in all directions. They overlap two shipping routes from the Soo Locks to Thunder Bay, Ontario.

Invasive Gobie Fish Spreading Through Great Lakes

The Round Gobie is an aggressive and voracious bottom dweller from China that drives away small native fish in the Great Lakes. University of Michigan fishery biologist David Jude discovered the round gobies in the Great Lakes in 1990. Scientists have been trying to figure out exactly how they got there, and how they quickly spread to all five lakes ever since.

Oceangoing freighters were the prime suspects. But round gobies are bottom-dwelling fish, so how could significant numbers of them get inside ships? Now Scientists think they have the answer.

At night during the summer breeding season, newly hatched round gobies leave their lake-bottom homes and swim to the surface. This nocturnal migration greatly increases the chances that large numbers of hatching's will get sucked into the ballast tanks of freighters.

So, who owns the lakebed?

Who owns the lakebed? Who controls the water? Who would issue building permits? Those are questions that don't have definitive answers.

Read more at
http://www.thestar.com/living/article/253236

Lake Erie Plane Crash.

A small plane crash into Lake Erie Monday. The single-engine plane went down about a kilometre off shore after taking off from the Kelleys Island airport.