The Dynamic Great Lakes

A Critically Acclaimed non-fiction book about the five Great Lakes

The Dynamic Great Lakes is available in the new edition at Barnes & Noble online or in stores. It is also available at Schuler Books and Music, The Bookman, Amazon.com (paper and Kindle edition) and many other fine stores.

Whitefish Run in the Great Lakes

Sophia's Lost and Found by Barbara Spring

Whitefish Run December

They speed upstream to spawn after dark
slick as ice and pearly white:
whitefish from Lake Michigan’s depths
torpedo home.
With sure instincts
with DNA of generations
with chartreuse eggs; with white milt
their sleek white shapes streak
through dark river waters
now starting to freeze.
It’s been this way in the Great Lakes
since Edenic times
when Ice Age glaciers melted away.
And now in this coldest December
anyone alive can remember
fishermen risk a walk the piers
wear cleats on their boots
tie themselves to something solid.
They jig rigged lines on the river bottom
and sometimes land a sleek, slick, delicious fish
while west winds howl.

Excerpted from Sophia’s Lost and Found: Poems of Above and Below.

This book is available from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and many other fine bookstores.

Surfing Lake Michigan

Two Surfers About to Enter the Washing Machine

My watercolor of surfers about to jump in the heavy waves. Steve Damstra took a photo of this scene and I liked it so much that I made a watercolor based on it.
This is a dangerous spot to surf. Lives have been lost here.

Oil Spill in Kalamazoo River, MI

Read more about oil and the Great Lakes in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes now available on Amazon’s Kindle.

Fall is in the Air

In the fall snow fences are installed to keep the sand from blowing across the road. In the late afternoon sunlight the fence casts shadows and the blown sand casts a shadow. In the distance is the pier with its fog house and light house. That’s how it is on the beach in Grand Haven, Michigan. There is a tang in the air and the fallen leaves crunch underfoot.

Beware Water Nixies

Beware Water Nixies

Freshwater beckons with its beauty
jade green waves
crowned with white caps
curl and break.
In the dark under the curl
nixies, currents, seiches,
spirit many away.
–Barbara Spring
From the book, Sophia’s Lost and Found: Poems of Above and Below

Food Webs in Lake Michigan

Here is a picture from Seagrant showing the food webs. Last year alewives were scarce and so fishing for salmon was so so. This year the alewives recovered and large salmon are being caught.

Here is an excerpt from my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes:
Plutonium, the most toxic substance known, is a by-product of
nuclear power plants. It is extremely hazardous because of its high
radioactivity: for half of its quantity to decay, it takes 24,360 years.
Our aging Nuclear Power Plants on the Great Lakes presently have
nowhere to store plutonium except on their property.
On the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant property on the shore of
Lake Michigan near South Haven, eight 100 ton casks stand on a
concrete slab only 150 feet from the waters of Lake Michigan.
The 16½ foot high casks are eleven feet in diameter and weigh
100 tons. They consist of a steel basket encased in 29 inches of
concrete and stand on a concrete slab. Palisades may eventually have
25 casks. Plutonium is so toxic that it could mean an end to life as
we know it in the Great Lakes region. Low-level radionuclides like
tritium escape into the ecosystem from these plants and like other
toxins, radioactivity magnifies through food chains. The nuclear
power plants are aging and must be phased out. Their radioactive
wastes pose an urgent problem that will have to be solved soon. No
one has solved the problem of how to store plutonium safely.

Today I heard on the news that the Palisades plant is now back online.

Palisades Nuclear Power Plant

As reported in the Grand Rapids Press

COVERT — Palisades nuclear power plant on Lake Michigan south of South Haven was shut down shortly before 3 p.m. Friday when a leak was discovered in a valve in the system that cools the reactor.

The plant will remain out of service until work and testing are completed, which should be “soon,” according to Palisades spokesman Mark Savage.The reactor is in a stable condition, workers isolated the leak Friday, and started work Saturday to repair the valve, Savage said.

Routine monitoring of pressure revealed the leak, Savage said.

While the plant is shut down, workers also added oil to a coolant pump reservoir, but the focus is on getting the leaking valve repaired and tested, Savage said, and that’s in progress. He said customers won’t be affected by the plant shutdown.

He would not speculate how long it would be before the plant is returned to service.

Lake Michigan salmon and trout

The river smells of fish and sometimes the small silvery alewives will jump out of the water when they are being pursued by Chinook salmon, coho salmon, brown trout or steelhead. It’s that time.

People have been catching salmon over twenty pounds this year and good size trout. They are being caught in the estuaries and tributaries to Lake Michigan.

Read more about fishing in the Great Lakes in The Dynamic Great Lakes available at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.