Dennis O'Hara / DuluthHarborCam.com
Cornelia
The oceangoing Cornelia returned to Duluth on October 16, 2016. Its last visit to Lake Superior included a six-week detainment and hefty fine.
Cornelia returns to Duluth
Brady Slater reports for the Duluth News Tribune on the return of a ship that inspired much fascination – and later environmental concern – during its previous Lake Superior visit:
An oceangoing freighter that was detained in the Duluth harbor for six weeks in 2015 made its first trip back into the local port over the weekend.
Flying a different flag and presumed to be operating under a different owner, the Cornelia arrived Sunday and remained docked at the Holcim Trading Co. terminal at the end of Rice's Point on Monday.
A long investigation followed the detainment. The ship’s owner was ultimately hit with $1 million in penalties for dumping oily wastewater in U.S. waters, including the Great Lakes.
+ Dennis O’Hara’s harbor cams captured the vessel’s arrival. Here’s the video (from which the image above is taken).
Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore turns 50
Last Saturday, Pictured Rocks – which in 1966 became the first U.S. national lakeshore – celebrated its 50th birthday with a bash at the Munising Falls Visitor Center. MLive has a lovely video slideshow of the park for the occasion.
In the late 1950s, the National Park Service surveyed the Great Lakes, looking for areas to include in its system. “By virtue of its unique and spectacular scenery unmatched elsewhere on the Great Lakes, the Pictured Rocks area of Alger County, comprising 43 miles of shoreline,” merited protection as a park, the report said.
After nearly a decade of political wrangling and negotiation with natural-resource industries, the Pictured Rocks bill reached the desk of President Lyndon Johnson, who signed it into law on October 15, 1966.
Truly devout national park nerds will enjoy this 191-page history (PDF link) of the lakeshore. There’s also a two-page Cliffs Notes-style version.
+ In other national park news, Apostle Islands National Lakeshore (designated in 1970) announced plans to replace the failing Raspberry Island docks next year. “Replacement of the docks will not adversely impact historic structures such as the boathouse and tramway and will have a beneficial effect in providing better protection from wave and ice damage to these two historic structures,” park officials said in a news release.
What’s polluting our beaches?
1 of 2
Alliance for the Great Lakes
Beach Sweep
2 of 2
Alliance for the Great Lakes
Beach Sweep
Cigarette filters and pieces of plastic.
Those were this year’s major finds according to the final tallies coming in for the Beach Sweeps held last month on all four shores of Lake Superior.
The Great Lakes Alliance, which organizes year-round programs for beach cleaning, logged nearly 2,000 pounds of garbage collected at different “Adopt-a-Beach” events. The alliance created a pie chart to illustrate how much plastic plays a role in the shoreside garbage, accounting for 87 percent of it.
Volunteers also found such oddities as half a bowling ball (Duluth), a meat thermometer (Marquette), an auto floormat (Bayfield) and a Nerf dart, a dog collar and a fishing lure (Baraga).
In Superior, the Superior Telegram reports on the volunteers working on a stretch of shoreline from Barker’s Island along the Osaugie Trail. The prevalence of plastic and foam shows potential groups to target for education, suggests Marie Zhuikov, one of the volunteers and with Wisconsin Sea Grant. The foam pieces, for example, seem to be from bait buckets, so anglers can be a focus of anti-littering education.
The city of Ashland also joined the Great Lakes Alliance event, asking residents to focus on the Sixth Avenue Beach across from the Ashland City Hall on Chequamegon Bay, reports the Ashland Daily Press. Earlier in the summer, about 40 residents, including some Girl Scouts, joined in cleaning up Maslowski Beach, a popular swimming site.
Schreiber, Ontario, looks to boost tourism: The small town on Lake Superior’s northern shore is developing a $1.6 million community revitalization plan to entice highway travelers to the Schreiber Railway Museum, downtown businesses and the Lake’s northernmost beach, reports the CBC.
Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society featured: A TV station from Michigan’s Lower Peninsula turned its cameras north to Whitefish Point for a story about the organization and a recent discovery.
College of St. Scholastica’s inaugurates new president: Colette McCarrick Geary is Scholastica’s first female president in more than 40 years and the first laywoman to lead the Duluth college. She previously worked at the College of New Rochelle in New York.
Hands-on learning: Bessemer High School students helped the Michigan DNR study fish in a local pond and learned about how contaminants affect aquatic life, the Ironwood Daily Globe reports.
Improvements to the St. Marys River control structure will let the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operate the gates remotely. The structure regulates the outflow from Lake Superior to the lower Great Lakes, and the project “will give the Corps more flexibility to operate the gates in ways that will improve conditions for fish,” reports the Associated Press.