Musical Sister: There's a grand YouTube video circulating of some percussion musicians using the ice of Lake Baikal (Lake Superior's freshwater sister in Siberia) to create an icy interlude. The real video shows the percussion group IRKUTSK ethnik (ETHNOBEAT) "playing on frozen water of deepest and oldest Lake Baikal with pleasure and delight in the soul:)" The video was created by Natalia Vlasevskaia for BAIKALSTORY. It's a beautiful example, as they say in Russian on the video site, of ЖИВОЙ ЗВУК БАЙКАЛЬСКОГО ЛЬДА!!!! (which we think means "Live Sound of Lake Baikal Ice.") These Big Lakes speak to us in so many ways.
The Grinch for Shore: We're pretty sure that Santa lives on Madeline Island (after all, he and Ms. Claus come over on the Madeline Island Ferry Line to visit with mainland children every year), but we didn't know until a series of recent sightings that the Grinch apparently lives nearby. Photographer Andy Matheus with his photo buddy Michael DeWitt have posted photos of the Grinch hanging out around the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. Hope he warms up and gets a bigger heart by Christmas.
Sorting Out the Packs: One of the two remaining wolves native to Isle Royale was found dead this fall, a victim of attack by other wolves and a natural outgrowth of the repopulating of the island with new wolves from Ontario, Michigan and Minnesota. The National Park Service reported a transplanted female wolf also apparently was killed elsewhere on the island by other wolves. "These events are not uncommon as wolves defend and establish their territories and social hierarchy," the NPS stated. "With many wolves on the island sorting out their relationships with one another, the dynamic nature of wolf social organization, territoriality, and wolf-on-wolf aggression during group and pack formation is not unexpected." The GPS collars on the newly introduced wolves show some are hanging out together and traversing the same areas; it's not known if they've developed packs that could lead to breeding. There are seven female and eight male wolves on the island. The final native wolves – a male (now dead) and a related female – would have been unlikely able to reproduce. "With the death of the island-born male, travel patterns of the remaining wolves are likely to change significantly, and probably dependent on whether or not the island-born female is still alive, whether she is territorial and how she gets along with the newcomers, both males and females. She is the final native wolf, never radio-collared, and searching for her will be a priority during the upcoming winter study," commented Rolf Peterson, a research professor at Michigan Technological University and long-time island wolf-moose investigator. The NPS has set up a site for people to monitor the changing relationships of the wolves (represented by number). “We have a unique opportunity to look simultaneously at the past and future of Isle Royale wolves’ genetic health," said Dr. Kristin Brzeski, wildlife geneticist at Michigan Tech, who has partnered with the park to sequence the Isle Royale wolf genome to monitoring the population's genetic health. "With the death of M183, we can now more fully understand how genetic isolation and inbreeding impacted the historic wolf population and use that to better monitor the new founders. This is an exciting time, and we will be using cutting-edge genetic tools to track reproduction, inbreeding, and genetic change through time, hopefully providing a piece of the puzzle for maintaining a thriving Isle Royale wolf population."
Breaking the Big Chill: As the temperatures go down, the concerns heat up over whether our keepers of open waters have adequate ice-breaking ability to maintain vessel traffic lanes. “The reliability and number of U.S. and Canadian icebreaking assets on the Great Lakes is critical for the flow of cargoes to freshwater ports during the winter and spring commercial shipping seasons,” the Lake Carriers’ Association noted in a press release from earlier this month. “Unfortunately the outlook is not good for reliable ice breaking on the Great Lakes. In fact, the number of U.S. and Canadian Coast Guard icebreakers today is just 60 percent of what they were in the 1980s and 1990s for a system that has more shoreline than the entire U.S. East Coast.” According to the association, which represents the U.S.-based Great Lakes fleet, the U.S. Coast Guard has 11 icebreakers in service, down from 19, and the Canadian Coast Guard has two icebreakers, down from seven. “We continue to voice our concerns that both the U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards need to take this seriously and put more icebreaking resources in the Great Lakes and repower the current aging assets to ensure they can continue to break ice,” association President Jim Weakley said in the release. “However, the response has been slow as molasses in winter and insufficient for the decrepit fleet of icebreakers. We are at a critical juncture, just to keep the small number of icebreaking ships operating is an ongoing challenge.” Lt. Paul Rhynard, USCG public information officer, addressed out-of-commission cutters with Jeremy Ervin of the Port Huron, Mich., Times Herald. "During portions of last year's ice season, we had to put some of these cutters in repair, but we still kept the waterways open about 95 percent of the time, the main channels. We'd like to keep the waterways open 100 percent, we haven't gotten there yet. And I don't know if more cutters does that." Seen in this photo from 2011, USCG Cutters Mackinaw, Katmai Bay, Biscayne Bay and Mobile Bay flush the ice from the lower St Marys River.
A New Boat to Float: The University of Wisconsin-Superior's Lake Superior Research Institute got an anonymous donation of $1 million to buy a new floating classroom. The money, donated through the UWS Foundation, launched "a two-year planning phase to re-establish a floating education and research vessel in Superior," according to a release announcing the donation. From 1978 to 2012, the institute once used the LL Smith Jr. (at Two Harbors, Minnesota, in this Pete Markham photo) for on-the-water research, education and public tours, but the old Wisconsin-built tug sold to a private party in 2016. “Innovative and regionally focused educational programs that meet the needs of our students and community, such as this, is what makes our ‘small but mighty’ university unique,” Jeanne Thompson, executive director of the UWS Foundation said in a press release. Dr. Matthew TenEyck, director of LSRI, said, “The addition of this vessel will not only provide educational opportunities, it will advance scientific research on Lake Superior, such as the work being conducted at our Montreal Pier Ballast Testing Facility that we opened last summer."
Healthy Infusion of Funding: The nursing program at the College of St. Scholastic announced a substantial infusion of funding from the two largest largest public and private grants in the college's 108-year history, as reported by Nachai Taylor of Fox21. St. Scholastica President Barbara McDonald announced at a press conference that the School of Nursing got $2.79 million, the largest grant in the college’s history, to fund the Advanced Nurse Education Workforce (ANEW) project. The four-year ANEW initiative works to mend primary-care shortages in rural and under-served communities by educating nurse practitioners to practice in those areas. Separately, the School of Nursing received $1.125 million from the Manitou Fund of St. Paul, the largest private grant in its history. That grant will primarily be for helping with a series of major renovations to the department’s learning spaces, creating state-of-the-art, hands-on educational experiences for students.
Is That the Good News?: The officers on the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Alder, home ported in Duluth, gave the cooks a night off this week, and we are just wondering if that was good news for the crew, since the real cooks generally serve up fantastic fare. According to the cutter's Facebook post: "the officers came down to the kitchen and whipped up a humble meal for the crew. The officers enjoyed taking a break from the bridge and paperwork to picking up measuring cups and spatulas!" Good thing it was burger night – a pretty basic meal even for novice cooks – and good thing, too, that there were cookies. The post garnered lots of good wishes and this note from Jeff Stoner, "I was a cook on submarines, and every Saturday night was pizza night and each division took over the galley and gave me a break. Bravo Zulu officers! We cooks appreciate you."
It's a New Year & We're on the Move!
The offices of Lake Superior Magazine & BusinessNorth, along with the Lake Superior Gift Shop, will be moving to a new downtown location on the Duluth Skywalk at 109 W. Superior St., Ste. 200. (It's above the Dubh Linn Brew Pub.)
The Gift Shop here at 310 E. Superior St. will be open 10 a.m.-4 p.m. tomorrow, then for regular business hours Monday (Dec. 23), until 1 p.m. on Christmas Eve (Dec. 24) and will reopen for regular hours Dec. 26 and 27. Then we close shop here and reopen Jan. 2 in our new location. Watch this newsletter for our official Open House so you, too, can become Skywalkers and join our Force in the New Year. Until then, we have tons of books and office furniture at rock bottom prices … or even for free! Drop by now at 310 E. Superior St. to browse for deals or look at our new Lake Superior Collection. Our online shop will remain open throughout the move, but shipping may be delayed.
Photo & graphic credits: Natalia Vlasevskaia/BaikalStory; Andy Matheus; Isle Royale National Park; U.S. Coast Guard; Pete Markham/Wikipedia; U.S. Coast Guard