- [Ward] On this edition of Great Lakes Now, the city takes action to protect its salamanders and creates an attraction.

- [Dr. Leonard] Two, 300 people at a time, walking around, staring at the ground, looking at salamanders.

- [Ward] Can Great Lakes ports help the backups on the coasts?

- [Friedman] The companies that need to move these goods, they're now asking why can't we get a ship into Cleveland?

- [Ward] And news from around the lakes.

- [Funder] This program is brought to you by the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, The Charles Stewart Mott foundation.

The Consumers Energy foundation is committed to serving Michigan from preserving our state's natural resources and sustaining our future, to continuing business growth, academic achievement, and community involvement.

Learn more at consumersenergy.com/foundation.

The Richard C. Devereaux Foundation for Energy and Environmental Programs at DPTV, the Polk Family Fund, and viewers like you, Thank you.

- Hi, I'm Ward Detwiler Welcome back to Great Lakes Now.

In at least one way, salamanders are like chickens: They, too, cross the road to get to the other side.

And in Presque Isle Park, on the shores of Lake Superior in Michigan's upper peninsula, the city of Marquette is helping the salamanders make their journey safely.

(sentimental music plays) - [Kathleen] I really like when I start to see one move and then they'll freeze, they just woke up and they need a cup of coffee.

So they take a break and then they'll start moving again and crossing the road.

- [Ward] Kathleen Henry is the Special Projects Coordinator with the Superior Watershed Partnership.

- [Kathleen] We have people coming out at all hours in the middle of the night in the rain to observe the salamanders moving, and for the most part, everyone's been super, super respectful and very engaged and wanting to learn more about the salamanders.

- [Ward] And not just any salamanders, Blue Spotted Salamanders.

Crawling across a road, at night, in the rain is what they do every spring at Presque Isle Park in Michigan's upper peninsula.

Measuring three to five inches long, these salamanders have a stout body with a broad head and wide mouth.

Dr. Jill Leonard heads the Biology Department at Northern Michigan University.

- [Dr. Leonard] So these animals, they will thaw out from winter and they will start walking through the snow actually to get to their natal pond, which for us is the bog that's right across the road.

- [Ward] That bog is where the salamanders meet up, lay eggs, and reproduce.

After three or four days in the bog, the salamanders cross back over the road, hide under logs or burrow into the ground.

These four legged amphibians have been following this same pattern for thousands of years, since long before there were roads here, and this road is closed for them now, largely because of this guy, Eli Bieri.

- Here's the main cabin, and I will take you above deck.

The sun's just rising.

This is home.

- [Ward] Bieri is a Fulbright Scholar currently living on a sailboat while doing research into amphibians in Australia.

But about four years ago, he was an undergrad Biology student at Northern Michigan University in Marquette.

While studying there, he routinely took walks through the woods on rainy nights with some fellow Biology students, looking for salamanders.

- [Eli] And then this one night at Presque Isle Park, we were blown away when we saw like truly hundreds of salamanders crossing the road at the same time.

And that was really incredible until a car started coming by and squishing the salamanders.

- [Ward] Bieri and his advisor Dr. Jill Leonard, developed a research plan and found that up to 20% of the salamanders were being killed by cars.

At that rate, the local salamander population would eventually go extinct.

So just exactly how many Blue Spotted Salamanders live in the Presque Isle area?

Scientists don't know for sure.

- [Dr. Leonard] But I can tell you it's certainly in the thousands.

One of the things that we're working on through a citizen science project is really to try to census how many individuals are crossing the road.

It sounds like a joke to do with chickens, but how many salamanders cross the road will really help us understand the population size here.

- [Ward] Bieri says the Blue Spotted Salamander plays a vital role in the local ecosystem, eating insects and providing food for other animals.

- [Eli] Foxes, birds, snakes, other amphibians, pretty much everything eats salamanders.

They're actually a really good indicator species to indicate ecosystem health, because if there's an issue with the soil, or the air, or the water, salamanders will be the first to be affected.

- [Ward] In the course of his research, Bieri discovered something interesting about some of the salamanders at Presque Isle: Some of them have what he called "Funky Genetics."

- [Eli] We noticed that some of the females in the population were much, much larger than they normally are, two to three times larger, and their pattern is a little different.

Normally they're a really dark, almost black color with little blue spots, but these females were almost completely pattern-less and like a slate gray color.

- [Ward] And there was something else a bit strange about some of the salamanders.

- [Eli] Yeah, we figured out that they're unisexual population of all female that actually clone themselves through a process called parthenogenesis.

- [Dr. Leonard] You know, most people never even see a salamander in their lifetime and yet they're fabulous.

One of my favorite things to do is to watch them walking across a snow bank in the middle of the wintertime.

- [Ward] Eli's research convinced the city of Marquette to shut down the stretch of road used by the salamanders during the spring migration and the road closure got a lot of people interested.

- [Dr. Leonard] Two, 300 people at a time, walking around, staring at the ground, looking at salamanders.

It sounds a little crazy.

I know, but it's actually really amazing.

- [Ward] The city of Marquette is now hosting "Salamander Days" events every spring.

Mayor Jenna Smith admits she wasn't a big fan of the little critters at first.

- [Mayor Jenna] But I've come to learn about their place here in our community.

And I really enjoy Salamander Days now, come full circle on salamanders.

So I really appreciate that now we're embracing our culture and celebrating with art.

- [Ward] Longtime resident and artist, Dan Barrington was one of the people who came up with the idea for the annual event at his retirement party.

- [Dan] We were just talking and I said, "I think it'd be great if there was Salamander Days."

And what I imagined was like a spring festival and the salamander would be the centerpiece.

- [Ward] Barrington's plywood, rendition of the Blue Spotted Salamander took up residence outside city hall and on the front steps of the Superior Watershed Partnership office.

- [Dan] What I was thinking of is something along this line, which would be a bigger, like a two by 10 and two by 12, and some legs just simple representation painted up because I've done something like that before.

- [Ward] Tiina Morin is the arts and culture manager in Marquette.

- [Tiina] The children's museum did art inspired salamander activities.

Our local brewery, Black Rocks, made a special salamander session beer that was on tap for the migration period.

- [Ward] And there was plenty of salamander art.

The Best of Show Winner was Susan Estler, who worked with enamel and copper to come up with her creation.

- [Susan] Took a silhouette of one of the salamanders.

When I was looking at photos of it, I thought this is just the perfect medium to represent the salamanders because he looks like a real salamander.

- [Ward] People of all ages submitted artwork, and a few of the outstanding artists were honored at city hall.

- [Tiina] The migration of salamanders, we thought, well, that's a wonderful opportunity for people to really consider the salamander, think about its habitat, learn more about it, to do that through art.

- [Kathleen] I think that this project is a great example and could be used to encourage individuals to look to their local migratory species, whether that be salamanders or turtles or whatnot, and see in their local area, what could be done to conserve those species in your local areas.

- [Eli] I think if you're in Marquette or really anywhere in the Great Lakes Region, and it's a warm, rainy spring night, go out with a flashlight, because you never know what you're gonna find.

They're all around and it's totally worth seeing.

- You can find out more about the animals of the Great Lakes Region and how you can see them at greatlakesnow.org.

Pandemic related supply chain issues have been in the news for a while now, and shortages of computer chips and other goods and components have made headlines too.

At the center of the story?

Shipping and ports, but not ports on the Great Lakes.

- [Laura] Since 2020, backups at ports in the Atlantic and Pacific coasts have left cargo ships stacked up, waiting to unload in the US.

And rising fuel costs, congested highways, and shortage of truck drivers are also creating headaches for businesses wanting to get their goods in or out of the US interior, and they're looking for other options.

Will Friedman is President and CEO of the Port of Cleveland.

- [Friedman] The companies that need to move these goods either as a manufacturer or as a retailer, they're pretty desperate.

And so, you know, necessity is the mother of invention, and they're now asking much more so than previously, why can't we get a ship into Cleveland?

You know, I have a series of distribution centers that feed my retail stores throughout the Midwest.

Boy, I'd love to get a ship right into Cleveland and just avoid all that gridlock at those big ports.

- [Laura] But rerouting cargo from congested coastal ports to Cleveland isn't so simple.

On the Great Lakes, freighters mainly move bulk cargos like iron ore, grain and coal, that are loaded loose into the ships' holds.

But globally, most cargo is moved in containers.

The steel boxes that you see stacked up in rail yards and ports, and on cargo ships.

Great Lakes freighters and the ports they visit, aren't really set up to handle large shipments and containers, but that may be changing.

In 2014, the port of Cleveland saw an opportunity and developed the first container service on the Great Lakes to handle import and export cargo.

In partnership with Dutch company Spliethoff, they created the Cleveland Europe express with a regularly scheduled route between Cleveland and Antwerp.

The Peyton Lynn C, a small container ship, travels out of the St. Lawrence Seaway and across the Atlantic.

The trip takes approximately 14 days with a few days in each port to unload.

- [Friedman] We'd like to say we're the best location on the Great Lakes here in Cleveland, because we're really the first major port that you would hit if you're inbound from outside of the St. Lawrence Seaway, or you're the last port on your way out.

And we're also within about a one day truck drive of a number of major markets, really from Chicago all the way over to Pittsburgh.

- [Laura] And the opportunity to move other types of cargo on the Great Lakes and containers is providing new cost effective transportation solutions for some shippers.

- [Friedman] It actually does help with cost for a ship to come all the way into Cleveland, because the longer you keep cargo on the water, the more economical it is.

The majority of the cost to move, let's say a flat screen TV from China to Chicago or Columbus, Ohio is the inland transportation, the over the land transportation.

Once it's on a ship, even if it's a smaller ship, doesn't have to be a mega ship, doesn't cost that much because you have those, you know, economies of scale, you're just pushing that ship through the water, you're not burning as much fuel.

It's also more sustainable, it's also a greener form of transportation.

- [Laura] And according to Friedman, shipping through Cleveland avoids the delays that can happen at congested ocean ports.

- [Friedman] Unlike the big ports where the container may be on a ship and it sits at anchor, you know, waiting to get to a berth for 30 days, 15 days, our service is more reliable.

- [Laura] In Cleveland, the cargo and containers has been mostly industrial non-consumer goods and exports from Northern Ohio and bordering states.

But on more than one occasion, they have been the answer for a business outside their region.

- [Friedman] We just had some rubber, synthetic rubber moving up from Houston, getting trekked all the way up here to get loaded onto the Peyton and go to Europe.

So those are the kinds of, you know, somewhat counterintuitive moves we're seeing here with all these supply chain problems, they could not get a ship or find space on a ship out of the port Houston, so they move that rubber all the way up here.

- [Laura] And Cleveland isn't the only Great Lakes port that's looking to expand its container shipping.

The port of Duluth-Superior is the largest port on the Great Lakes by tonnage, including the twin ports of Duluth, Minnesota and Superior, Wisconsin and its making waves in container shipping.

Deb DeLuca is the executive director of the Duluth Seaway Port Authority.

- [Deb] From here, you can reach major markets such as the Twin Cities, Fargo, Des Moines, also Milwaukee and even down to Chicago.

So it's from a logistic standpoint, that's very attractive.

- [Laura] Last fall, The port of Duluth was granted approval by US customs and Border Protection to handle shipping containers by water, and just recently it exported its first shipment; 200 containers of kidney beans from a company in the region.

- [Deb] They were having difficulties arriving at a supply chain solution with all the snarls and backups and supply chains over the past couple of years, they were not able to get their goods to market.

So they working with freight forwarder trucking company, we were looking for an alternative solution and that ended up being Samuels containers by ship through our terminal.

- [Laura] Great Lake ports are also looking into new options, like a feeder service where containers are offloaded in bigger ports and transported along St. Lawrence Seaway in smaller vessels, similar to what is done in Europe.

- [Deb] Whether that's service that comes all the way in the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway and directly to a port, or do you have one of the huge Panamax container ships that comes to Montreal and trans loads onto smaller ships that then move to the port terminals.

And either one of those options can work, and that's what we're working on.

- [Laura] Along with all the opportunities, there are many challenges to container shipping on the Great Lakes, including the locks of the St. Lawrence Seaway, which restrict the size of the ship.

- [Friedman] If you're coming into the Great Lakes from outside the system, you're limited by the dimensions of the locks.

There are 15 locks that get you from sea level up to where we are, which is roughly 650 feet above sea level.

And those lock dimensions are roughly 750 feet long and about 75 feet wide and the controlling depth of the water and all the channels on the Great Lakes is about 27 feet, or 28 feet.

So ships can't exceed those dimensions.

- [Laura] Another factor that has been challenging for container shipping is the shortened season.

Both the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Soo locks closed during the winter.

- [Friedman] Many who use the system or ports on the system are like me, advocate for let's keep the system open longer.

We think that's feasible from a technology point of view.

We all know, unfortunately, with climate change that we're not getting as much ice cover anymore, winters aren't as severe, let's allow more year round shipping or closer to year round shipping.

- [Laura] Both the ports of Cleveland and Duluth expect to move more shipping containers in the coming year.

- [Friedman] So the challenge to growing our port as a container port is not so much finding the customers, I'm very certain the business would be there, It's getting the companies that own the ships to come in to Cleveland and putting together the end to end pieces to allow for, you know, transportation of containers from Asia or Europe into Cleveland and beyond, and vice versa.

- For more about Great Lake shipping visit greatlakesnow.org.

And now it's time for the catch, which takes you around the Great Lakes to hear from reporters about the issues they're covering.

Bite sized news briefs about the lakes you love.

- [Narrator] At beaches along lake Michigan scientists are studying how well Whitefish are surviving to adulthood in the Great Lakes.

Kurt Williams is a journalist with Great Lakes Echo, and he dove into this topic for a recent story.

- [Kurt] Lake Whitefish are a native species in the Great Lakes and beloved by people who live in the region, an economically important species, and also keystone species in the Great Lakes.

And they currently are experiencing what is known in the world of fisheries biology as a recruitment problem, meaning that fewer young Whitefish are making it to adulthood.

- [Narrator] Kurt says invasive mussels are the likely culprit, specifically Zebra and Quagga Mussels.

- [Kurt] And this has to do with their impact on the base of the food web in the Great Lakes.

They're filtering out the phytoplankton that provides food to the zooplankton.

That is the food source for baby Whitefish.

- [Narrator] In addition to the environmental impact, Kurt says this recruitment problem also has economic and cultural implications.

- [Kurt] Lake Whitefish is the most commercially valuable fish for commercial fishermen, both non-tribal and tribal fishing communities.

The impact on tribal fishing communities that were here for thousands of years, they've been using this fish as an important food source and culturally as an important species in their lives.

And it has, you know, profound implications for the continuation of that tradition for those folks.

- [Narrator] When it comes to combating invasive mussels, Kurt says that from his view, there's not much that can be done.

- [Kurt] I have seen stories about efforts to control them, but really, I think that horse left the bar.

There are hundreds of trillions, you know.

I saw an estimate of peaks of at least 300 trillion.

Quagga Mussels with a T in lake Michigan, Lake Huron.

So they dominate the ecosystem.

- [Narrator] Kurt says that some species in the Great Lakes ecosystem are beginning to adapt to the mussels, and he's hopeful that things will balance out in the long run.

- [Kurt] Adult Lake Whitefish have started to feed on mussels, they're not as nutritionally, they're not a great food for Lake Whitefish.

Another invasive species, the Round Goby feeds on Quagga Mussels and other fish, including Lake Whitefish eat the Round Goby.

So honestly I think that, you know, any thoughts of trying to eradicate these invasive mussels into my mind is not a practical solution, And it's something that the lakes are gonna have to get used to.

This is a new member of the community.

- [Narrator] Kurt's story about Whitefish recruitment as part of a five piece series he did for Great Lakes Echo, looking at significant ecological changes that test our collective ability to manage the Great Lakes.

In Toronto, a story of ecological resilience is taking shape at a former landfill, that's now home to Tommy Thompson Park.

Emma McIntosh is a reporter with the Narwhal, and she's been covering the story.

- [Emma] The fact that it is a park at all is a complete accident, but over the years, it's turned into a really, really important area for a ton of biodiversity, but especially for birds.

- [Narrator] This place hasn't always been a Haven for wildlife though.

After decades of industrial dumping, Emma says that by the early 20th century, the area was a smelly and polluted dump and was later filled in.

- [Emma] At one point, Toronto was expecting a shipping boom from the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway.

And so it started constructing this breakwater in the outer harbor and they would have crews dumping truck fulls, and truck fulls of rubble and stuff from demolition sites to basically fill in the lake, and make a little spit of land.

But that shipping boom that they were expecting never materialized and they didn't need the breakwater after all.

So couple decades went by and in the meantime, nature started to move in.

- [Narrator] Eventually, officials decided to turn it into a public space.

- [Emma] Today, Tommy Thompson has walking and cycling paths, it's a really popular place for people in the city to visit year round because it's so close, but it has such a rich, a variety of nature.

It's this great public access wild place.

- [Narrator] Emma points out that Tommy Thompson Park has also become an important bird habitat and hub for banding birds.

That's a technique used by conservation scientists to help track the health of specific bird species during migration.

- [Emma] This helps researchers across North America keep track of where bird populations are going, which is really important because bird populations are on the decline here.

And because their ranges are so enormous scientists don't always know where the problem is.

So banding them here helps researchers everywhere know more about what's going on in their lives and helps us dissect the mystery of what's causing their decline.

Some of the things that staff at Tommy Thompson have done are really setting a guideline for everywhere else, even the way that they manage some birds versus others is like precedent setting stuff.

- [Narrator] In Michigan's upper peninsula at Fayette Historic State Park, limestone cliffs are home to some of the oldest trees in Eastern North America.

During a work trip with some colleagues, MLive environment reporter Garret Ellison, recently learned of the ancient white Cedars.

- [Garret] We had no idea when we got there that we were going to be stumbling across Michigan's oldest trees.

You, you know, we walked into the visitor center and saw a display that says some of the trees on the cliffs here are believed to be 1400 years old.

And it was one of those, like, "What?

No way!

I would know about that."

- [Narrator] The trees were first discovered back in the 1990s by a group of scientists led by researcher, Doug Larson, who learned that despite the modest size of the trees, they had been growing out of the cliffs for more than a thousand years.

- [Garret] These trees are not impressive looking, but they are very, very old.

And it's because of the environment that they grow in and the unique nature in the way that the tree grows, it has these roots, which are hydraulically separated and unique to different sections of the tree.

So they're very, very slow growing and parts of the tree can die.

And, you know, the rest of the tree continues to grow, it survives.

And so they can survive in harsh environments, in rock fall, and things of that nature.

- [Narrator] The age of the cedars was calculated through a scientific technique called dendrochronology, which also reveals centuries of data about the region's climate history, recorded in the width and chemical makeup of the tree's growth rings.

- [Garret] What they're doing is they're core sampling the tree and measuring and estimating it that way.

We wanna protect these trees.

They're a, you know, a natural, amazing natural feature of Michigan.

- [Narrator] Amazing as these trees are, they're one of the region's best kept secrets.

- [Garret] Part of the reason that they're not more well known is because they're somewhat inaccessible.

- [Narrator] The limestone cliffs at Fayette Historic State Park are closed off to the public, but if you're willing to work for it, you can still glimpse these ancient cliff dwellers by taking a boat or kayak out onto Lake Michigan.

- [Garret] Bring a camera with a long lens and look up.

And in the words of Doug Larson, the researcher who I interviewed said, "You'll see an ecosystem in the habitat, that's been staring out at Lake Michigan for the last thousand years."

- [Ward] Thanks for watching.

For more on these stories and the Great Lakes in general 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.

- [Funder] This program is brought to you by the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.

The Consumers Energy Foundation is committed to serving Michigan from preserving our state's natural resources and sustaining our future, to continuing business growth, academic achievement, and community involvement.

Learn more at consumersenergy.com/foundation.

The Richard C. Devereaux Foundation for Energy and Environmental Programs at DPTV, The Polk Family Fund, and viewers like you, Thank you.

(piano music plays)