- [Narrator] On this edition of "Great Lakes Now," helping birds safely migrate through cities.

- Birds don't perceive glass.

They see it as an open area when it's clear, and they don't avoid flying into it - [Narrator] Investigating algae blooms on Lake Superior.

- They can produce really potent neurotoxins, and those can affect our pets, wildlife, and human health as well.

- [Narrator] And visitors return to Great Lakes Aquariums.

- There's smiles all over the place.

It's an awesome feeling.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] This program is brought to you by the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Laurie and Tim Wadhams.

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, Eve and Jerry Jung, the Americana Foundation, the Brookby Foundation, Founders Brewing Company, and viewers like you.

Thank you.

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

Every year, millions of birds travel through our region as they migrate with the changing seasons, but some never make it to their destination.

Many die or are seriously injured after crashing into windows.

And according to one study, Chicago is the deadliest city in North America for migrating birds.

But some folks are trying to change that.

- [Annette] Why don't you go down there and check inside that alcove there, and I'm gonna cross the street and check this side.

- [Laura] On any given morning during migration season, Annette Prince and her team of volunteers can be seen patrolling the streets of downtown Chicago.

Carrying a net, lugging a big bag, Prince is visually sweeping the edges of buildings, looking for birds, dead or injured, that have collided with one of Chicago's numerous skyscrapers.

- Birds don't perceive glass.

They see it as an open area when it's clear, and they don't avoid flying into it.

Essentially having flown all night, they're looking for a place to rest for the day, find food, just kind of like if you've driven your car all night and you're looking for a place to stop to rest and find something to eat.

They're using the city, but the city is filled with a lot of dangerous areas that can get them in trouble.

- [Laura] Prince is director of the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors.

Established in 2003, the mission of the volunteer organization is to protect migratory birds through rescue, education, and outreach.

- We're gonna walk through this alley and around.

We're gonna take this side because there's birds foraging over there.

We don't wanna chase them into the windows.

(bright music) See the little bird on the sidewalk over there, we're gonna go over and catch that bird.

- [Laura] Nobody ever said catching a bird was easy.

- Well, I don't see where he went.

We cover about one square mile of downtown.

And in that one square mile, every year we pick up about 5,000 birds.

If you multiply that by all the areas along the lakefront, which the birds use to travel, you get into the tens of thousands of birds that must be hitting windows and either dying or being injured by it.

This bird looks like he's unfortunately dead.

It's another cat bird, and you saw that cat bird that just flew into the tree there.

Can I give this to you to label?

- Yeah.

- And then we'll boogie around the building.

- [Laura] Annette and her team get to work long before many people are even awake.

- We're out here early in the mornings because gulls and crows come into downtown Chicago, looking for injured birds on the sidewalk.

they'll eat them dead or alive, and we are trying to find them hurt or dead on the sidewalk before these gulls will grab them as a food source.

- [Laura] Hundreds of bird species migrate through the Great Lakes region, mostly at night.

Just like moths, they're attracted to light, so brightly lit tall buildings in cities around our region pose a real danger.

No Great Lakes city is more dangerous than Chicago, but there's been some progress on reducing that hazard.

- Working together with building owners and managers, we've gotten a lot of buildings to dim their lobby lights, such that in the early morning, a lobby that was brightly lit and might attract a bird inside because there were trees or plants or fountains inside looks like a dark space, and birds won't fly into it.

- [Laura] Since 1995, the Bird Collision Monitors and other groups have worked with commercial building managers under the Lights Out program.

During migration season, tall buildings turn off or dim their decorative lights at night, saving an estimated 10,000 migratory birds each year.

- This is a red-eyed vireo that we just rescued.

He flew into the window several times.

It's a small bird that has flown here all the way from the Amazon.

These birds spend their winter in South America.

The majority of these birds have what is similar to a mild concussion.

Team members who've been around the city, looking for birds, are bringing them to the car that's gonna transport them to Willowbrook Wildlife Center.

They're able to rest inside these bags and be transported to where there'll be examined at the wildlife center.

And you've got something here.

And if he's flight ready and looking symmetrical and active and alert, he'll be released into a forest preserve out in DuPage County, where he'll be able to forage, kinda restore himself, get himself together, and then continue traveling north to his ultimate destination, which could be the Northern United States or Canada.

Twice a year, they fly all the way from, sometimes it's almost the same tree that they use up in Canada, down to the place they go in the Amazon.

And taking them 20 miles west of here and putting them down in a forest there, is not going to change his ability to navigate to his final destination.

(bright music) - [Laura] In addition to rescuing injured birds, Prince and the Bird Collision Monitors have been working with local architects on building designs that can reduce hazards for birds.

Carl Giometti is a Chicago architect and former president of the Chicago Ornithological Society.

- Cornell did a major study of all the major cities in the United States for bird friendliness.

And what it confirmed and told us is that Chicago is actually the most dangerous city for bird migration in the United States.

- Glass is dangerous for birds because when it's clear, transparent, birds think that they can fly through it.

They see more space that they think they can fly through.

They see sky, they see their own reflection, and they think they can fly toward an area that really is just a false reflection.

- So what you can see here is we have a variety of different buildings from different eras.

And a lot of the older buildings are actually more bird-friendly than a lot of the newer buildings.

Something like the Wrigley Building here, it's a very solid building, has very little glass, and it's a beautiful, ornate building.

It's an iconic building in Chicago, and it's very bird-friendly because there's not a lot of glass.

Right next to this, now we see a building from a later era that is covered with reflective glass.

As a result, it poses more of a threat to migrating birds.

(bright music) - [Laura] But some newer buildings are deliberately designed to be more bird-friendly, like the Aqua Tower.

The 82-story tower was completed in 2009.

- Rather than glass railings and some of the other predominantly glass features, it used just typical balustrade metal posts, still provides a lot of visibility for the amenities of the individual units.

However, those railings provide a lot of visibility for birds.

So if a predominantly all-glass building can still be bird-friendly, then there's really no excuse for other types of building concepts to go ahead and employ bird-friendly measures.

(upbeat music) - [Laura] New regulations are in place in Chicago that require all new buildings and renovations to be more bird-friendly.

The new guidelines include such things as reducing window reflections by incorporating patterns etched into the glass or applying a special film to make the glass more visible for birds.

- It's not a new building method.

Window films have existed for years and years and years.

We've now just discovered that there's another purpose that an existing building technology can serve.

- [Laura] Pam Karlson, who lives on Chicago's Northwest side, has devised a similar solution for preventing bird collisions.

- But we've had some strikes until I put up a Post-it Note.

So it's a temporary solution, it's cheap, there's a ton of them up there, obviously.

Some people might think it looks kinda hokey, but it works.

- [Laura] Karlson, a professional garden designer, has created a small paradise in her backyard, including a waterfall and stream that attracts hundreds of birds each migration season.

- With water, you attract a wider diversity of birds.

So now we get great blue herons, certain warblers are attracted to water.

So yellow warblers seem to really enjoy it.

- [Laura] Karlson says her goal has always been to give migratory birds a safe haven where they can feed, rest, and refuel to continue their journey.

- Oh, you've got another one.

- Yeah.

- [Laura] Meanwhile, in downtown Chicago, Annette Prince and her team of volunteers count up the daily tally of birds whose long journeys were cut short.

- I'd say it looks like we've got about a half dozen live and maybe 25 to 30 dead.

It's usually a 60-40 split.

It's a good day when we find more live that get a chance to recover and get rehabilitated.

They're just visiting and passing through the Great Lakes area.

We consider them tourists that really, we wanna do better as far as protecting them when they travel through our city, because it's a privilege to have them visit us and be able to enjoy them.

And we would like them to have a better fate than this, and they deserve a better fate.

- There's more about our region's migratory birds at greatlakesnow.org.

The deepest and coldest of the Great Lakes, Lake Superior was once thought to be immune from algae blooms.

Today, it's one of the fastest warming lakes in the world, and toxic algae blooms are a looming threat to the ecosystem and drinking water.

Now, scientists are trying to understand why this is happening, what's at stake, and what, if anything, can be done to stop it.

This report was made possible in part by the Fund for Environmental Journalism, the Society of Environmental Journalists.

(upbeat music) - [Dan] On a recent hot, still July day, Northland College researcher, Reane Loiselle, steered a flat bottomed boat into Chequamegon Bay on Lake Superior, off the shore from Ashland, Wisconsin.

Her destination, CB-1 a spot a quarter mile or so offshore in 17 feet of water.

It's one of 31 sites along Wisconsin's Lake Superior shoreline where a team of researchers is sampling on six different days throughout the summer.

Loiselle drops a tool called a water quality sonde into the lake.

It gathers data every two seconds, as she lowers it down through the water on a steel cable.

- So we'll get this snapshot in time of what's going on with the near shore areas of the lake.

- [Dan] Matt Hudson is associate director of the Mary Griggs Burke Center for Freshwater Innovation at Northland College.

He's leading one of the groups of researchers sampling this stretch of the lake this summer.

- There's sensors in there that tell us basically the amount of algae in the water, both green algae, and then blue-green algae.

And then we're also looking at things like temperature and conductivity.

We lower this into the water from the surface to the bottom.

We call it a water quality profile.

And we do that at each one of our sites.

- [Dan] Researchers are also collecting water quality samples to analyze for everything from the tiny microbes that live in the water to nutrients like phosphorus that the algae needs to grow.

Hudson says all this data will help scientists piece together the story of how an algae bloom evolves in Lake Superior.

- If we analyze for the kinds of things that would tell us, "Okay, where are the algal cells?

Where are they?

Are they in the water column?

What's the temperature, what's the nutrients?

What are all these different pieces to the puzzle?"

- [Dan] 10 Years ago, this kind of research would have been unheard of.

But then in 2012, researchers confirmed the first ever blue-green algae bloom in notoriously frigid Lake Superior.

It followed a massive rainstorm that dumped up to 10 inches of rain over Duluth.

Then in 2018, another huge storm caused major flooding, this time over Northwestern Wisconsin.

Soon after, a blue-green algae bloom stretched for parts of 50 miles along the south shore of Lake Superior from Superior, Wisconsin, all the way to the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, including here at Meyers Beach, a popular departure point for kayak trips.

The bloom looked like green paint floating on the surface of the water.

Brenda LaFrancois is an aquatic ecologist with the National Park Service.

- They can look a lot of different ways, but one of the things that we look for is kind of a bright green surface film.

- [Dan] The algae is unsightly.

It often stinks.

It can harm tourism economies around the lakes, and it can impact water quality.

The city of Ashland pulls its drinking water from Lake Superior.

- And then one of the big concerns obviously is their potential to produce toxins.

They can produce really potent neurotoxins and other kinds of toxins, and those can affect our pets, wildlife, and human health as well.

- [Dan] So far, researchers have not found evidence of toxicity in any of the blooms on Lake Superior, but they stress that doesn't mean that's not a possibility in the future.

And while scientists are still trying to figure out exactly what's causing the algae to grow in such a clean and cold lake, they believe there's a strong link between the growing number of blooms on Lake Superior and climate change.

Blue-green algae needs nutrients to grow, especially phosphorous, which gets washed from the land into the lake during big storms like those in 2012 and 2018.

- We know that those blooms did occur in years that had pretty catastrophic flooding in the region, 500 to a thousand-year precipitation events, and flooding from the tributaries.

- [Dan] And those big storms are predicted to occur even more frequently because of global warming.

LaFrancois says there's also a second climate change link.

- We also know that those blooms tended to happen in years that had warm springs and early summers, so years where the lake kind of started warming up early and continued on that trajectory to have warm summer water temps, not unlike what we're seeing out here today.

- [Dan] And Lake Superior, it turns out, is one of the fastest warming large lakes in the world.

Summer surface water temperatures in the lake have increased by five degrees over the past 30 years, but scientists are still working to better understand the precise mix of factors that determine when and where blooms on the lake will form.

And an important part of that equation is likely the many streams that feed into Lake Superior.

- Yeah, right now we're at the mouth of Fish Creek or Fish Creek Slough, just on the west side of Ashland.

And so this is one of the many fabulous, coastal wetland areas that we have in this region of Lake Superior.

- [Dan] Fish Creek is the main tributary into Chequamegon Bay near Ashland, Wisconsin.

This is a place that has flummoxed researchers like Hudson.

As one of the warmest and shallowest parts of Lake Superior, it's seemingly an ideal place for algae blooms to form.

But so far they haven't found any here.

- The reason we're here is this is gonna be one of the places where we're gonna look for clues as to the puzzle of why we don't see or we haven't seen blue-green algae blooms in Chequamegon Bay yet.

- [Dan] One possibility is there aren't the same species of algae cells along the lake shore surrounding Chequamegon Bay.

Another hypothesis is that so much sand and clay washes into Chequamegon Bay during big rainstorms that the algae cells get buried, and not enough sunlight filters down into the water for the algae to grow.

So this summer, researchers are also collecting samples from Fish Creek and a number of other streams that flow into Lake Superior.

That water gets analyzed here at the Large Lakes Observatory at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Researchers are also taking algae cells they collect from different places to see if they can grow blue-green algae in the lab.

Scientists are trying to pinpoint the places on the landscape where the algae cells or the nutrients are coming from that feed the blooms that are forming in the lake.

If they can do that, then maybe they can help land managers identify the places they need to prevent phosphorus runoff or control erosion into the lake, and maybe stop blooms from growing in the lake in the first place.

Bob Sterner directs the Large Lakes Observatory at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

- So what we're trying to do is get a much better handle on where are those control points, if they exist, that may be more important than others so that we can focus our conservation efforts where they'll do the most good.

Even though we're still talking about a minor part of the volume of the lake, if people get in their heads that this is a place that sometimes turns really green, that isn't a real pivot from the mental space that people normally have about Lake Superior.

- For more about algae blooms, their causes, and the threat they pose to drinking water, visit greatlakesnow.org.

When the COVID-19 lockdowns took hold in 2020, we brought you the story of how three aquariums around the Great Lakes and the animals that live there were handling all the changes.

A year later, we decided to check back in and see how they're doing now.

- [Nick] The Shedd Aquarium in Chicago is once again open to visitors.

- We see all kinds of school groups or camps that come to visit Shedd Aquarium, they're people of all ages that are visiting us.

Throughout the pandemic, we were able to engage people, even though they weren't on site, through social media, in different virtual programs.

We launched a program called Stay Home with Shedd.

It was a video series that initially launched with Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and it gave people a behind-the-scenes look at our animal care and health practices.

- [Nick] The pandemic also created a rather famous social media star, a penguin named Wellington.

- Wellington the penguin has become somewhat famous for the field trips that him and several other penguins at Shedd went through throughout the pandemic.

- [Nick] So while we humans may have had our travel restricted during the pandemic, Wellington and his friends were experiencing some newfound freedom, visiting parts of the aquarium that would normally have been off-limits because of crowds.

They also had a chance to get out and explore greater Chicago.

- They visited places like the Field Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Arts.

The penguin adventures throughout Chicago received a really great worldwide response.

We heard from people all over the world about how much joy these penguin field trips were bringing them.

- [Nick] Like many aquariums, Shedd was concerned about the impact the lack of visitors might have on the animals.

Were they relieved or bored?

Did they even notice?

- Anecdotally, a lot of our animal caretakers who are here day in and day out throughout the pandemic, they had shared that they noticed some differences in behaviors with some of the animals.

- [Nick] So Shedd Aquarium researchers decided to try and determine if the animals missed seeing visitors.

Austin Happel is a research biologist at Shedd.

- So what we were doing is taking water samples out of the habitats that the fish live in.

And from that water sample, we're actually able to look at hormones, and these hormones are released by fish whether they're excited, maybe they're going into spawning mode, or maybe they're stressed out.

And what we were able to do is kind of compare those hormones when guests were not in the building to the levels of those hormones when guests were in the building.

- [Nick] So what did the study reveal?

- They don't seem to care that we're here or not, at least with this study's outcome, or at least at the moment.

- [Nick] But according to Shedd researchers, there is still a lot to learn about fish behavior.

- I think anecdotally people are noticing that the fish seem pretty excited when people come to the aquarium and see them.

You can see some of the fish come swim up to you and kind of see what you're doing, and why are you here?

So there's some of those behavioral responses we're seeing.

- [Nick] At the Aquatarium in Brockville, Ontario, their first concern during the pandemic was feeding and caring for the animals.

- It was all about making sure that we had enough food on site because in the beginning it was really difficult to get some foods and even just to have them transported here.

So just stocking up on foods for the animals was a big priority.

- [Nick] They also realized that they needed to change their training methods to protect the animals.

- Our otters especially are susceptible to getting COVID, so we needed to change our training methods.

So we no longer used a whistle, which was our daily routine.

Instead, we were just making noises behind our masks to emulate that sound of a whistle so that we can continue training and giving them the enrichment that they needed.

- [Nick] The Aquatarium started virtual tours that included a live component that gave viewers a behind-the-scenes look at otter training.

- So they got to go live with our otters and see how they were trained and just learn a little bit more about them and what we do with them and how much we love them.

So it was a great overall experience for our guests, as well as for us.

- [Nick] The tours were so successful that the Aquatarium has created a special virtual experience just for elementary school students.

- Grade one to grade six was kind of our target audience, and it was called Adventures Behind the Scenes.

And so we really focused on the animals and the animal husbandry team and the things that they do and the fun, quirky things they like to see and do with the animals.

- [Nick] The Aquatarium plans to continue doing virtual tours and may even expand the age of their audience.

- I think in the off season, we're gonna continue to offer them to schools and other groups such as seniors' residences, for instance, 'cause they don't necessarily have a chance to get out, so this is a way for us to reach them.

- [Nick] Although they have had great success virtually, they say there's nothing like the feeling of having visitors back in the building.

- It's loud and it's busy, and there's so many people, and there's smiles all over the place.

It just really brings joy back into the building.

And it's an awesome feeling.

- [Nick] The oldest aquarium in the country, the Belle Isle Aquarium in Detroit, spent the lockdown sprucing up.

- During that time, we spent about $1.2 million to renovate exhibits, especially in the background, new filtration systems, we've added exhibits and refurbished almost every exhibit we've had while we were closed.

- [Nick] The aquarium also added a garden eel exhibit and eight new saltwater tanks that feature a variety of visitor favorites like clown fish.

They have new freshwater fish, like the African Butterfly Fish and Elephant Nose Fish.

And they created enrichment programs designed to provide stimulation for the animals.

- I had to actually do different things to create something for them to look at.

I would change their environment.

I actually have hissing cockroaches that I used to let walk on the glass.

I would draw on the glass with paint markers just to keep the animals stimulated 'cause in nature they have constant stimulation.

- [Nick] The Bell Isle Aquarium also started a series of virtual classroom events.

- We were doing in-person field trips before the pandemic, and rather than leave the teachers in a lurch that are trying to teach, we took our field trips and presented them virtually.

And then we started doing live virtual events for classrooms where the classroom would tune in to the aquarium and our staff, and they would walk around and do their presentations live, and then take questions from the children.

- In part two, we learned about decomposers and how they continue the flow of energy for the ecosystem.

- [Nick] Belle Isle plans to continue their virtual learning events and is now welcoming teachers back to educational programs at the aquarium.

For those who work there, the effort is all worth it when they see visitors enjoying the exhibits.

- It's really exciting 'cause we put a lot of work in this aquarium, and with no one here to see it, it was just kind of sad.

So I am so excited to have people enjoy these fish like I do.

(upbeat music) - 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.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] This program is brought to you by the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Laurie and Tim Wadhams.

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, Eve and Jerry Jung, the Americana Foundation, the Brookby Foundation, Founders Brewing Company, and viewers like you.

Thank you.

(upbeat music)