A wild rice stand on the Peshtigo River. Image credit: Marie Zhuikov, Wisconsin Sea Grant

The calendar has flipped to 2024. Our staff members are already tackling new projects. Before they move too deeply into the new year, however, some staff members took a moment to retain the glow of their favorite 2023 project. Titus Seilheimer, fisheries outreach specialist, shared his thoughts.

Call it manoomin (the “good berry”). Call it wild rice. Call it Zizania. Whatever you call it, it is a great plant species! My favorite group of projects from 2023 revolves around wild rice restoration along the west shore of Green Bay and in several rivers in Manitowoc County.

Hundreds of years ago, wild rice was abundant in the Great Lakes region, from what is now Milwaukee Harbor to all over Green Bay. Development and settlement led to declines in habitat and water quality, and associated declines in wild rice. Wild rice is an important staple for the Indigenous people of the region, with the Menominee named for it, “People of the Wild Rice.”

Titus Seilheimer (far side) and Amy Carrozzino-Lyon (left) and her crew use a seine net to capture fish for counting in a Green Bay wetlands near Marinette. Image credit: Marie Zhuikov, Wisconsin Sea Grant

For the second year, I have worked with Amy Carrozzino-Lyon, a professor at UW Green Bay. Amy leads the wild rice restoration project in Green Bay. We have been looking at fish use and fish assemblage in locations with and without wild rice in Green Bay coastal marshes. We had a great team this summer of college students (Sea Grant summer outreach scholars), high school students (Freshwater Collaborative of Wisconsin funding through UW-Green Bay) and colleagues. We set nets and pulled seines. We waited out a storm in the back of the truck and had some great times on the water.

As the weather cooled, we also planned for seeding wild rice, which is an annual plant. Although the seeds are ripe and harvested in late August to early September, seeding success is better later in the season. This keeps hungry migratory waterfowl and other species from chowing down on all the seed. We stored the rice seed underwater until late October to early November.

I helped the UW-Green Bay team with educational seeding events with the Great Lakes Explorers and the Menominee Indian High School. I also planned seeding in various ponds and habitats at Woodland Dunes Nature Center in Two Rivers. We seeded about an acre on a snowy day and the team at Woodland Dunes seeded another three acres in the West Twin River on a better weather day. We also seeded an acre of marsh in the Little Manitowoc River.

It was a great year for wild rice projects for the Manitowoc Field Office! Now, the long winter-wait to see how much germinates in the spring.

 

The post Tossing seeds and measuring fishes first appeared on Wisconsin Sea Grant.

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https://www.seagrant.wisc.edu/blog/tossing-seeds-and-measuring-fishes/

Titus Seilheimer

Researchers from UW-Green Bay deploy a seine net in a Lake Michigan bay. Image credit: Marie Zhuikov, Wisconsin Sea Grant

There’s nothing fishy about wanting to learn about colleagues’ projects more deeply, while also spending time with far-flung co-workers, right? Or is there? The numbers below—fish measurements in centimeters—were in fact, so fishy.

Bullhead, 26

Banded killifish, 23

Yellow perch, 60

Madtom catfish, 33

Titus Seilheimer shows a bullhead to Noah Hoffman (left) and to members of the Wisconsin Sea Grant communications team at Seagull Bar State Natural Area on Lake Michigan. Image credit: Marie Zhuikov, Wisconsin Sea Grant

On an early August trip to the Seagull Bar State Natural Area on Lake Michigan, five members of the Sea Grant communications team (including me) were exposed to this count and what sounded like the recitation of another, decidedly piscivorous language.

As glorious sunshine streamed down in the sheltered small bay, our co-worker, Sea Grant Fisheries Specialist Titus Seilheimer, called out fish names and proportions. He had collected the fish, more than 100 in all, from both a 150-foot seine net and a fyke net.

In a neat hand and with a sharp pencil, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay Assistant Researcher Amy Carrozino-Lyon recorded the counts of species type and measurements on a sheet of paper. She will take the figures back to her campus office and add them to  previously collected data about fish species found in four areas with fresh beds of wild rice on the western shore of Green Bay for her study about the effect of wild rice on the ecosystem.

The full record of wild rice’s historic presence in the world’s fifth largest lake is murky, but it is known that this wild grass, revered by Indigenous people, grew for centuries at river mouths on the lake until development, varying water levels and pollution took a toll. Now, the plant prefers shallow waters with organic, soft sediment and clear water that isn’t frequently or extremely stirred. 

Amy Carrozino-Lyon is collecting data about fish species found in four areas with fresh beds of wild rice on the western shore of Green Bay for her study about the effect of wild rice on the ecosystem. Image credit: Marie Zhuikov

Carrozino-Lyon has been restoring the stands of gracefully swaying rice, purchasing seed by the truckload and fostering nearly 40 acres of habitat. This year (2022) marks the seventh year of her efforts.

Wild rice’s effect on the ecosystem is also being checked by her two students, Noah Hoffmann and Colin Ritchie. That day, these bright young men, both students at UW-Green Bay, gave us lessons in dragonfly larvae growth, crayfish identification and the differences between native and nonnative aquatic plants.

This is all good stuff to us because we write and edit stories, post on social media and create videos and podcasts about the wonders of the Great Lakes. It was a hands-on tutorial for those of us who typically deal in words, audio and images, not slippery fish and underwater bugs.

It was also a chance to meet with our co-worker, Science Communicator Marie Zhuikov, who is based in Superior while we remaining four communicators, including Bonnie Willison and Jennifer Smith, are based in an office in Madison.

The trip not only connected us in person with valued colleagues Zhuikov and Seilheimer, but it also further proved to be a day to observe a fish count, marvel at nature’s beauty and contemplate a place where wild rice can flourish once more.

 

The post A pretty fishy work experience first appeared on Wisconsin Sea Grant.

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Moira Harrington

Teacher mentor program connects both teachers and students

Teachers with a passion for the Great Lakes are sharing their expertise across the region with other teachers in a program that benefits the educators and their students. The mentor program, organized by the Center for Great Lakes Literacy (CGLL), is funded through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

Wisconsin is home to five teacher mentor/mentee pairs. They’re organized by Anne Moser, senior special librarian and education coordinator for Wisconsin Sea Grant. She explained that this is the first formal year of the program and that it’s growing.

“The teachers we chose for mentoring are really dynamic Great Lakes educators,” Moser said. “They’re so committed to bringing place-based education to their students and then sharing that love for Great Lakes literacy with either colleagues in their school or with their wider community.”

The mentors were chosen from a pool of teachers who had participated in past CGLL programs. Moser explained these teachers are always, “thinking through the lens of the Great Lakes. Whatever they’re teaching, they’re drawing on their knowledge of the watershed.”

The program kicked off last June with a two-day workshop where the mentors and mentees got to know each other better and plan which activities they wanted to work on. A check-in this past fall included a professional learning opportunity, featuring a presentation by Jackson Parr, the J. Philip Keillor Flood Resilience-Wisconsin Sea Grant Fellow who is working with communities on flooding issues. In January of this year, the teachers were introduced to the Watershed Game, an interactive, educational tool that helps people understand the connection between land use and water quality.

Kelly Kollar, Bay View Middle School. Submitted photo.

One of the mentors is Kelly Koller, technology integration specialist at Bay View Middle School in Green Bay. She actually has two mentees: Mona Forbes, an eighth-grade science teacher, and Chandra Johnson, a special education teacher.

Koller first became involved in mentoring when she applied to one of the CGLL summer professional learning workshop aboard the Denis Sullivan sailing ship in 2019. That experience showed her the value of such relationships. For her current mentoring connection, she’s working with Forbes and Johnson to provide their students with opportunities like raising brown trout in the school library and growing wild rice plants.

Koller works in the library and thought the fish would be a great addition. “We didn’t have any pieces of student engagement that were living. Everything is books and decorations, and I thought fish would be an addition that would capture students’ interest.”

Koller organized the fish rearing through Trout in the Classroom, a program offered by Trout Unlimited. By raising the fish from egg stage to adult, the students gain knowledge about the fish and the environment where they live. The goal is to release the trout into a local stream, under the guidance of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

The wild rice project is being done in conjunction with the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, which provided the seeds and equipment. The goal is to plant the rice in a wetland the university is working to restore.

Brown trout raised in the library by students at Bay View Middle School in Green Bay. Submitted photo.

Koller explained she did the heavy lifting to get the projects started so that the weight of organizing didn’t all fall on the mentee teacher’s shoulders, since they had enough challenges already teaching during a pandemic. To orient Johnson’s students to the fish’s environment, she organized a boat trip on Green Bay through Hands on Deck, a local nonprofit.

“So, even before the students started putting together our trout tank and receiving the trout eggs, they were learning about the Great Lakes through being on one of them. Any time you have a shared outdoor experience it helps build relationships and a positive sense of community,” Koller said.

After navigating two months of start-up challenges, Koller received the agency permissions needed to house the tank. Johnson’s students set up the tank and then Forbes’s students took over once the eggs arrived. Three middle-schoolers have shown impressive dedication: Mercades Bryfczynski, Sandra Thompson and Emily Jarmuskiewicz.

Students at Bay View Middle School test the water quality of their trout tank. Submitted photo.

“They do all the water measurements on their own. They take the pH level, the ammonia level, they change out water daily. They’ve been just wonderful about the caretaking involved with the trout and seeing them grow,” Koller said.

Despite a rough start one weekend after the automatic feeder malfunctioned and a third of the larval trout died, the students said the experience of caring for the fish has made them more interested in nature.

“I’ve been having a little bit more fun in science, learning about the fish,” said Bryfczynski. She also said that seeing the tank sparks interest from other students in the library. “We’ve had people come in and ask us questions about the fish, like how big they’re going to get or how old they’re going to live, and what we do with the tank.”

Jarmuskiewicz said that learning about the fish’s life cycle has sparked her interest in biology. Thompson has also enjoyed watching the fish grow under their care.

When asked if they are excited to release the fish into the wild, the girls all replied with a resounding, “Yes!”

“We hope that they’ll be healthy because they grew up healthy with us, and that they’ll stay healthy in the river once we release them,” Bryfczynski said.

A student tends to the wild rice in a project done in conjunction with the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Submitted photo.

At the end of the school year, Moser said the mentor/mentees and their students will gather together for a student showcase. This will offer the students an opportunity to present their project and receive feedback from other students across Wisconsin and Minnesota. In summer, mentor/mentee pairs will be invited to their own summit where they can provide the CGLL network feedback about their experiences. The goal of both events is to build a community of educators passionate about Great Lakes literacy and to build a community of youth who will be future stewards of the Great Lakes watershed.

“It’s been an exciting year, even as we have had to navigate the challenges of a global pandemic. To work with such passionate and resilient educators has been a gift,” Moser said.

A new mentor/mentee cohort will be formed in the fall of 2022. Please contact Anne Moser if you are interested in learning more.

The post Thinking through the lens of the Great Lakes first appeared on Wisconsin Sea Grant.

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Marie Zhuikov