By Eve Wackett

The Great Lakes Center for Environmental Research and Education is performing research and meeting with the Great Lakes Commission and others to determine why Lake Erie is dying again. (www.buffalostate.edu/orgs/glc/) Lake Erie, the shallowest of the Great Lakes, was once deemed the place where “fish go to die” by talk show host Johnny Carson.

Captain John Freidhoff, the field station manager at the Buffalo State Great Lakes Field Office on Porter Avenue said, beginning in March meetings will take place with the commission and several research missions are scheduled to determine the “actual chemistry of the water.” Funding is already in place for the research and budget cuts should not affect the work to be done.

“We will begin to take water samples at various depths as well as bottom samples to measure for oxygen, temperature, pH levels, chlorophyll and other factors,” he said. “We will enter the data into the GIS mapping program to analyze the results and compare the results with other data collected from the commission and others.” (www.great-lakes.net/gis)

Thirty years ago, the United States and Canada signed the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, an agreement to protect and clean the Great Lakes. (www.epa.gov/water/yearofcleanwater) (www.binational.net)

Since the agreement was signed the Great Lakes have cleaned up considerably. Yet this past summer researchers discovered a growing dead zone (www.epa.gov/glnpo/lakeerie/eriedead
zone.html), an area depleted of oxygen, where life struggles to survive. (www.on.ec.gc.ca/water/
greatlakes/lakes/erie/intro-e.html)

The dead zone covers an area more than 6,300 square miles spanning from Erie, Pa to Sandusky, Ohio, in the central basin of Lake Erie. Several factors may be related and contribute to the dead zone. (www.on.ec.gc.ca/laws/coa/2001/lake-erie-e.html)

• An invasion of non-native species such as zebra and quagga mussels, sea lampreys, round gobies and Asian carp contribute to biological pollution.
• Biological pollution rather than chemical pollution may be the main reason for the dead zone today.
• Avian botulism cases involved more than 5,500 birds. These birds were collected along the Lake Erie shoreline last year. The birds eat the fish that may have been exposed to botulism from decaying algae.
• An increased level of phosphorous has been measured in the lake. Phosphorous levels were the reason for Lake Erie’s death in the 1960s and 1970s.
• The phosphorous excreted from the mussels feed the algae, the algae dies, falls to the bottom of the lake, the dead algae decompose causing botulism and other diseases.
• The decaying of plant and animal life use up the oxygen they need to survive.
• Global warming effects.