Saildrone returns from Great Lakes journey: A silent vessel's mission to gather valuable fish population data
Published: Friday, October 20, 2023 12:00 pm
By: Heather Bricca, Up North Live
CHARLEVOIX COUNTY, Mich., (WPBN/WGTU) -- An autonomous quiet vessel that has been traveling across the Great Lakes is back on dry land. Saildrone's mission to gather data began in June.
We're here in Charlevoix and on last Wednesday we were fortunate enough to capture Saildrone being towed underneath the drawbridge after more than 50 days of collecting valuable data on the fish population in the Great Lakes.
"We got great-quality data, it went in all the places that we needed it to. It's always subject to the wind availability. So if it's a windy day and moves quickly, and if it's not windy, it doesn't have a propeller," said Peter Esselman, United States Geological Survey Fisheries biologist.
This was the bright orange 23-foot long boat that is only powered by wind and sun and because it's quiet, it doesn't scare fish away.
"The noise has been shown in other places to scare fish away from the place where we're trying to count them. So obviously, there's a conflict there potentially," said Esselman. "But Saildrone offers a basically quiet operation and they can carry the same environmental sensors and sonar, so they can count fish with Saildrone in the absence of noise."
Its voyage started in Charlevoix, spending time in Lake Michigan and Lake Huron before returning home.
"This was the first year we were able to access parts of Lake Huron that hadn't been accessed before with this technology. So for instance, the North Channel is in you know, tucked up there in northern Lake Huron, it's very hard to access through some very narrow channels," said Esselman. "We actually had to tow Saildrone into the North Channel, and the North Channel always has lots of fish in it."
Saildrone also made its way to the Georgian Bay in Canadian waters.
The big picture of this project is to better understand where the prey fish are in the lakes and how many.
"We're really trying to improve our annual assessment work and what our annual assessments are every year now for going on 50 years, we've been trying to monitor the status of prey fish," Esselman said. "Which is basically the food availability to predators in the lakes and we're always trying to improve the way we do that."
It's gathering all of this data for several agencies.
"This is a massive collaborative effort between the U.S. Geological Survey and the Fish and Wildlife Service in the state of Michigan, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry Commission," said Esselman. "There's many, many individuals and scientists involved."
Saildrone and U.S.G.S. are in year three of a four-year-long project of collecting valuable data on the Great Lakes.
Esselman says that they are at a turning point in their project where the data will tell us whether Saildrone gives them improvements over the traditional vessel-based data after assessing three years worth of data.
tags: Education, Environmental Impact, Fishing, Great Lakes
