by: Christine Gregory

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is collecting data to assess the health and quality of Lake Ontario from April to September using two large research vessels. One of them was docked at the port of Rochester Thursday afternoon.

Megan O’Brien, a Physical Scientist with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says that monitoring the Great Lakes is essential to protect and restore these large bodies of water that are so prevalent in our daily lives, and this year the focus is on Rochester’s own Lake Ontario. 

“This is the EPA’s 40th year of monitoring the Great Lakes. We do this aboard the research vessel, Lake Guardian. We monitor all five of the Great Lakes. This year, however, is the focus year of Lake Ontario so we’ve spent quite a bit of time here at the Port of Rochester,” says O’Brien.

Over a span of six months the various equipment on board allows them to look at everything from ecosystems to different organisms, and especially the focus of this year’s study, which is sediments in the deep lake waters.

“Sediments gives you a unique opportunity to look back into time through sediment cores you can kind of peel back layers of history one centimeter at a time,” says O’Brien.

Keeping track of both the history and overall health of the water is something that Owen Stefaniak with the U.S. Geological Survey says would not be possible without the Lake Guardian, whose focus on board is keeping track of mercury levels on the lakebed.  

“It’s long days, hard work, but really rewarding. It’s an incredible platform to get out to these deep parts of the lake that smaller vessels can’t reach,” says Stefaniak.

Even Graduate students such as Jake Zunker from the University of Minnesota Duluth get a chance to compare the results from Lake Ontario to other neighboring lakes such as Lake Superior. 

“There are a lot of things that aren’t well understood about these lakes particularly. In the sediments a lot of research has been done in the water column and not a whole lot is known about the composition of the sediments, the chemistry that’s down there,” says Zunker.  

The Great Lakes Research Initiative that’s helping to fund this project has all kinds of work being done that includes tracking habitats, storm water runoff, and invasive species management.

(Source: https://www.rochesterfirst.com/)