Northern Wilds

The chances are slim, but if you are boating on Lake Superior this summer and come across a six-foot-long, yellow, torpedo-shaped device floating in the water, don’t worry. It’s not a weapon; it’s an instrument of science.

The device, called a Webb Electric Glider in formal circles and Gitchigami by its friends, is helping scientists to better understand the lake by collecting data. It belongs to the University of Minnesota Duluth’s Large Lakes Observatory (LLO). The glider measures water temperatures and conductivity. The glider’s keeper, assistant professor Jay Austin, has his phone number imprinted on the glider, just in case anyone stumbles upon it and has questions.

Austin purchased the glider in 2007 with the help of the National Science Foundation. After inland lake testing, he released his $74,000 baby into the wilds of Lake Superior in fall of 2009. Austin likened the glider’s deployment off the decks of the LLO’s research vessel, the R/V Blue Heron, to sending a kid off to the first day of kindergarten.

“It was nerve-wracking,” Austin said.

The glider moves by taking on and releasing water. A compass helps it navigate and it communicates with Austin via satellites and computer. The glider can dive to depths up to 600 feet and surfaces every few hours to receive new instructions or to transmit data. It also stores data for downloading once it completes its mission.

The batteries that power it can last longer than 30 days, but Austin is not positive because, “We haven’t run it for that long yet. It’s only been out a total of 24 days right now, and it looks like we still have about ten days of battery power left.”

Although gliders have been used in saltwater oceans for many years, Gitchigami’s 2009 deployment was a first in freshwater history. “And there are still no other gliders in the Great Lakes,” Austin said. That historic event was made possible by funding from the Great Lakes Observing System (GLOS), a non-profit organization dedicated to providing access to data of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway system. Austin hopes to use the glider to conduct research that, for instance, will aid fisheries managers to develop a better understanding of the physical environment where the fish live.

“The glider itself doesn’t take any fundamentally different measurements relative to other sampling devices like a mooring buoy or an instrument dragged behind a boat,” Austin said. Rather, it provides high-resolution cross-section views of temperature and depth profiles, like an MRI does for body parts.

It’s also cheaper. “With a boat, you can’t afford to stay out there for two weeks when it costs thousands of dollars per day,” Austin said. “That is what makes this a real game-changer as far as how we’re studying the lake.”

During June or July in 2010, Austin will deploy Gitchigami in the western arm of Lake Superior, probably off the coast of Two Harbors and along the South Shore. If more funding comes through from GLOS, the glider will go in lakes Michigan (near Milwaukee) and Huron.