Disclaimer: This is an automated transcript, we apologize for any errors. If you notice any problems, please email the show at teachmeaboutthegreatlakes@gmail.com. Thank you.

Stuart Carlton 0:00
teach me about the Great Lakes. Teach me about the Great Lakes. Welcome back to teach me about the Great Lakes a twice monthly podcast in which I A Great Lakes novice as people who are smarter and harder working than I am to teach me all about the Great Lakes. My name is Stuart Carlton and I work with Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. And I'm fortunate so fortunate to be joined by my good friend Carolyn Foley. Carolyn, what's up?

Carolyn Foley 0:25
Not much, Stuart. I, yeah, not much. How are you?

Stuart Carlton 0:32
I'm fine. Yep. Ask a stupid question. Get a stupid answer. No, I'm doing good. Actually. I'm doing quite good. Because I'm really excited about today's episode. And we'll get into that. But first, there's a little bit going on. I want to start off x, we have some breaking news right now hold on.

This is this is just in and check the box Jason on that song. But we have a cold brewed 10 a brute 10 update. And that is so behind the scenes here listener. So I do a lot of work. Basically, I just listened to the awesome team. Every now and again. Now what I will do is I'll say You know what, no, I'm gonna exert a little bit of leverage here. And so one of those leverage points was I really wanted to talk with Jessica were about the brute 10 cicadas. And it seems like you know, it's not really great legs. I mean, she seems great, but whatever. And I was like, no, no, we're going to talk to Jessica we're rising superstar. And I've really fond memories of the last brood 10 breeding cycle in 2004, because my wife was in law school, and I came up and went to a bunch of concerts and heard this okay to whatever. So alright, we're gonna do and so we had this big Episode Episode. I'll link to in the show notes. I don't I don't know numbers a couple of weeks ago. And she was great. Jessica was awesome. And since then, she's been on like CBS News and NPR. So I was right total Rockstar. And brew 10 in West Lafayette, Indiana, my kids and I we got all excited about it all fired up, we got like our little bug boxes and our magnifying glasses. And we learned about the fungus that makes your butt disappear and like all of this stuff, and we didn't get any roots where I was. And I reminded that today because our annual cicadas are out in force, and I had to change my podcast location or recording setup a little bit otherwise it would just be so that is the brewed 10 update total boss. So I exerted a lot of leverage for basically nothing, which is my managerial style. And like,

Carolyn Foley 2:34
no, that's not accurate. It's not I mean, maybe like your plan locally, but people learned lots of great stuff from that show it

Stuart Carlton 2:44
did and Bruton was a big deal in lots of places just not here in Lafayette is

Carolyn Foley 2:48
outside of the Great Lakes Basin too. So

Stuart Carlton 2:51
I mean, technically speaking, to draw him which brew 10 action up in whatever city in Michigan you're in, I can't remember.

Carolyn Foley 2:57
So so. So it's more than annual ones that are that are going now to which I actually said the other day, like don't ever make me live in a place that doesn't have cicadas because I love them. Alright.

Stuart Carlton 3:08
That sounds good. I think one other place the one other place where I've exerted leverage, other than all the other places that I'm sure buddy would tell me about that I don't perceive as exerting what because that's privilege, right? Is the the lake ease our annual award show, which is maybe the best idea I've ever had it was it was borrowed from another podcast, but that's okay. So at the end of the year, we're gonna have an award ceremony that we're calling possibly not the least prestigious, Great Lakes related awards show that there is and it's gonna be the lake East. But we need your help listener, we need you to submit nominations and categories ranging from like science communication piece of the air, you know, scientific research of the year. What else is in their sandwich of the year, of course, Great Lakes news of the year, and a couple of big ones, Great Lakes animal of the year and Great Lakes non animal of the year are some other big ones. And so those are things that aren't animals, Carolyn, is you're giving me a befuddled, look. We want people to vote on the Great Lakes non animal of the year. And so anyway, to do that, what you're gonna do is you're looking at the show notes, we got the link, but but you can go to bitly.com/linkys 21, that's L A Kie s 21. And submit your nominations. We've already gotten quite a few nominations, some really great, some really interesting in by a variety of definitions of that term. Interesting. Yeah. All interesting. Yes. And so go but go to bitly.com/like. He's 21 and submit, and get fired up about the linkys. Once the award ceremony is here later in the year, probably probably November, December. We'll go from that. So anyway, that's the big news. Up at the front, we got breaking news, we got Lake ease, and my understanding is we also have a Great Lakes factoids. So if I can figure out the thing, it's a great lakes factoids, a Great Lakes factoid, it's a great factoid about the Great Lakes, Chad. Carolyn, you have a great lakes factoid for us. What should

Carolyn Foley 5:05
I do? So our guest today that we'll be bringing on in just a second is from the Wisconsin Maritime Museum. And so my Great Lakes factoid is that there are between 6000. And there are definitely over 6000 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. And there are some estimates that they are as high as 10,000 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, which is both fascinating and a little bit sad. And just something that captures the imaginations of many people. So that's my factory.

Stuart Carlton 5:38
That is a really interesting factory six to 10,000. I think that would be surprising to a lot of people, not to a lot of people. But there's just a lot of shipping, right? Shipping. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Well, let's actually then little jump right into our guest, because she does a museum or she doesn't do a museum. She's the executive director of a museum related to maritime history. You could if you wanted to call it a maritime history museum. So we'll welcome on our guests right after this little bit of transitional music.

Our guest today is Kathy green. Kathy is the executive director of the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, Kathy, how are you today?

Cathy Green 6:26
Hey, I'm great. How are you?

Stuart Carlton 6:28
I'm really good. I'm so glad to be talking to someone who works for a museum, generally, and more specifically a Maritime Museum, which is not something that I initially would associated with the area. I'm learning more and more though, thanks, this podcast another thing, so I'm not as surprised as I would have been a year ago. But I'm doing. So let's actually start with the basics like, so you're at the Wisconsin merit Maritime Museum. How did you get there? How do you get that kind of work? Exactly? Yeah,

Cathy Green 6:51
well, you know, coming here to the Maritime Museum is a culmination of, oh gosh, over 25 years in the museum, and maritime heritage field. I've been working for over 20 years here in the Great Lakes, mostly, as a Marine archaeologist and researcher studying shipwrecks here in the Great Lakes, which is one of our Of course, featured cultural maritime cultural resources, right? So working with telling those stories, whether it's drafting shipwrecks on the bottom, or, you know, putting together an exhibit in the museum, it's all kind of related

Carolyn Foley 7:29
to what do you mean by drafting shipwrecks on the bottom? Oh, yeah.

Cathy Green 7:33
So. So as an archaeologist and an underwater archaeologist, you know, you're, you use different tools than if you were excavating a site on land, right. But the same principles apply, you're looking to, to document what a site looks like, how its laid out across the bottom, and what it contains. So to do that, you can use all kinds of tools, you can go old school with a pencil and a piece of waterproof paper and measuring tape, which is how we always start. But then the really cool thing nowadays is you can use all these high tech tools like digital photography, photogrammetry. So you can get representations of exactly what a shipwreck looks like underwater. So you don't necessarily have to dive to, you know, 200 feet, if that's not your thing. We can gather that information and pass it on to you, the citizens, whether it's in an online feature, whether it's in an exhibit, whether it's in a publication, there's lots of ways to get this information out.

Carolyn Foley 8:44
So you mean drafting, like, hard schools, like with the T square and stuff like that, right? Yeah.

Cathy Green 8:50
Yeah. It's, it's awesome. It is, it is the most fun part of what you do as a Marine archaeologist. A lot of the work comes in with historical research ahead of time, and then with processing data afterwards. But yeah, you're you're have your scuba gear on and you're down there as a team, mapping your little piece of a shipwreck and you're taking measurements, you're creating sketches. And then you bring that back to the lab and and draw it up. So you have that scale representation,

Stuart Carlton 9:20
welcoming, and you've done this kind of throughout the Great Lakes. Are there any like cool place that where's the coolest place? You've been? I guess, Oh, gosh.

Cathy Green 9:26
So I've worked for the state of Wisconsin here for a number of years, and then I worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Marine Sanctuary program up on Lake Huron, but because that programs linked to a whole series of sites around the country and around the world, I did get the opportunity to dive some other places. So diving out in the Pacific and the northwest Hawaiian Islands, and Midway Attell and all those places out there that that was that was pretty amazing. The Great Lakes are fantastic. But it's hard to be, you know, the natural aquarium of a marine protected area in the middle of the Pacific. That's fair.

Carolyn Foley 10:10
We, we sometimes give grief to our secret colleagues, but that's totally fair.

Cathy Green 10:16
Although, although I will, you know, the Great Lakes far and away, surpass anywhere else I've ever been in the world as far as the state of preservation of the sights. Yeah, so the cold freshwater here in the Great Lakes is a great environment to preserve, you know, the materials, a 1870 ship would be made out of wood, iron, you know, and organic materials of all kinds. So it's, it's like putting the wreck in a in a big freezer. So it it verse, it really does kind of freeze the wreck in time?

Stuart Carlton 10:59
Why is that? Is that? Is that because of the chemistry or no salt? What's the I mean, what's the deal with it?

Cathy Green 11:04
Yeah, all so a number of things. So number one, no salt. So that's much better for anything. Metal, right? iron steel, much happier here. So for example, for a shipwreck, you know, from, say, the 1870s out in the ocean, all of the metal would be completely concreted, and, you know, largely eaten away except the most robust things and you just kind of would have an outline or a concretion of of things to show you what what was there, right. And then wood and warm saltwater would be completely eaten away if it was exposed by little marine animals, Teredo worms, wood boring organisms that that like to eat wood, here in the Great Lakes, we don't have that. So again, you could have something that was sitting on the bottom, that was, say, 130 foot schooner, with the mass still standing with the lifeboat on the rail, you know, virtually looking like it was sailing through the sand on the bottom. It's it's incredible. You find that very, very, very few places in the world. And so we have that here. And it's preserved these wrecks like like nowhere else.

Stuart Carlton 12:22
Oh, that's amazing. And if listeners are interested in finding out more about marine archaeology, we actually recorded an episode with Stephanie Gargiulo of the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary sanctuary.

Cathy Green 12:32
Yeah, we were we were colleagues for years, Stephanie's a great archaeologist. We actually went to the same graduate program. And and yeah, there's there's fascinating stuff out there for Wisconsin shipwrecks. I would recommend folks go to Wisconsin shipwrecks.org, which is the state site that looks at the submerged cultural resources here in Wisconsin. They've got some fantastic archaeologists, on staff here at the State of Wisconsin out of Madison, and the Wisconsin Historical Society, and they've done a fantastic job with documentation through the years. So a great place to explore that. But of course, shipwrecks only one thing that that we feature here at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum, it's so easy to get like sidetrack on the shipwreck thing.

Stuart Carlton 13:22
Thank you for doing that hard work. Yes.

Cathy Green 13:24
Yeah. Yeah.

Stuart Carlton 13:26
We're one question into our outline. And I've already got us off off way off. This is why you are executive director and I am nothing. Yes. So you do future

Carolyn Foley 13:35
assistant director?

Stuart Carlton 13:38
Yes, let's let's return back to the museum. First of all, let's let's go. Maritime Museum in Wisconsin. That is a little counterintuitive, right? Oh, there's a lot of shipping and things like that. But how did the museum get started? And why is it cited kind of where it is?

Cathy Green 13:51
Yeah. So you know, you would think like a maritime in the museum in the Midwest would be a weird thing. But it happens that the Great Lakes are one of the business busiest shipping lanes in the world. And at the end of the 19th century, in the early 20th century. It was the busiest ports in the country. We're here on the Great Lakes. And when you think about it, cities like Chicago, Detroit, Green Bay, Milwaukee, Duluth, they couldn't be here if it wasn't for the transportation superhighway of the Great Lakes that allowed those places and the people that settled them to have some way to get there and then have goods to get back out. So there are you know, this, this is a very maritime place. And Manitowoc is a very maritime community. So we're located about halfway between Milwaukee and Green Bay on that mid Lake Michigan coastline. And we've been a center have been a center for shipbuilding since the Early 1800s. So whether it was fishing schooners, all the way up to, you know, 730 foot bulk freighters. Over the years. Manitowoc has kind of been that hub of shipbuilding in Wisconsin.

Carolyn Foley 15:17
Is there still shipbuilding that happens today.

Cathy Green 15:21
There is there is that we still have an active shipbuilding community here. Burger boats is still operational. They build luxury yachts and tour boats and things like that. Because ships got larger and larger. In the shipyards, we're all on the river here on the Manitowoc river. You know, we kind of outsized ourself, and so the major centers that shipbuilding here in Wisconsin these days are Sturgeon Bay and up in in Marinette, right on the the Michigan border, which, I mean, they still have huge contracts today. But we still actively have shipbuilding here and the former sites of the shipyards have kind of retooled and are used for other industries. So we have the former site, one of the former sites of a shipyard now makes huge huge cranes for shipyards. Then they assemble them here and then they take them out by barge, we have another company that makes windmill parts. And again, they assemble them here and they take them out by water. So we're still using the the lake as that conduit to move goods in and out of Manitowoc.

Stuart Carlton 16:40
So when you weren't like the shipbuilding capital of the Great Lakes or whatever, like so, when the ships only for within Great Lakes travel or was this for you know, that we'd go out to sea, I guess, through I mean, eventually, was it would have been the St. Lawrence Seaway or depending on time, your Erie Canal, whatever, I haven't gotten that far in depth, the likes of the Great Lakes had to fully know all about that stuff. But but so is that what it was, was it for all over just for the Great Lakes?

Cathy Green 17:03
Yeah, mostly for the Great Lakes, mostly for the Great Lakes, because you know, different kinds of ships are, are going to be better for different kinds of transportation, but not necessarily. A lot of the vessels here could have been used anywhere in the world. And in fact, one of the features of our museum here is highlighting the submarine building heritage here in Manitowoc. So during World War Two, when the US when the Navy was looking for places to contract to make submarines, diesel submarines for the war effort, Manitowoc was one of those places, our shipyards, were some of the most cutting edge in the country. And so we were able to quickly retool, to turn out the submarines very quickly. During World War Two, we actually built 28 of them right here. And we have a ghetto class sub here today. That's kind of the central feature of the museum, to memorialize and to illustrate the Sumerian building heritage here in the Great Lakes,

Stuart Carlton 18:16
and so that's the cobia. Is that the cobia?

Cathy Green 18:19
That's the cobia. Yeah. And cobia actually, was built out in Connecticut. So that was the other place that they were building the submarines. And so 52 years ago, when folks in Manitowoc came together and wanted to get one of these subs to have here as a submarine Memorial. They looked around they there was not a Manitowoc submarine available. However, cobia was just being decommissioned. And she had been in Milwaukee as a training vessel. So when she was decommissioned, they towed her up here to manage walk. And she has been here ever since. We started out just you know, focusing on that submarine building heritage. And then over the years, became the Manitowoc Maritime Museum and then the Wisconsin Maritime Museum. So over the course of that 50 plus years, we've grown in size with our facilities, but also in the scope of of our mission and what we interpret.

Carolyn Foley 19:16
So I kind of feel as you were saying, first Manitowoc, then Wisconsin, you're like

Cathy Green 19:26
you never know. You never know you can say you do us way back when when we were just the Wisconsin Maritime Museum. You know, it's funny, though, that maritime history, it's all pretty interrelated. You know, you can go to a maritime museum anywhere in the world. A lot of those same themes. A lot of those same tracks are going to stories are going to be told at those places. But what's what I find really interesting is those local or regional things that developed in particular areas And so when I go to a different Maritime Museum, of course, I drag my kids to every Maritime Museum we run across. But it's those regional differences that I like how ships were built differently, the different trades and kind of the different unique features of of that history. And of course, here, it's, it's the submarines and, you know, the story of turning out the summer and so quickly, within the matter of, you know, three or four months, they could, they could start one of these things and get them launched, they were having people working around the clock to build them, a lot of women, right, because many of the folks who traditionally be on the line were at war. And so it was, you know, a whole not just a whole town effort, but a whole regional effort. And then once they launched these boats to get them from Lake Michigan, out to the Pacific, right, any any Any guesses on on what route you would take to do that?

Stuart Carlton 21:03
The one I have, all I talked about now is Erie Canal and St. Lawrence Seaway. So those that those are my guesses. Okay, those are both wrong both wrong. Wisconsin, no idle, no hope no. Okay. So

Cathy Green 21:18
you go the other way. So you go through the Chicago canal. And down the Mississippi River. No kidding. Yeah, yeah. And because of the Sumerians, they were too deep to go through the canal and down the river as they were they built a floating drydock. So they would launch them here and do their sea trials and everything out like Michigan, and then they would put them in this floating drydock that that kind of, you know, lifted the bulk of them out of the water. And then they took them all the way down to the Gulf, relaunched in there and off, they went to the Pacific

Carolyn Foley 21:56
that is bonkers. That's awesome.

Cathy Green 21:59
Think about the engineering that had to take place. You know, it's It boggles my mind just walking through the sub, the engineering to make, at the time, what was probably the most complicated piece of machinery in the world, right. To, to put something like that together all the systems that needed to be there pre computer, right? Everything's digital, everything's analog, everything's, you know, knobs, gears, and all that kind of stuff. But even just to launch these vessels, they the shipyard was on the river, so you couldn't launch them traditionally, like, bow to stern sliding in the water, so they side launched them. And if you if you if you go to our website, you can see these historic photos of these launches, where it just looks like these ships were tipping over sideways into the river, it, it was it was fascinating. And it's it's fun to be able to retell those stories, both of making the subs, and then the stories of what the subs did during the war. And what cobia did during the war. She was on four different war tours saw a lot of action in the Pacific, seeking sinking Japanese vessels. And it's, it's just cool stuff. And, and this is, you know, one of my favorite parts. We've had volunteers and staff over the course of the last 52 years that have restored cobia pretty much to how she would have been during the war. So the electrical systems work, the radar works, the sonar works, the radios work, two of our four diesel engines still operate. So it's, it's fantastic. Everything's still there. And you know, nothing gives you nothing's a better kind of agent for storytelling than getting someone to walk through the space. Right. You can envision what it what it felt like what it smelled like, what it you know, the whole the whole thing. And it's, you know, it's, it's, it's a really cool thing, and a really unique, a unique experience. So again, like we've been doing this for for 52 years, but we're always trying to offer more ways for people to have access to the sub and to learn about that history.

Stuart Carlton 24:31
And it's always seen on your website, people can actually sleep on the cobia is that right?

Cathy Green 24:36
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's one of our most popular programs. We've been doing an overnight program with mostly Scout groups for many years. And so pretty much every Friday and Saturday night, we'll have you know, 6570 Scouts on there, sleeping in all the bunks and you know, we don't just it's not just a slumber party. We do programming in the evening, you get to crawl into all the nooks and crannies that you don't usually on the tours, and you learn about the history, you learn about the science behind a lot of these systems. And yeah, and then you stay on the boat, and you also get access to the museum before anybody else comes in in the morning, which is, which is are always pretty cool too. As you can imagine, last year was a bit challenging for that program. 70 Scouts on an enclosed tube is not a socially distant experience, right. However, what we did have to be able to let other people experience this is we have we started our sub b&b program. So families can come and basically they they rent the boat for the night. And we have somebody on board who gives them a tour and who stays with them to kind of host the whole experience. But it's, it's your boat, and you pick where you get to sleep and your family can, you know, run around and you know, see what it was like to be on one of these boats. It's it's pretty cool. It's been very popular.

Carolyn Foley 26:17
I wish that I had known about that when I was getting married, because I would have forced everybody to, like have a wedding underneath.

Cathy Green 26:26
We haven't had any weddings inside the boat. We've had them on the deck before. And we've had a surprising number of weddings. Well, maybe not so surprising in the last year on our roof deck. We have a roof deck. And we also have a bar, of course because it is Wisconsin called the sub pub that we do up there in the summertime. So that's been a popular venue as well, whether it's for weddings or class reunions, or just to come and hang out and overlook the river and downtown Manitowoc.

Stuart Carlton 26:56
Carolyn, we're gonna have to talk about the specifics of your desire for later. Carol and I both work at university. So one last thing I know. So you have these cool exhibits, like you've already sold it to not that this is a sales pitch, but if it were a sales pitch, I'd be on my way to Manitowoc. But but also people use music for research, right? Like what kind of research Do y'all do there? Are do people do there? Is that is that historians and the like that come through? Or how does that go?

Cathy Green 27:19
Yeah, absolutely. So we have an outstanding collection. I mean, Kobe is kind of the crown jewel in our collection, right? But we have, you know, over 10,000 3d artifacts, including 60, small boats, we have over 100,000 items in our archives. So a lot of the research is Yeah, historians during doing archival research, it could be folks doing genealogy. It could be you know, kind of small boat, wooden boat enthusiast who want to come and see specific types of vessels we have, we have hundreds and hundreds of outboard engines. And and you wouldn't believe the number of people who are crazy about outboard engines. So looking at those kinds of collections and everything in between the shipwreck artifacts, we are the state repository for any of these items recovered from shipwreck, so we have an awful lot of those things, it is illegal to take things but before the abandoned shipwreck back in 1987, it was kind of fairly common practice for things to be salvaged from the bottom. So there are collections out there that you know, divers took in the 60s and 70s. And they've been sitting in their basement and so you know, bringing those back into the public sphere is something we're really interested in facilitating here. So we can share that with you and and and everybody else. And again, if you can't if you're not going to go out and dive on these wrecks, which is spectacular, you know, having those tangible pieces those touchstones here in the museum to kind of launch those stories right to generate those talking points is really key for us. And so yeah, the everything from archaeological to historical research we do

Stuart Carlton 29:19
right here. Well, that sounds really really interesting actually. And I can't wait to hear about it. But Kathy, that's not actually why we invited you and teach me about the Great Lakes this week that we invited you on to read about the Great Lakes ask you two questions. The first of which is this. If you could choose to have a great donut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch, which one would you choose?

Carolyn Foley 29:42
This is a very important question. Okay.

Stuart Carlton 29:45
More questions about this more feedback on this question than any question

Cathy Green 29:50
you know, you know I'm I'm I'm having an inner struggle right now but I'm gonna go with my my first thought which is donut absolute

Stuart Carlton 30:00
And then so what I'm doing with that Carolina Mr.

Carolyn Foley 30:03
It's just him donut is getting larger

Stuart Carlton 30:07
because all the donuts but

Carolyn Foley 30:09
no

Stuart Carlton 30:15
it's The Few The Proud team donut. Absolutely. But so when I'm in when I'm in, or there's team like me team Yes, please. Anyway when I'm in Oh, I already forgot a minute to walk right. And I want to know, Manitowoc oh I so close. So close. I wasn't even that close. Anyway, when I'm there,

Cathy Green 30:36
the clipper city just say that we get our nickname the clippers, I can

Stuart Carlton 30:39
do that. I can do the clipper city when I go to visit the Clippers city. And so I wake up early go to the museum. But before I go to museum I want to get a donut. Where should I go to get a really good doughnut?

Cathy Green 30:51
Bakery on State

Stuart Carlton 30:53
Bakery on state I'm writing it down now. And I will put a link to it in the show notes that teach me about the great lakes.com/thirty 737 Because this is episode 37. Alright, so tell me about bakery on state your doughnuts.

Cathy Green 31:07
Oh, yeah. But you know, each of them is like five pounds. Or like, you know, I like good Midwest donut like we I get it's got some heft to it. They even do like the croissant donut, like the deep fried croissant, which seems, you know, too over the top to really be a good doughnut. But it's it's pretty fantastic.

Carolyn Foley 31:32
You don't have to go to New York, you can go

Cathy Green 31:34
to man. That's That's it. That's it. I hope these guys are listening and like, send me over a whole bunch of doughnuts.

Stuart Carlton 31:42
I mean, I agree. We'll send them we'll send them the link. And I mean, the least they could do is send you like,

Cathy Green 31:49
oh yeah, the lady from the museum. We know her. Alright.

Stuart Carlton 31:55
That's great. And so your executive director, the the Maritime Museum, right? What is it that makes you good at your job? Right? We only people are good at their job on with the possible exception of the hosts. And so, um, what is it? What is it that makes you good at that job, what are like some key skills for your type of work?

Cathy Green 32:13
I, and I hope this comes across and just this conversation we had have, I find all of this fascinating, like maritime history, ship construction, storytelling, you know, kind of the, the Great Lakes in general. It's fascinating stuff, you know, and so I think I translate that enthusiasm in a genuine way. But at so I think that makes me good at what I do. And just being a good storyteller, at the end of the day, whether we're an archaeologist or historian or a museum person, like, it's, you know, we have these things we're really excited about. So if we can effectively tell that story in a way that's gonna get you excited about it, that, you know, you're gonna book your trip to Manitowoc, then that's, you know, we've done our job. And at the end of the day, it's not just about getting you to come here. It's about getting you to care about these resources, whether it's the historic resources, archaeological resources, whether it's to appreciate the the World War Two history, you know, and the way you do that is make people care about it. And that's not such an easy thing to do. But we've got a really talented team here, whether it's interpreters, or facilities folks or collections managers that helped to do that pretty effectively. So, yeah,

Stuart Carlton 33:49
where can people go to find out more about the museum or your work? Is there a website or their social media feeds what what's the best place to go? Of course,

Cathy Green 33:56
there's Wisconsin maritime dot o RG. So Wisconsin, the state maritime dot o RG is our website, and I'm sure we have Facebook, instant chat, gram thing, all of the things that my 14 year old sons would be appalled if they just heard me, you know, rattle them off right there.

Stuart Carlton 34:18
We'll put links to all of the things we've got, we've got I've got younger people who work with me, they can help me identify the things and place the things into the appropriate thing location. Well, Kathy green, Executive Director of the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in Wisconsin, Manitowoc.

Cathy Green 34:40
Go get it. There you go.

Stuart Carlton 34:41
You know, it's important that we grow in life. Thank you for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes.

Cathy Green 34:47
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Stuart Carlton 35:01
Well, that was awesome. I can't wait to once we travel again, if I find myself between Milwaukee and Green Bay, I will definitely stop at this museum. It sounds really neat. Yeah, it was.

Carolyn Foley 35:11
It's really, really cool. And it's neat to think about the people who lived in the Great Lakes along with the organisms lived and worked in, sailed the Great Lakes along with the organisms that live in the Great Lakes. So that's fun to think about.

Stuart Carlton 35:27
I think there's something about your mindset, the like, it's also interesting to think about the people in addition to the biota, and the mayflies or the Great Lakes, but you're right, you're right. But so I thought that was really great. I, you know, I knew, obviously, the shipping is a big industry, we do a little bit of work at Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, but a lot of the secret programs do a lot of work with shipping in the Great Lakes. But but I had no idea like on the ships, and that they summed on the Mississippi, I was trying to figure out how they got them out. And, again, because we're reading Death and Life of the Great Lakes, and it's all about the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Erie Canal, at least in the first part, I assumed it was that way, but no through the Mississippi, which was actually the second part of the Great Lakes, but we'll get to that.

Carolyn Foley 36:02
Yeah, I was gonna say if you had read further along, you probably you might have been thinking, but yeah, it's it's pretty crazy. And I mean, the the fact that 28 of the submarines were made there. I mean, I don't know I wanted to go look and see, you know, what proportion of all submarines made were made in Manitowoc, because that's just bonkers. So Oh, brief shout out to Titus from Wisconsin Sea Grant.

Stuart Carlton 36:26
Will put his link after pronounce his last name if you're gonna shut them out.

Carolyn Foley 36:30
So I'm sorry, silent. Yes.

Stuart Carlton 36:33
Or why are we shouting? I'll Titus. I agree. He deserves a shout out but but

Carolyn Foley 36:37
because he works in Manitowoc, and he has lots of really awesome pictures from there. of the lake from there. So we can link to his he's Dr. Fish as G on Twitter, but good twitter follow too good. Yeah. Cheers. That's cool stuff. So and it's a very nice person. And good at his job.

Stuart Carlton 36:57
Yep. All right. He gets a shout out. He gets a link in the show notes, which again, you can already teach me about the great lakes.com/ 37 Number three, seven. Yeah, that's good. Um, let's see. I think that is about it for this week. Carolyn, would you like to do the credits or would you like me to do the credits?

Carolyn Foley 37:13
I will do it as soon go for it.

Stuart Carlton 37:17
Great. Teach me about the Great Lakes is brought to you by the fine people at Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant and myself. We encourage you to check out the great work we do at AIC grant.org And then we're on Facebook Twitter Other Social Media i l i n see grant. Teach me about the Great Lakes is produced by hope charters, Carolyn fuling Megan and Rini miles Ethan Chitty is our associate producer and of course our fixer and congrats to you Ethan. are super fun podcasts artwork is by Joel Davenport. The show was edited by the awesome an inimitable Quinn Rose and I encourage you to check out her work at aspiring robot.com If you have a question or comment about the show, send us an email thread links@gmail.com Or you can also leave a message on our hotline we might play it on the air that's 765496 I SG that's 44 and 74 or find us on Twitter we teach Great Lakes and you can reach out to us there the tweet basically these days because it's bad for my brain. But thank you for listening and of course keep grading those BD Did Did he Did

I have a quick question not related if you have two minutes I was curious about it but but you rightfully pulled us back to the real reason we're here so are there with you've dove in? That's not right. dived around the Great Lakes

Cathy Green 38:40
don't have dove? Yes.

Stuart Carlton 38:44
Anyway, you've done the scuba around the lakes and so on the ship so you're thinking oh, well preserved they are are like muscles attaching to them an issue now?

Cathy Green 38:52
Absolutely. Yeah, it really a big issue. But you know, as a diver there are some some good things or bad things right, the good thing is so when I started diving up here 25 years ago, the visibility in the lake was not nearly as good as it is now. Right? And so you know, a wreck that you could maybe see 10 feet on 2530 years ago, you can see 130 feet on it, it's it's almost unlimited. It's like diving in the Caribbean, if you hit it on the right day, so visibility is much better but instead of seeing a pristine shipwreck, you know, where you could read the name board and you know, all that kind of stuff. You can see the outline of of a pristine shipwreck covered in zebra mussels. You know, and and concerns there's, you know, different kinds of concerns. The filaments where they attach, can damage the archaeological surface of the wood, that top surface that maybe has tool marks or carvings, things like that, especially when divers remove them but then also must Let's build up so deep especially when zebra mussels it wasn't so much the quality was but the zebra mussels they build up so deep they'd be five or six inches you know deep and that actually would add a lot of weight right on the rack so it could it could accelerate their deterioration