Stuart Carlton 0:00
teach me about the Great Lakes. Teach me about the Great Lakes. John. Welcome back to teach me about the Great Lakes a twice monthly podcast in which I A Great Lakes novice asked 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 know a lot about emailing someone who says they will edit for you and giving him the paperwork to fill out and then having them ghost you. I know a lot and a lot about that two times, two times, and then having to edit the podcast yourself. But I don't know a lot about the Great Lakes. And that is the point of this your show. And this is a special one. This is our annual a little bit late this year, but our annual linkys Awards and I'm joined today by the one the only special Megan Lake lover gone. Yes. Hello, everybody. All right, we are excited to get into the Leakey. So for those who are new, the lake is our annual award show. We call them quite possibly not the least prestigious, Great Lakes podcast associated award show that there is. And so we ask people in our professional and personal networks, to submit nominations, so many nominations across a variety of categories. This is a send us your nominations. And what we're gonna do is we're going to look at the nominations. And we're gonna pick a lucky winner. And that's it. Yeah, that's it. That's the whole thing. And we do this while we do it. Because it's really think of it like a celebration, it's not us choosing the best stuff that even if that's possible, what you may or may not be, we're not the official arbiters of No, no, no. Instead, it's a couple it's a celebration of the schoolwork. Every year, we do the lake ease, we find out neat stuff, we end up featuring quite a number of Leakey nominees on the show, either directly or indirectly. And then, on top of that, one thing I kind of like is it shows on random award ceremony, because award ceremonies are random. And so by making the random explicit or I think that there's some value in that, too, because if it works ceremonies are designed to pick the best of something that's a little bit goofy, because whatever, and

Megan Gunn 2:01
who gets to decide what's best, there's so many, exactly so many things

Stuart Carlton 2:06
are really the answers we get to decide is this true, at least for the like, at least for the lake ease? Yes. Okay. So the very first the very first category this year is Great Lakes news event of the year, Great Lakes news event of the year. Yes. And so what we say is, what are your this could be good news or bad news. We just want to know what you think is the Great Lakes news event of the year. And so the way we will do this is we'll go through and we'll feature one or two nominations, if some we had hundreds of nominations. And from those hundreds of nominations. If something came up a couple of times, we might mention it. And if not, you know, we might just mentioned stuff that sort of sticks out to us, but we can't mention every nominee.

Megan Gunn 2:50
Just kidding, we don't have enough time. It's like a 30 minute podcast. It's we at least

Stuart Carlton 2:56
at most hopefully. It's like getting your kids dressed for the snow. You know, it's 45 minutes of dressing for eight minutes of snow. Yeah. 90 minutes of prep, trying to get the road caster to where anyway. Alright, anyway, so um, so one thing it was nominated Michigan regulators have approved a $500 million pipeline, tunnel project, linking to Great Lakes. This is part of the line five. Yeah, this is part of a line five thing and we actually had an episode about that where he spoke with Eric Anderson, who then was with Noah, Great Lakes, environmental reach, or Clairol, the Great Lakes, Mr. I'm gonna research that now. He's with the Colorado School of Mines. Eric is a colleague and a friend that was teaching about the Great Lakes episode 34. But so what happened? Let me see if I can load up the story here.

Megan Gunn 3:41
The links to all of the nominations that were mentioning will be in the show notes. There it is. So there's

Stuart Carlton 3:45
an oil pipeline, Enbridge line five, it's called and it runs it runs under the Mackinac straits. And it's a big deal. Because if there's an oil spill in the area, you know, it's a real problem for the Great Lakes. And so this has been very contentious whether they're going to be permitted to continue to run that line. It's called line five the company has Enbridge I believe is the company and or whether they should not be permitted in this rapidly gets into like international energy agreements and stuff. It's extremely complicated. But so with this, the Michigan officials what they did was they said we're gonna just in case, so protective tunnel around this, because our casing rather, because the the oil pipeline itself is pretty old, and maybe a little bit leaky, and certainly something that, you know, is potentially dangerous. And so what they're doing is kind of in case some of that, and that's really interesting. I hadn't, believe it or not. So this just happened on December 1 is when this was announced and I I had missed this article, I guess it was over the winter holidays. But that's that's interesting. And so what's cool is like it's a protective measure right little sheath around that. But the danger side is or what some people are saying is well, you know, but we're just making it easier to continue our addiction to fossil fuels. Yeah, fossil fuels. It's really complicated, but also people need energy. And there's a lot of jobs and stuff about got to try to have Yeah, but that is that is good, big piece of Great Lakes news so that I say worthy Leakey nominee. Definitely.

Megan Gunn 5:06
I was tied in my and

Stuart Carlton 5:11
I'm just featuring one or two. Oh, this might not be my pick. Oh,

Megan Gunn 5:15
well, let me tell you the which ones that I'm featuring because I just one of them is a lake here on shipwreck. I'm fascinated by shipwrecks they're just they have really good stories they answer questions they just so much history and then they're preserved in this underwater water casing just because I can't remember what she said it was an episode with our lovely friends from Thunder Bay

Stuart Carlton 5:38
Hall of Famers, gamers.

Megan Gunn 5:41
Thank you. Stephanie was telling us it's some property in the water that helps like preserve these shipwrecks. Yeah. But it just like this shipwreck, just answered a lot of questions about these people that were on the ship, and they just, they didn't know what happened. And now they've got some answers

Stuart Carlton 5:57
until they found the shipwreck.

Megan Gunn 5:59
Yes, it is. They found it on well, maybe. Maybe they didn't find it on March 1. They announced it on March 1, and it was the third most popular story in the world in

Stuart Carlton 6:09
the world. So a BAP news site that's big, big, Great Lakes news.

Megan Gunn 6:12
Oh, yes. And I mean, it brings a lot of attention and history or sorry, a lot of it brings a lot of attention to the rich maritime history. This happened in the Great Lakes. So I think it's wonderful. My other one that I had was for Shedd Aquarium. So they were nominated to be a mission blue hotspot. And so a mission blue hotspot is a special place identified as critical to the health of Oceans and aquatic life. And so the Great Lakes joined 151 Other hopes was recognized across the globe. And it is the first and only freshwater hotspot Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 6:48
that's really neat to see the weather freshwater gets integrated into this. That's something our director Thomas hakea suited who was giving a talk yesterday comparing like the Great Lakes to maritime system, or the fishes in there. And a cool thing is that, like the Great Lakes are in many ways. It's like oceans, right? Yeah. And so it's neat to see them get recognized as such. And then so she has such a, you know, she had such a great place. Alright, anyway, yes. So that is great, the Great, the Great Lakes hotspots. So I think looking at this, I'll be honest, one of these, one of these is most teaching about the Great Lakes oriented. Even though we've talked about several of these topics, we are fundamentally a show that is about being a train wreck while discussing shipwrecks. So I think I think we're gonna have to give the Leakey this time are you okay? If we get the lucky this time to the discovery of the ship? The

Megan Gunn 7:39
love that congratulation. Yes. Can you hear

Stuart Carlton 7:43
me? Yes, no, super fantastic. I even wrote a song about the Ironton this year. I did it. I will not put it in here because we've been trying for a year to have a draft of shipwreck. Great Lakes shipwrecks, and we're gonna record that this spring, hopefully, but I had to read juggle it around, thanks to some stuff. And that will be the world debut. The second debut after we played it at the retreat last year of the song about the iron. I can't

Megan Gunn 8:06
wait. I'm so excited. I

Stuart Carlton 8:08
too, am excited to rerecord the vocal because it was bad even by my very last fingers.

Megan Gunn 8:14
So many talents, do it. Well, incredible.

Stuart Carlton 8:18
Anyway, great, Nate. All right. So congrats. Yeah, congrats to the Ironton. Finally, some good news related to the iron tip, let's say. All right. Next up is the Great Lakes research finding of the research. Yeah, so we're looking oops, I mistyped this on my nomination form, but it says we're looking for journal articles that were accepted or became available in 2023, not 2022. I apologies to everybody, Great Lakes research finding of the year. Well,

Megan Gunn 8:46
the one I thought was probably the most fascinating was that big shout out to Dr. Christy McCall, who was the interim Wisconsin Sea Grant director at the University of Wisconsin Madison. They came up with and now I've lost my spot, they came up with a way to track P FOSS. And so the P FOSS was moving from this industry spill or from industry through the groundwater to the Green Bay, and they were able to track the movement, a plume of P Foss and I just blew my mind a plume of Luma people. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 9:25
that was nice going. It's a great example of using research right? Differences not just research, research research. Like it's important, but But it's nice to see some application. Yeah, yeah. P FOSS was also the new Excuse me. P FOSS was also sort of the subject of another research paper that we ended up talking about a lot and at some point we're going to talk about it on ask Dr. Fish, um, but we haven't yet and this is and this is by Nadia Barbeau and co authors. Article was environmental research published in March of last year. It was called locally caught freshwater fish across the United States are likely a significant source of exposure to PFOs and other perfluorinated compounds. And so this article caused quite a stir because they had some very striking findings in there. And what they did was they tested fish, or they used EPA fish testing data and found that P Foss and PFOs levels were really high. And like eating one, one fish meal could be the same as like ingesting, you know, or drinking a whole month's worth of water. Yeah, but the problem I mean, so so it's good. And that's good to know. But the a lot of people were saying, well, but they don't provide enough context to compare fish eating with eating SAP for chicken or anything else, you know, is that everywhere? And it's not necessarily that wasn't their aim, right? Yeah. But as the story took off, that context was often missing. And so So, information people want to know it is and it's important, and we spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to best address this on something like on this show, or on sacrafice. Especially because we're not experts in P FOSS. And anyway, we're gonna address it at some point. Not that everybody's waiting for us to talk about, but But anyway, so yeah, more P Foss, a lot of people. In fact, that's kind of the story of a lot of what is happening. I think this one is P FOSS. That's good. Another one I wanted to point out was kind of a cool one to have papers by my friend and colleague, Tim Campbell. Let me find these. Tim and his colleagues, Brett Sean, Evelyn Hammond, some other people too, but they seem to be the most consistent across this, they're looking at this idea of Buddha's life release rituals, and invasive species. I gotta be careful talking about this. I'm not a Buddhist, I'm not very knowledgeable, right, but but my understanding, I guess, is that I'm releasing live organisms into the environment. Buddhists do this for religious reasons. And it's called a life release. And that's a potential pathway for invasive introductions. And so Tim did some interviews, I think back in 2021, or was published in 2021, knowing academic publishing cycles, and he probably did the interviews in 1984. So he did some really interesting qualitative interviews to understand what was happening. And then they also did talk to managers about the potential Buddhist life release practices. And that was part of a second one. And so these two papers together are kind of, they haven't had a big impact. Exactly. I'll just read with the nominator said, I like them as a pair because I think they're a good example of talking to a community to find out what they need, and then talking to resource managers to understand what can be done to meet community needs in a sustainable way. And I think that's true. I think that's absolutely true. It's really interesting. And then they say, now we just need someone to do the outreach and program development. Yeah, so what I like about that, isn't it it's the way most papers do which is we need more money. There's more work to be done. Yes. Because work work never done real difference. So that's good. I don't think that's our research finding of the year. But I just thought that was an interesting paper that I wanted it very interesting. Yeah. So for fighting me Are we going P FOSS plume? Let's go P FOSS PLO FOSS plume? Congrats to Christopher McCall, who's the interim director of Wisconsin Sea Grant who are too worried we're getting Wisconsin heavy.

Megan Gunn 13:13
Yes. But that means that our friends in Wisconsin are listening to the podcast and they are submitting nominations. That's shrinking you,

Stuart Carlton 13:21
Michigan, where are you come on Ohio. You want to be a great Lake Champlain.

Megan Gunn 13:31
Only a very good Lake.

Stuart Carlton 13:35
Fantastic. All right. Now we're moving into now we're starting into the important categories. That's the thing. We're going to create lakes animal of the year, animal of the year. Now in past years, let's go and see what is one in past years just as an FYI, Great Lakes animal the year so last year was Monty and Rose Muntean rose, it was an rip if you remember, because Monty and Rose are no longer with us. So in memoriam Great Lakes animal of the year, and oh, my goodness it was two years ago was a piping clovers. So you know, it's a lot of clover. They might come up again soon. But pullovers are a great great lakes story, because it's a really charismatic, cute animals. There's a lot of science and conservation around them. And it's something that is unique and interesting. So that's why, but yeah, so Great Lakes animal of the year. This year, we had a number of nominations. And I think, actually really good at first I thought it was very obvious, but then a second nomination came through and I said well, this is more complicated. Okay, then I realized so what do you got Great Lakes animal of the year. So

Megan Gunn 14:42
I have what I thought was really neat. And I mean, this ties back to how our oceans how our marine systems and our freshwater system are actually integrated. So the one that I thought was really neat is the and I know that I'm gonna butcher this the key So is the Chi yr core ganas chi is a deep part of Cisco, and it's native to, like Ontario like here on Michigan and superior. They think it's extirpated in Huron and Ontario and it's definitely endangered in Lake Michigan. But it just like they're found in these deep, clear, cold open waters, like, wait like 121 feet deep and maybe even more abundant, like 600 feet deep down like that. Just what survives down Yeah, no kidding. And it's so cold. So I think that's I think that's called for a freshwater fish. You only hear about things like that in the ocean. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 15:40
no, that is very cool. That depth and it is neat that they thought it was exploitative. extirpate excuse me, which means extinct in like a specific area. And then they found them and so that's good. That is certainly an animal and Cisco was actually a Cisco was a runner up. Last year, Cisco was a runner. So we see we've got a trend. We know a trend. Another one that is a popular nominee. That is unfortunately the number one defender. This nominee is not recording with this this year. And that's the lake sturgeon. Lake Sturgeon is always the bridesmaid, I think never the bride maybe this year, maybe this year. But the thing is, is that this year, they spotted flamingos like Michigan, in Port Washington, they didn't spot it was really cool north of Milwaukee. And so that's a rarefied, right. They found them, five of them in Lake Michigan in Port Washington, Wisconsin, as I said, just north of Milwaukee and ultimate Florida thing. So what happened was that they were flying between Cuba and the Yucatan. And they got diverted by hurricane I Dalia. Now, I'm going to draw a line. I want you to get out a map and draw a line between Cuba and the Yucatan, Wisconsin not like diverted is maybe a little bit of an understatement. But anyway, anytime you see flamingos, that's super rare, right? You see flamingos. That is good. And I used to live in Florida, and I didn't see flamingos there but but that is cool. Yeah, but the thing is, that's cool. And I was already to nominate the flamingo

Megan Gunn 17:10
when a lot of people went out to see them. Yeah, everywhere that because they were in wet like Kentucky or something.

Stuart Carlton 17:17
Yeah, they were everywhere. I think that's something Indiana Dimagi Archer Yes,

Megan Gunn 17:20
somewhere down south she went to go to see that

Stuart Carlton 17:23
so Flamingo maybe. But then I also saw roseate spoonbill which I used to see in Florida a lot one of my favorite species of birds again, that is beautiful. We are working under Foley's assumption with the birds. Yes. But that said, rotates, poodles are very cool birds. And they found one,

Megan Gunn 17:41
this article says, is the first time it was spotted in Wisconsin in 178 years, certain

Stuart Carlton 17:47
78 years. Look at that. So that is super cool. And they aren't sure why that one could be but it is probably connected also to weather, right? It's just a weird weather you're in what might increasingly be a weird weather here. And so the reason that I like these two as potential Leakey nominees is a they're goofy, and that's fine. This little bit weird movie, it sort of connects this idea, right of like, that we're not in like a static timer of things, the same things are changing and strange things are happening. And you know, good. These may or may not be directly climate related, but like this sort of weird stuff is something that's going to be a bigger and bigger part of what is happening. So, roseate spoonbills is my choice, but I feel like I've picked a couple so we'll let you make the final call.

Megan Gunn 18:37
I want to go with the Rosie a spoon bill. Do it. It's beautiful. I mean, it's a lot more pretty than this disco is Yeah, but that is not why Joe

Stuart Carlton 18:48
could help. I mean, it never hurts, right? Yeah, no, that is true. Oh, yeah. A couple and yeah, a lot of people. Lake Sturgeon got a lot of nominees. lake sturgeon. You can be a runner up and we'll make that does Cisco runner up? Yeah. All right. Well, congrats to the roseate spoonbill and of course our runners up the Lake Sturgeon and the Cisco if you want lake sturgeon when Carolyn, my recommendation is you appear on the podcast all right now another big one another big one is the Great Lakes non animal of the year the Great Lakes non animal of the year in 2021 that winter was Beechcraft. Oh yeah. And the runoff was putting stones which were the kind of these cool little rocky things

Megan Gunn 19:29
delicious dessert.

Stuart Carlton 19:31
No, no, no. The sound that way though. Yeah, last year at Great Lakes animal of the year was or a non animal year excuse me, it was the sailing vessel inland seas interesting. Yeah. Which what they do is to scooter that's the schooner that they take the kids out. And Remi and I went and recorded that episode, which you can find a teaching about the great lakes.com/that Episode number

Megan Gunn 19:53
they did a presentation that I Agler last year yeah. And nating with they get to do with it. Yeah. And

Stuart Carlton 19:57
we got to go to vote. So that was cool. Oh, that's awesome. Yes. was awesome anyway so very worthy in Great Lakes non animal deer but not nominated this year. And I didn't get to go on. I tickets go anyway. But we have other nominees. Oh, I'm looking at last year. All right. What are the nominees? So

Megan Gunn 20:17
one of the ones that I really like and this may be my winner is diatoms. I love diatoms they use while you started to make this earth. What even is diatomaceous earth is diatomaceous earth is made from fossilized remains of tiny aquatic organisms called diatoms. It's just what we do a diatomaceous earth as we put it, to help clean aquariums got it and so die time. They're just like, there's, there's so cool. But our friends from University of Minnesota Duluth, you and revie said that it's the diatoms that make the lake the Great Lakes great. And so they just they're very, we need them. So their skeletons are made of a natural substance called silica. And over a long period of time diatoms accumulate it they'll sediment or accumulate in the sediment of rivers and streams and lakes and oceans. And so they are mine. That's how we get to die. But to me, it's Earth they just, it's cool. So all right, cool.

Stuart Carlton 21:14
Well, diatoms That is neat. And yeah, that's interesting, the nominee said on both that quote, again, it

Megan Gunn 21:21
was is the diatoms that make the Great Lakes great.

Stuart Carlton 21:24
It's a diatom that makes the Great Lakes. Great, says human human revie at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Fantastic. All right. Oh, another nominee that came up was microplastics. Yeah, yeah, they can be the non animal of the year every year. But this is true. I'm not feeling it. I'll be honest, I'm not. I'm not feeling plastic. So

Megan Gunn 21:45
what is cool if you all are looking for, if you're educators, looking for a neat way to teach about microplastics in your classroom, we I guess our friends at Wisconsin Sea Grant Wisconsin, they put together a really cool plastic panic kit. So you can see how microplastics are how they get filtered through the system going through a wastewater treatment plant and teach it in your classroom. And so Oh, very cool. Reach out to the reach out to the seagull people or Seagull the Center for Great Lakes literacy, or is it Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant we can get you can reach

Stuart Carlton 22:17
out to Mike it should get choked up. It's a CG l l.org. Right Seagull, one of the many, many seagulls Yeah, well, that's, yeah, we're not going microplastics I don't want to go hydrilla. That was another nominee. You know, let's do diatoms. Diatoms. Papa. All right. We need a Saudi thing when obviously anything. All right, good. All right. They just get more intense from here yesterday. Yes, they do. Alright, the Great Lakes sandwich sandwich of the year. We had some nominees this

Megan Gunn 22:50
time. They're really good nominations in here. Yeah.

Stuart Carlton 22:53
We had a smoked Lake whitefish on Pumpernickel. Hmm, that's, that's intense. That's a lot of flavor. Yeah. It's a lot of flavor going on in that sandwich. Yes, it is. Yeah, the more general would be the fried white fish.

Megan Gunn 23:07
For sure. One of my favorite nominations was anything that takes two hands to eat the loose definition of a sandwich while on a paddleboard on Lake Superior on a glass smooth day with only a lunar two for coffee. Thank you. That

Stuart Carlton 23:22
is a strong one. That is a very strong one. And then here's another one, using a potentially loose definition of sandwich. And that is a hot dog with Froot Loops.

Unknown Speaker 23:37
This is a macaroni and cheese. Yeah, I

Stuart Carlton 23:39
think we've talked about this before this has come up. And this nominee has sent Oh, and had sent a picture which we will include in the show notes show notes. And it's a Google Photos site and vetoes the name of the person who shared the link. And that was our good friend and leaky runner up Tim Campbell. Tim this does not win. Now this loses we've never had somebody lose the lake you know, but the hot dog with macaroni and cheese and Froot Loops and maybe Doritos. That is our first leaky loser,

Megan Gunn 24:12
you know, make it a winner. If it had a Goby dog, I'd

Stuart Carlton 24:15
have to go breed dog. And maybe not Froot Loops, and macaroni. Cheese. disgusting things. I think we're going I like this one. I think we'll go anything that takes two hands to eat while on a paddleboard on Lake Superior Arctic last day with only a lunar to for company.

Megan Gunn 24:33
Thank you birds. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 24:34
and I will use this opportunity to insert the loon call right here which is something else

For birth,

Megan Gunn 25:00
I don't know what the one sound like,

Stuart Carlton 25:02
well listen to the episode

Megan Gunn 25:08
we'll do that. Oh, I took that app off my phone. Otherwise I can play it for us. It takes up a lot of space. If you are looking to I guess YouTube, you could do it on YouTube. There's a really cool app called Merlin bird ID Yeah. And you can you can find calls or identify like you can set record and and identify the birds that are calling in your area.

Stuart Carlton 25:30
Oh, sure.

Megan Gunn 25:32
Use it for groups. I'm not a bird nerd.

Stuart Carlton 25:34
No, it's okay to be a bird nerd. I just mean, have you have you ever really thought about who makes that up? And what it's doing now? Yeah. I don't know. But you're making the assumption. Birds are real. If they're not. If they're not.

Megan Gunn 25:46
It could be sighs that's the thing. secret spy.

Stuart Carlton 25:51
Merlin is a strong app. Alright, great lakes. Donut of the year last. Oh wait, we forgot to go over the winters Great Lakes sandwich of the year. I'll do that and cut it in. Let's not forget a Great Lakes sandwich of the year. 2021. Do we not have it? No. There it is. Tom coons is homemade garden fresh BLT. Delicious. Yeah. ABC 57. He's a weather forecast. Yes. Anyway. Homemade garden fresh BLT and the runner up. Was the concept of a fish sandwich apparently. Okay. To go back and listen to the episode. That's that's the quote. And then there was a new memoriam that year because we had somebody Cameron Camden bird Excuse me. He came on and talked about some great lakes history stuff. That was really cool. He had a sandwich named after him at fifth frame brewing in Rochester, New York. I went to look it up because it was gonna be the lucky winner. Don't make it anymore. That was in memoriam along with Monty and Rose. Oh. 2020 To 2022 Great Lakes sandwich of the year falafel pita. Okay, sure. And the runner up was the white fish sandwich from Lisha. No culinary school, falafel. Pete. I was outvoted by hoping. That's that sounds. That sounds about right. I don't mind a falafel pita but but absurd. Yeah, they're delicious. Okay, great lakes donut of the years. Our next category. This one was big.

Megan Gunn 27:16
There are some really good tasty Yeah, counting one.

Stuart Carlton 27:19
Well, hold on. Let me do the old winners. No, it's all good. It's all good. All right. The winner in 2021 was strange matter, a coffee company that Munch doughnuts there. And the runner up was Tim Hortons. Timmies. Of course, the Great Lakes donut of the year in 2022. Oh, yes. Pumpkin and cider donuts, from Danny Jenny's farmstand and Dexter, Michigan. That just sounds nice. And we chose Alex it was like a real great lakes thing. It was a foul thing. It was contextual to a season. And it's very Midwestern. Yeah, no, that was super. Yeah, very Midwestern. Excellent. And then along John from benefits and heavens, Illinois, was included because the person who gave me that recommendation then called me desperately saying that he I had to delete the recommendation because this person worked for the federal government. And they were concerned that it would come off as them like making a government recommendation for a donut stamp. So that was the runner up last year, but I recommend the loan John from benefits and Evanston, Illinois. The reason I know is because I got one when we were in Evanston for the Great Lakes secret. Oh, sweet. Okay. What do we got this year donut of the year? Okay,

Megan Gunn 28:30
so I was gonna say, Uncle Mike sea salt and camo crinkle until I read that it's not a doughnut but it's in the family. But if it's not a doughnut, it's not gonna say that right. leg surgery so I chose I chose the giant cinnamon rolls with a hole cut out in the middle which makes it a donut hole is kind of in the middle. Oh. That that's what makes it donut is dough with the with the whole missing cinnamon

Stuart Carlton 29:03
rolls into cinnamon roll you took you can't do you can't watch the other one.

Mike. Also not a donut because

Megan Gunn 29:15
I don't know what a Kringle is.

Stuart Carlton 29:17
It's not I don't either.

Megan Gunn 29:19
But a cinnamon roll with a hole out of the middle is definitely a donut

Stuart Carlton 29:25
we need to discuss this further. That's okay well a future episode in which we we decided

Megan Gunn 29:29
with donuts All right, well,

Stuart Carlton 29:31
we'll bring on an expert will bring on an expert. Yeah, all right. That's so the other big popular nominee was a chocolate cake donut with cherry frosting at cops and donuts and alpino Michigan Yeah,

Megan Gunn 29:42
make a road trip for helping a lot of people recommend things and you know it's really Thunder

Stuart Carlton 29:45
by national average diving. Alright, right so are we really going giant cinnamon roll with the size of your head? It is the size of your head. All right, I'm gonna Google this right now hilltop restaurant and you pronounce flat lands

Megan Gunn 30:00
township does that right? Not

Stuart Carlton 30:05
anybody got a fix for it? Anyway, hilltop restaurant you know like give me give me your menu I want to see your donut. I want to see it don't

Megan Gunn 30:17
know it only works that they have pictures but surely they'll have pictures if it's the size of your head. Everyone wants to see that.

Stuart Carlton 30:23
That is a sizable cinnamon roll. Is it? It's a fairly sizable cinnamon roll. They don't know. That can't be right. Oh, no, no. I'm gonna text you a picture right now.

Megan Gunn 30:40
Okay, this is not a donut guy. I see. I can see the roll in the middle of it. Well, they

Stuart Carlton 30:46
got to cut it out. That's the point in order to make it oh my god that said if that picture though. The one I texted you. Yeah, there might be a little forced perspective thing. Like in The Hobbit but if not.

Megan Gunn 31:00
That is the the size of this child's head. Yes. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 31:03
Homer the famous sweet cinnamon roll. I feel duped. You feel duped? Well, in that case, the Leakey Award winner for another beer as the chocolate cake donut with cherry frosting a cops and donuts in Alpena, Michigan, the runner up will be series of dupes. Yeah. What is life? Excellent. All right, this next one, our important science podcast of the year. Science podcasts either we originally had I think we had regular and non science podcasts. We combine those. So let me say neuro science podcast. Oh, yes. introduced one in 2021. From our friends in Wisconsin, Sea Grant allergies, which everybody loves. Love allergy. Yes, that was runner up in 2021 2022. The water we swim in by the people who brought you introduced by Bonnie Wilson and Holly JAMA, who are on our show to talk about it. That was good. The runner up was lakes champion for the Great Lakes rip, not the Alliance. But lakes Chad has gone Oh, one of the many podcasts we have left in our dusty. But that was a runner up. That was good. And this year, I want to point out a couple of there's one Midwestern oriented podcast is not science, but I was enjoying it for a while. So make it one of the things about me is I have trouble sleeping. No trouble falling asleep. I'm actually I'm gonna solid fall asleep are very good among the best. But when I wake up, I'm totally hosed. And if I wake up at 230, it's like, Hey, I'm up. And so for awhile, I was like, trying to listen to podcasts to go to bed, which isn't maybe perfect, but that's okay. And I found this podcast called Northwoods. Baseball, sleep radio. Okay. All right. And this is a fake baseball game. Somebody's calling a fake baseball game set in like this fictitious Midwestern League, and they have teams and players and fake ads and very nerdy Oh, yeah. And it's kind of like it's kind of like static like it's coming in poorly over the radio guys. It was perfect for falling back asleep and go find it out and asleep. baseball.com. And it anyway, so and it's produced by a guy named Mr. King, I think. Yeah. Fans call it baseball, radio ASMR. And it's super fantastic. And I'll also link to a New Yorker article called The Rapture of listening to a fake baseball game. And yeah, they have all kind of like I said, fake teams like the Big Rapids timbers, the Baraboo bombers. Oh, yeah. Anyway, so this is not a science podcast, but it is Great Lakes oriented like that. Yeah, you gotta go. Go listen to that. All right. And then we had I had one, and then it also was nominated. But we will get to that one. Was there a great letter or a Science Podcast? Excuse me, that stuck out to you?

Megan Gunn 33:42
I do have one. Um, it's this one. That's called who smarted. And they say that it is the funniest podcast, the most hilarious podcast that adults and children can listen to together, combine science and history and all the good things. Anyway. Okay. So their episodes, they talk about? What's the Monopoly game based on? What's paint made out of deceit true that elephants never forget these things that people really want to know. But no one ever really has the answers to the answer to it. And these

Stuart Carlton 34:15
are bite size to they're like, you know, 510 15 minutes. And this was actually the nominee that I was bringing, regardless of the audience. My son has ingested every who's smarter. Oh, I love that. So I asked him, I asked him this morning, my eight year old kid, I said, Give me the top three facts that you learned on who's smart. Yeah, so it came to me. And we'll see if there's a theme to these. All right. Well, the first one, and I'm gonna just read these verbatim as the game. Basketball was invented by and this is a quote, some weirdo in a gym. Okay, yeah, I love it. This is right. Here we go. Cows for 300 times a day. Really? It's according to my son according to who sorted And then the last one last one is this number one, right? So koalas poop 400 times a day.

Unknown Speaker 35:07
Okay. A lot of a lot of food. I mean, what else do they do? The

Megan Gunn 35:13
Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. They're constantly eating. They've got to get all their food out.

Stuart Carlton 35:17
Yeah. Yeah. So that anyway, so that is a potential Science Podcast. Yeah, the your nominee another one I wanted to mention, and effect that will likely be our winner. But, you know, our friends in Wisconsin, they do the best podcasting, like as far as I know, in the great in the cigarette network. Like they just had the most most diverse types of shows. And they have a new one called Fish Fish. Which is it's a couple years old now. But I just wanted to point that out as one, what else might be on there that people mentioned? Crowd science.

Megan Gunn 35:48
BBC produced it. And the person that submitted it said that they must have a huge travel budget. Listener questions are answered by the experts with an entertaining Host.

Stuart Carlton 35:59
Oh, that's excellent. Often listen to crowd science, and we love travel stuff. I love travel budgets. Specifically, we need to make sure that we get a travel budget. Yes.

Megan Gunn 36:08
Okay. We have all these places that we need to go try donuts and

Stuart Carlton 36:11
sandwiches and we got nothing in terms of travel budget. All right. Well, we'll have to work on that. Well, then. And then Wisconsin water news is another one from Wisconsin. Secret. That is great. So are you comfortable going with who's smarter though? Yeah. As nominated by Okay, great. And our runner up? Let's go Wisconsin water news.

Megan Gunn 36:28
Thanks. So. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 36:30
we sure do. Okay, so yeah. So next is the wildcard we let people nominate a category. And then a winner was the one that stuck out to you. Yes,

Megan Gunn 36:39
I loved. So Michigan Sea Grant came up with a social media graphic for Halloween. And it's called Meet the haunted homes, homes. Its acronym for all the links. So you got like Boo Pierre, your lake, which again, like Haoran, Lake Ontario, and then Lake theory ferry. That's so cute. That is

Stuart Carlton 37:05
cute. All right. So that winds are our I guess we'll call that category. The Halloween social media graphic of the year. Yeah. All right. Well, congratulations to Michigan secret for winning that. Congratulations.

Yeah, that'll be our wild card of the day. And let's see great. Next category is the Great Lakes Titus of the year actually, the Great Lakes Titus of the year. And so someone wrote in and wrote this about Titus. So Titus Heimer. As you probably know, him was one of our doctors fish. And so that is excellent. And you know, Titus is amazing. At any one is communicating science. He does videos from the field, usually a fish having sex, but it's still videos. He points people to important papers. He's a passionate advocate for the Great Lakes. It really is. And he's, you know, he's on our show. And he even called him to ask Dr. Fish video style from a boat in the middle of I think it was a Fox River or something.

Megan Gunn 38:01
I left that dedication. Yeah, yeah, it really is.

Stuart Carlton 38:04
And let's see, let's read someone actually nominated Titus for the fishery specialist of the year, we had a great lakes Titus OF THE YEAR categories without, but so Dr. Titus ol Heimer, also known as Dr. Fish, as he approaches his 11th year at secret, he has said the word fish about oh my gosh, 8,542,039,231 times in his career credible, very specific. Yes. And he's answered 7321 questions on all things, freshwater fish. He answers each of those with a lot of I haven't done the math, but it's a lot. And it's hard to recognize Titus for his accomplishments and his contributions to Great Lakes fish. Throughout the years, he's given numerous presentations. He's posted 1000s of fish and Great Lakes related social media posts. He served as a local expert. He's taught hundreds of children about fish ecology. He's published reports served on dozens of committees. He's received several grants and he's served as a mentor to so so many people, he's dissected dozens of fish for science a couple more for pleasure. I added that. He's made blog posts and cooking videos about how to prepare Great Lakes fish. He was even featured as the local Santa Claus, who comes in by boat in Manitowoc, complete with a billboard to prove it. It's a tight end the tightest gets the recognition he so deserves as a local Great Lakes hero. And I mean this is true, which is which is why he is runner up for Great Lakes Titus of the year. The winner of Great Lakes Titus of the year is Titus bakery, which has locations in webinar Westfield and Atlanta, Indiana. And so I see the signs for Titus Baker when I typed in the Annapolis and they always have the nicest looking doughnuts. Truly a deserving Great Lakes Titus of the years okay grats to Titus bakery on your Lake County Road Trip. That is the second year in a row Titus has been runner up to create

Unknown Speaker 39:54
so close, so close

Stuart Carlton 39:58
to where though Yeah, but down it's a very competitive category. It really is. All right now to left

Unknown Speaker 40:08
the Great Lakes communication

Stuart Carlton 40:09
Product

Megan Gunn 40:11
of the Year. Fine.

Stuart Carlton 40:14
There were a lot of these nominated right? Fish this was nominated, which which is great Lake Champlain Sea Grant, they, their watershed education team has this really nice looking curriculum? Amazing. Yes, it is beautifully produced. It's standards aligned in a way that is really easy to understand. It's a very, it's on watershed monitoring, stream monitoring, rather, and how to use that as a science and you can adapt that to Great Lakes or a lot of other places. It's primarily aimed at middle school students. So this is really worth checking out. We'll have a link to it. It's not great lakes oriented. Exactly. Right. So I'm nervous to give it a leaky because of that, because it's, it's Lake Champlain, which is very good. Various rock solid, like rock solid, among among the better lakes, but not exactly a great lake. But it's got another nominee, I saw that I wanted to talk about

Megan Gunn 41:06
really great tool.

Stuart Carlton 41:07
It's a really great tool.

Megan Gunn 41:08
I mean, it's just, it's beautiful. Yeah.

Stuart Carlton 41:12
Looks so nice.

Megan Gunn 41:16
Never liked a publication so much.

Stuart Carlton 41:19
The Lake Superior State University has a fish camp in their center for freshwater research, and it's really cool. I love fish camp. Here's problem. It's always off.

Megan Gunn 41:26
Yeah, I was. So I looked at that earlier. And I was like, Oh, this is gonna be what I choose. And then it was like livestream networking. No,

Stuart Carlton 41:32
no, I was watching. I went to visit their aquaculture lab or their fish lab. And they have actually a huge surge in there too. But they had the fish can play a salmon swim by with a big lamprey sock. And I've never seen that before. It's just on the side right in front of the fish camp. And so it's super cool. I love the fish camp. I think you have to be on and working though to qualify for Leakey. Yeah,

Megan Gunn 41:54
that puts you down there a little bit.

Stuart Carlton 41:59
Alright, so what do you got?

Megan Gunn 42:00
I think I mean, I think the education tool but I'm very biased being an education reporter. This

Stuart Carlton 42:06
is we are bias you are an education person. Alright, let's, let's do it. Okay, teach me about many types of lakes great or otherwise, congrats. And we'll do fish cam as a runner up.

Unknown Speaker 42:18
Yeah, yep. We'll

Stuart Carlton 42:19
do fish cam as a runner up. And also when we come up, there's a really nice, a really nice story map. on pavement overs? Yeah. It's cool. It's got pictures and stories. It's compelling. It's very well done. We'll put a link to that to a we may talk about that later in the year when it gets to be plover season, but we'll see.

Megan Gunn 42:37
Did we talk about what the communication runners out there the past communications were?

Stuart Carlton 42:43
No we didn't so let me let me do that. She does these really cool tick tock videos? Oh, greatly stuff. We of course are not allowed to use tick tock. Yeah, we do. But we weren't when he 21 it so I saw them and they were good. And healthy headwaters that that's cat February as lab does really great work. And so that was and Oh, another runner up was the Michigan secret Great Lakes Basin map this is that. I love the map. Yes, I love that map too. And the Great Lakes Basin it's always worth thinking about because it's really interesting how different states have different amount of space in the basement like in Indiana with very little right out. It's super critical in certain ways. In fact, we're gonna meet a next episode, we're going to interview Peter Annan, who wrote the Great Lakes, water wars, and the basin comes up in that a lot. So tune in in a couple weeks to listen to that. So that was cool. I'm glad that was a nominee. In 2022. We had the Great Lakes nitrification row coloring sheets and paper graph by Tasha Tucker, she did cool things. And the classes had a video series of a story map on Great Lakes invaders, the story maps are a theme story maps are a theme. They're cool. My the challenge with story maps in my mind is it's there. Oftentimes, I'm not saying this is the case of the ones who were nominated. But you want to make sure you know who is the audience for these Yeah, and who's going to use them that can be a challenge with them. They can be really neat but but I would love effect if you have some great examples of story maps being used. I would love to see those so some of those and teach you about the Great lakes@gmail.com All right, great, great lakes

Megan Gunn 44:14
outreach program at the HEA which Program

Stuart Carlton 44:16
of the Year. This is great. In 2021, Friday the gnome Believe it or not, was a Outreach Program of the Year runner up the students to Stewart's program by at Grand Valley State was the winner that year. That's any program over there. And then last year, the Great Lakes outreach, the student watershed watch by the Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Governments was a really cool program and then the Thunder Bay marine sanctuaries. Get into your sanctuary oh nine was a cool program to help people understand what's going on there by our friends at Thunder Bay and then also baby surgeon release events just generally great progress whenever you bring out Have you seen a baby surgeon? No.

Megan Gunn 44:54
Get out. Okay, so that was a complete lie. I have seen baby surgeon we did did research on them years ago? We had them like on campus and then we had somebody, Arielle, and they were so cute.

Stuart Carlton 45:06
Yeah. Excellent. Okay, well, this year, we have a few different nominees that I think are worth talking about. They're really good. They are good. They're good. Hit me with your favorite.

Megan Gunn 45:19
I have to okay. But I'll tell you. One of my first ones is the trash robot and drone project. Tell me about this. So we have some friends over in Ohio, that were able to get some funding through a lot of different projects and they put together a robot is called a bee bot. And it's a remote controlled electric sand skimming and sieving device. So it like it goes through the beaches, and it removes the sand and collected and then from the from the surfaces, right. And then they have a drone that's remote controlled, and it skims the water and it removes floating trash, on calm surface water. So anything on the Great Lakes, when we have a calm day, inland lakes and it just it can remove trash down to the size of three millimeters, which is super tiny, like things that we need, right? And there's just not enough people. Well, I guess that the people actually threw their trash in the trash, we wouldn't have this problem. But there's not enough people to go and like, they're not going to go offshore to pick up this trash. And so we've got these tools, these little robots that can go and do it for us. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 46:26
no, that isn't even they use them as part of like programming, right? It's not just they have the Biba I mean, you got a trash cleaning robot. That's cool. But but they have what they call waste characterization events. But they get volunteers. They gotta like 140 or 150 volunteer hours, and reach just hundreds of people with this. And what was also cool, it's a big partnership right at the Council, the Great Lakes region, Meyer, Ohio Sea Grant, of course, Michigan, Seagram, Wisconsin Sea Grant, and the coastal management programs and stuff. And so it's a lot of partners to such a great story for that. I liked that. I liked the trash removal robot and the programming around that quite a bit. My

Megan Gunn 47:02
other favorite, Wisconsin's Hugh Grant has a beat Ambassadors Program. So he's got this cute little car and they use it to inform people about water safety using talking about like water quality conditions and rip currents and dehydration and hypothermia things that are important if you're going to the lake and aren't like really informed about that stuff. Yeah. And then they encourage people to like check out the data. So before they go out, look at the current conditions and weather safety it just, you know, all the things that people should know before they're heading out to

Stuart Carlton 47:32
the water. Yeah, no, that's really cool. That is really good. Because drowning in Great Lakes is a real problem. Yes, it is. Kind of surprisingly so having wasn't from here to see the numbers and and so that's that's really important stuff. Scary stuff. Yep. Another Wisconsin. When was this role redemption thing? Yeah, this is interesting. So Wisconsin Sea Grant helped to share information with some people in Sweden, the Worldwide Fund in Sweden and they got what they did was they reached out I guess, to World Wildlife and Sweden when they're making rankings, and they helped the World Wildlife Fund recognize that Cisco and Lake whitefish row were good choices for for fish eggs. So for people who want to eat fish eggs, which a lot of Swedish people do here ever been to IKEA, they sell them in the tube like a toothpaste to your cup of fish eggs, and I know this because our director is from Sweden. In goes IKEA. Well, no, when I go to Ikea, I send him a text and he asked me to bring in some toothpaste tubes as a fish eggs, and then is and then his daughter eats them all up. But anyway, so that's cool to make help people recognize sort of the, you know, what a great fishery, sustainable fishery that is. But I'll be honest, Meghan, Wisconsin's won a lot of stuff today. Yes, the constant heavy so I bet I

Megan Gunn 48:47
mean, the 10 these nominations, but if we have to just choose one Yeah, we just gotta go with it. Let's go with the robot.

Stuart Carlton 48:53
I think we're going robots we bought by our friend Joe Bartolotta. Turns out who was in my secret Academy cohort. Let's see. Yes, she was human. Yes, she was. Well, she still is a lovely human being. She has not yet joined the bird sandwich.

Unknown Speaker 49:08
Now. Wait a minute.

Stuart Carlton 49:15
One day, but not yet. Yeah, Joe can aspire to that. But for now, she will have to settle on being a Leakey winner for each program of the year. Congratulations. Congratulations, man. That is our Leakey awards for 2023. Sorry, they're late.

Megan Gunn 49:31
Congratulations, everyone. Yeah, congrats. Well, we're very deserving

Stuart Carlton 49:36
you were last year I said I was gonna make certificates. It did not make certificates. That's okay. I'm talking

Megan Gunn 49:43
with what do people do with certificates that they get, they actually display them. Not the

Stuart Carlton 49:47
ones that I wasn't gonna make. It's a good question. But this year, I had another idea. I was talking to my friend Robin Mayer have the knowledge that we're actually recording this live in the Purdue knowledge lab podcast. The studio. Go please. Rob and I are in discussions. I'll be honest, it's probably not gonna happen. So I'm not even gonna mention it. But so instead of a physical thing that I will actually not make and send to you what you get instead is my virtual heartfelt congratulations.

Megan Gunn 50:12
No, it'd be cool. Like a sticker. Like you sticker a liqueur. But like, I mean, we can't give it to all the ambassadors. We're just giving it to a program.

Stuart Carlton 50:26
Yeah. Do we give it to like you sticker? Well, we'll put top people on it. So we have spare budget. Yeah, because I tried making sticker ones and it was more of a Stoker. Anyway,

Megan Gunn 50:40
teaching about the Great Lakes is brought to you by the fine people at Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant we encourage you to check out the cool stuff we do at AI sea grant.org and at i l i and Sea Grant on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media.

Stuart Carlton 50:54
Our senior producers Carolyn Foley and teach me about the Great Lakes is produced by hope charters, Megan Lake lover Gunn and Rini miles. Ethan Chitty is our associate producer and our fixer right now he's fixing fixing to upload a bunch of forms to the national office are super fun podcast artwork is by Joel Davenport. Thank you, Joel. And are good stickers or maybe it's not our stickers or stinkers. It's the show is still reluctantly edited by me even though I thought I fixed it and got ghosted again, the twice ghosted Stuart Carlton while we find someone to replace the apparently literally, you're replaceable.

Megan Gunn 51:32
If you have a question or comment about the show, please email it to teach me about the great lakes@gmail.com Leave a message on our hotline is 765496 IESG or 765-496-4474. You can also follow the show on Twitter, also known as x at Teach Great Lakes but let's just say that it's not likely to win a leaky anytime soon. Thanks for listening and keep growing those lakes

Transcribed by https://otter.ai