What is happening to Lake Winnipeg is a familiar story to anyone who is paying attention to the plight of lakes in this country.  Increased phosphorus runoff from wastewater, animal manure, laundry detergents and fertilizer are creating massive algal blooms in lakes, which can impact wildlife and fisherman and make swimming a dangerous venture if the algae that you are swimming in happens to be of the blue-green variety.

In Minnesota and North Dakota, more intense farming and floods have greatly increased the amount of phosphorous the flows north out of the Red River and into Lake Winnipeg.  Where algal blooms were once a thing that happened to other lakes and not Lake Winnipeg, it is now getting so bad that fishermen and the Canadian government are working hard to understand and stop the problem.  Enter the Motor Vessel (MV) Namao.  This retired Coast Guard vessel makes three cruises a year in the spring, summer and winter testing the same 65 locations during each season.  This gives the scientists good baseline information about what is happening to the lake.

If you do a little research, the same thing was happening to Lake Erie in the 1970s.  Massive algal blooms were appearing every year polluting beaches and devastating industries dependent on the lake.  People called the lake dead.  Scientists studied the problem, discovered inordinate amounts of phosphorus in the lake, put a stop to the primary sources and within a few years the lake came back to life.  It’s a success story that scientists aboard the MV Namao hope can be repeated here without ever getting as dire as the Lake Erie story.

This is where the scientists come in.  In the pictures below, they are studying everything from water quality characteristics to details about Lake Winnipeg’s food chain.  All of this information will go into developing a better understanding of a lake that was rarely studied before these issues surfaced.  In the end, they are hopeful this information will lead to some sort of change that will preserve the lake for generations to come.

Click here for a link to Minnesota Public Radio’s story on the subject…

To listen to MPR’s audio piece on the story, check it out below…

And now for the pictures!

Andrew Olynyk (right) takes a whiff of an Emerald Shiner after Heather Clark (center) commented that it smelled like cucumbers Thursday, June 3, 2010 near Gimli, Manitoba in Canada. To the left is Katie Sheppard. The three were separating fish brought up by a trawling net that skimmed the surface of Lake Winnipeg.

Increased phosphate and nitrate runoff from the Red River is one of the primary causes of more frequent and intense algae blooms in Canada's Lake Winnipeg.

University of Manitoba research student Heather Clark holds a small Emerald Shiner that was pulled out of the water after trawling Lake Winnipeg Thursday, June 3, 2010 near Gimli, Manitoba in Canada.

The contents of a trawling net that skimmed the surface of Lake Winnipeg for about 30 minutes Thursday, June 3, 2010 near Gimli, Manitoba in Canada. The fish were separated by species and then weighed, packaged and sent off as part of different studies involving Lake Winnipeg.

Every single fish brought to the surface by trawling nets aboard the MV Namao would have to be counted and weighed as part of a study to see what walleyes were feeding on in Lake Winnipeg Thursday, June 3, 2010 near Gimli, Manitoba in Canada.

Sunrise over Lake Winnipeg near Gimli Harbor in Gimli, Manitoba in Canada. Increased phosphate and nitrate runoff from the Red River is one of the primary causes of more frequent and intense algae blooms in Canada's Lake Winnipeg.

LEFT: Heather Clark uses a small fishing net to sift through the smallest remaining fish caught in a fishing trawl while aboard the MV Namao Thursday, June 3, 2010 near Gimli, Manitoba in Canada. Some of the fish are barely the size of a fingernail and each must be captured, counted and weighed. RIGHT: A bag of Cisco fish taken from a trawling net sit in a plastic bag awaiting shipment to various research institutions in Canada as part of ongoing studies to learn more about Lake Winnipeg.

Gordon Chamberlain (right) and Elise Watchorn (2nd from right), both of Environment Canada, empty their trawling nets Thursday, June 3, 2010 near Gimli, Manitoba in Canada. Next to Watchorn is University of Manitoba student Andrew Olynyk (far left) and above Watchorn is University of Manitoba student Katie Sheppard. The four were aboard the MV Namao.

A fishing trawl aboard the MV Namao is lowered into Lake Winnipeg while the ship's captain Walter Lee (center, bottom) watches Thursday, June 3, 2010 near Gimli, Manitoba in Canada. The net would skim the surface of the lake looking to see what fish such as walleyes might be feeding on.

The MV Namao captain Walter Lea looks through binoculars looking for buoys put out by fisherman while on Lake Winnipeg Thursday, June 3, 2010 near Gimli, Manitoba in Canada. The nets can span the length of a football field and can be dense in areas so Lea has to have a keen eye so they do not run over and destroy any nets.

The MV Namao's fore during research operations on Lake Winnipeg Thursday, June 3, 2010 near Gimli, Manitoba in Canada.

Sunrise over docked sailboats in Gimli Harbor in Gimli, Manitoba in Canada. Increased phosphate and nitrate runoff from the Red River is one of the primary causes of more frequent and intense algae blooms in Canada's Lake Winnipeg.

University of Saskatchewan student Amy Ofukany pulls Lake Winnipeg water from the Seabird Rosette Thursday, June 3, 2010 near Gimli, Manitoba in Canada. The Seabird Rosette is an auto-sampler that measures water characteristics such as conductivity, oxygen levels, light penetration and turbidity. These are some key characteristics in determining whether algae blooms will form.

The University of Regina's Vince Ignatiuk (left) and the University of Manitoba's Kaite Sheppard (right) help hoist a tube containing a probe that penetrated the floor of Lake Winnipeg Thursday, June 3, 2010 near Gimli, Manitoba in Canada. The two were aboard the MV Namao.

Manitoba Water Stewardship's Shannon McDougal (right) smiles after someone stepped on a hose aboard the MV Namao and water gushed out of it hitting McDougal and making her wet Thursday, June 3, 2010 near Gimli, Manitoba in Canada. Next to McDougal is Enivornment Canada's Todd Breeden. McDougal and Breeded were in the boat because when a probe that penetrated the floor of Lake Winnipeg is brought to the surface, someone needs to plug the bottom of the probe so the sediment does not fall out when it is lifted into the ship.

The MV Namao sits in the Gimli Harbor after a day on the water Thursday, June 3, 2010 near Gimli, Manitoba in Canada.

Minnesota Public Radio contacted me to shoot pictures of a Wisconsin DNR pilot who tracks radio-collared wolves for a story about continuing efforts to get wolves delisted from federal protection.  Farmers and hunters have been complaining for a few years now that the wolf population in this part of the country is starting to get out of hand and this year saw a record number of wolves (16) killed and those were only the ones that were found so that number is just a fraction of how many were probably killed.   This sounded like a cool assignment, but I was worried we would only see one wolf at a time or that the woods would be so dense that it would be impossible to see them from up in the sky.  I was so wrong on both accounts.

Now I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have the wolfpack scene from “The Hangover” playing over and over again in my head.  I just love that movie.  Anyway, back to my story.  The wolves have a radio collar attached to them and the pilot, Phil Miller, used a GPS tracking system that beeps when the airplane gets closer to the animals.  When the beeping really picks up, it’s time to start looking on the ground for the animal, which can be tough when the woods are thick.  The first animal, a lone wolf, took about five minutes to find.  We located him sitting just off to the side of a deer stand.  It was too thick to photograph so we moved onto the next group.

This was the first of two packs we would see on the day and it would be the biggest.  We flew a few minutes before the GPS started beeping again.  We saw one wolf then another and another and another and this kept going until it stopped at 11.  This was the pack I was hoping would be out in the middle of a lake or out in the open, but they still remained in fairly dense forest.  The third and fourth pictures are from this pack and the fourth one demonstrates just how hard it was at times to find these animals if you weren’t already locked onto their location.

So after circling them for 10 minutes shooting pictures and freezing the face of Minnesota Public Radio reporter Bob Kelleher from my need to open the window of the plane to shoot pictures, we decided to move on.  This third radio-collared animal was supposed to be part of a group of nine wolves.  And with this, my hopes and dreams for the assignment came true as we came upon a beaver pond and five of the wolves were walking and lounging around in the middle.  No trees to obstruct, no bushes to get in the way.  It was a perfect setting and with fresh snow, the tracks the wolves made were quite visible as well, which just added to the photos.  We spent about 15 minutes circling these guys before we left to track two more radio-collared animals.  After that, I took some pictures of Bob at the controls before watching the last radio-collared wolf trot along a snowmobile path.

I had never seen a wolf in the wild and after reading what one did to a woman’s dog in Ely, I don’t think I’d want to either.  You can find out what happened to that woman’s dog by clicking here and reading Minnesota Public Radio’s story about the flight and efforts to delist the wolves.  I hope you have as good a time looking at these pictures as I did taking them.  One thing for all you people out there that I learned from this trip… Dramamine will knock you out.  I thought I might need some because of all the banking, spinning and twisting the pilot needed to do to get a good look at the wolves, but I didn’t get sick and all it did was make me nod off in the middle of conversations with Mr. Kelleher on the way back.  Sorry Bob!  Anyway, on to the photos!