Great Lakes

Imagine you’ve planned a big trip to the beach with your family and friends, loaded up the car with supplies or jumped on a plane, and traveled to your vacation spot, only to find a beach littered with plastic beverage bottles, stray fishing line, chip bags, cigarette butts, and other debris. Would you stay and play, or be on your way? What if there were no debris, would you be more likely to return in the future? These are the kinds of questions we asked to better understand the relationship between marine debris and the coastal tourism economy.

Today is World Water Day, a day to recognize that water is our most precious resource, needed by every single living thing on earth. In the Great Lakes, over 40 million people depend directly on HOMES (Lakes Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior) for drinking water. These lakes are the largest freshwater system on Earth and contain a fifth of the world’s water, adding up to more than 6 quadrillion gallons. Unfortunately, marine debris not only exists in our ocean, but can also be found in the Great Lakes and affect the quality of the water that we are drinking. Tiny plastics less than 5mm in size, called microplastics, dominate the waters of the Great Lakes. We don’t yet know how microplastics in our drinking water can affect human health, but we do know that preventing marine debris is a crucial step in improving the water quality of the Great Lakes.

Meet Sarah Lowe, the NOAA Marine Debris Program’s Great Lakes Regional Coordinator! Reach out to Sarah at sarah.lowe@noaa.gov!

The NOAA Marine Debris Program’s Great Lakes region is a large one, encompassing all Great Lakes states— from New York to Minnesota. This region has unique beauty with its complex system of habitats, ranging from the Lakes themselves to their associated wetlands, rivers, and tributaries.  Unfortunately, this landscape is marred by the presence of marine debris. Like many places throughout the country, marine debris is a big problem in the Great Lakes region, impacting the environment and the animals that live there, as well as the Great Lakes’ robust recreational fishing and boating economy. Luckily, there are many efforts currently underway to tackle marine debris in this area. Check out some of the newly-established projects funded by the Marine Debris Program.

The NOAA Marine Debris Program and our partners – Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, Ohio Sea Grant, and the Ohio State University Stone Laboratory – are pleased to announce the winners of the first annual “Communicating for a Clean Future” Marine Debris Public Service Announcement Competition!

The competition was open to students in grades 9 through 12 from Ohio’s 9^th Congressional District. After learning about the issue of marine debris in the ocean and Great Lakes through lessons and school activities, students were challenged to develop innovative public service announcements (PSAs) aimed at inspiring others to take action to prevent and reduce marine debris. This competition not only worked to engage students and to spread the message about marine debris, but empowered students to become leaders in their communities in the fight against it.

Over the years of the NOAA Marine Debris Program, there have been many efforts around the country to rid our waters and shores of marine debris. As part of our ten-year anniversary celebration, let’s take a look back at one of those efforts in our Great Lakes region.

Fordson Island, in the Lower Rouge River, is located near Detroit, Michigan, and was the site of some pretty neat removal efforts back in 2011. The area actually has some cool history which you can read more about here. The shore of Fordson Island, which hosts some of the last remaining undeveloped habitat in a very industrialized area, was unfortunately the site of a lot of marine debris, most notably abandoned and derelict vessels.