Ferry Badger will start season June 1
The S.S. Badger’s schedule has been updated, with crossings now starting earlier than expected. Departures will commence on June 1st instead of June 14th. Continue checking back for even earlier booking dates. Read more here:
Lake Michigan Carferry
Keewatin museum at Kingston rebrands
Kingston, ON – The Marine Museum of the Great Lake at Kingston has rebranded itself the Great Lakes Museum. Visit https://greatlakesmuseum.ca/ to learn about the museum and centerpiece the steamer Keewatin.
Tours of Keewatin start May 13. Two tours will be offered: a 75 minute Passenger Experience and a 45 minute Engine Room Experience. Tickets go on sale, online, April 24 – tomorrow – here: https://greatlakesmuseum.ca/buy-tickets/.
On July 6, 2007, during S.S. Keewatin’s centenary celebration, her then owners RJ and Diane Peterson appointed Eric Conroy as “Captain Rick”… that is, as S.S. Keewatin’s (honorary) captain. (Although it is a marketing persona, Eric took the trouble to become qualified to use the honorific, obtaining certification from the International Shipmasters Association.)
Since then, it is a role Eric has played during hundreds of presentations, while telling the story of S.S. Keewatin to prospective visitors in audiences of up-to several hundred at a time. On Monday April 15 Eric gave his final presentation as “Captain Rick” and at the end of it presented his uniform to Doug Cowie, Manager of the Great Lakes Museum.
Great Lakes Museum
CMU buys sub to help research Great Lakes
Researchers at Central Michigan University are exploring the Great Lakes with the help of a brand-new submarine.
By Lauren Piesko
MT. PLEASANT, Mich. (WNEM) – Researchers at Central Michigan University are exploring the Great Lakes with the help of a brand-new submarine.
CMU’s Institute for Great Lakes Research bought a two-person submersible with big plans for its future.
Don Uzarski, director of the CMU Institute for Great Lakes Research, said the machine is fully grant-funded and was bought on a whim from private sub owners.
“It was kind of odd, because I was contacted just out of the blue by an individual from Virginia and from Texas that said, ‘Hey. We own our own submarines, or submersibles, and we like to get together and try to help out scientists with these.’ And these are just guys from across the country who have submarines that their vacations, vacationing one week out of the year, going to do research at research stations,” Uzarski said.
CMU’s biological station on Beaver Island is the new home for this maroon and gold submersible.
“I got into the sub and I spent three hours just doing habitat surveys in the sub and I was able to write things down and look around and I’ve been scuba diving for 20 years and this was still a whole new world,” Uzarski said.
Uzarski said this is a huge addition to CMU’s biological station and he is excited to see what new information it will help uncover in the Great Lakes.
“Not only can we stay down longer, we can travel much farther distances. The hopes are, I want to get it in the water as soon as possible and start using it for data collection,” Uzarski said.
One of his primary goals will be using the sub to go regular checks on the Enbridge line 5 pipeline in the Straits of Mackinac.
“When I got in that sub for three hours last year, I was amazed at what I was seeing. It can immediately help in understanding the system much better through our water quality and chemistry data that she could already collect, but also help the managers manage that ecosystem and understand it better,” Uzarski said.
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