Great Lakes 101

I think that if many people were asked “Is Detroit a Great Lakes city?” their response would be a confident “Yes!”. But if then asked, “What Great Lake is it on?”, confidence in their answer might wane. In fact, if their familiarity with the region or mental geography is limited, they may become stumped. Because the answer is that Detroit is not on one of the Great Lakes. But it does sit on water that is part of the Great Lakes system (remember – the largest freshwater system on earth!).

We’re moving on today from Lake Huron-Lake Michigan (remember – technically one body of water!), to Lake Erie. But we’re making a stop along the way in Detroit on the banks of the Detroit River, a 28 mile straight ushering water south and west to the mouth of Lake Erie. The water is flowing at origin from Lake Huron, down the St. Clair River and into Lake St. Clair and then into the Detroit River.

wide angle photography of city near body of water
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The Detroit River is a significant stretch of international border between the United States and Canada. There are currently two automobile crossings, the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, managed by border agencies on both sides. More than 40,000 people cross the border each day.

In the early part of the 20th century, the Detroit River was one of the busiest commercial waterways on earth with the rise of the auto industry in Detroit. In 1907 the river moved 67 million tons of shipping commerce out to destinations around the world. By comparison, New York City moved about 20 million tons that year. 

But decades before automobiles were built and started crossing the Detroit River, it was a different crossing. It was a  final stop for many routes on the Underground Railroad. Code name “Midnight”, Detroit was the most active entry point along the US-Canada border for enslaved people escaping to freedom.

There were several reasons for this:

  1. Slavery was outlawed in Michigan, and by the 1830s Detroit had developed an established Black population, some of whom courageously accepted the profound risks of assisting enslaved people;
  2. By 1833 Canada had declared that enslaved people could not be extradited to be returned to their owners and granted legal immigration status to Blacks, making it the closest thing possible to freedom; 
  3. The river is relatively narrow and shallow, making it navigable by even smaller boats, although winter months would have been a perilous trip.

Second Baptist Church of Detroit and the First Baptist Church of Amherstburg on the Canadian side of the river coordinated many of the crossings. The basement of the Second Baptist Church was likely the last place in America that some enslaved people spent time before leaving for Canada. You can arrange for a tour of the church. Across the river, 30 minutes south of Windsor, is the Amherstburg Freedom Museum which consists of a church and a log cabin built by people who escaped slavery via the underground railroad.

The last steps to freedom for many people were actually a distance covered on the waters of the Great Lakes.    

white and brown bird near body of water under blue sky at daytime
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As a native of the Washington, DC area and relative urban and suburban life, until recently, my depth of familiarity with maritime life, resources and economies was truly slim. I will be honest in having a hazy understanding of the word fishery, hatchery, or what was meant when mentioning the work of fish management. While my knowledge is still not deep, I have learned much more through my Great Lakes exploration of the past three years.

Here is the mission of the Fish and Aquatic Conservation program of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: We are committed to tackling the nation’s highest priority aquatic conservation and recreational challenges to conserve, restore, and enhance fisheries for future generations.

My lack of clarity around the word fishery is actually understandable. The word is used in a number of different, and sometimes inconsistent, ways. According to Wikipedia, Fishery can mean either the enterprise of raising or harvesting fish and other aquatic life or, more commonly, the site where such enterprise takes place (a.k.a., fishing grounds). Commercial fisheries include wild fisheries and fish farms, both in freshwater water bodies (about 10% of all catch) and the oceans (about 90%).

Last post I shared about the infamous, massive alewife die-off of 1967 in Lake Michigan waters and shores. I ended with the question: What did they do about it?

In this case the “they” ends up being the Michigan Department of Conservation. And what they did was initiate one of the largest bioengineering endeavors of all time. States around the Great Lakes agreed to introduce coho and Chinook salmon from the Pacific Ocean into the lakes to bring the alewife population under control. It was a successful effort to redesign the Great Lakes fishery. Alewives were back to more controlled numbers by 1971.

person holding raw fish
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Introducing salmon was the brainchild of Dr. Howard Tanner. In The Life and Death of the Great Lakes, Dan Egan writes a riveting chapter about Tanner – his environmental management expertise, his love for Michigan and the Great Lakes, his vision, and his streak of independent decision-making fostered by his time as a soldier in World War II.

As head of the Michigan Department of Conservation, he led the effort to introduce salmon in 1966. Biologists had already recognized the overpopulation of alewives by that time. Just one year later, by the fall of 1967, millions of salmon offspring appeared in Lake Michigan. The salmon grew large and heavy on the alewife diet. It created a frenzy of recreational fishing. Egan describes it memorably: “It was as if all the skiers in Michigan awoke one morning to find that their little hills had been replaced by the Rocky Mountains.” Recreational fishermen who had dreamed of one day fishing out West for salmon literally found them leaping out of the waters of Lake Michigan. Word spread of “coho fever”. Beyond successfully controlling the alewife population, the effort created a recreational boom in sport fishing and a new constituency of people invested in the Great Lakes. 

photo of man fishing
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The Great Lakes have been known as a world class salmon fishery ever since. However, some danger signs have been flashing over the past thirty years. Nature constantly brings our attention back to cycles and interconnectedness – and sometimes seems to enjoy a little irony on the side. The alewife population is now dwindling.  And in dwindling, it may take the salmon with it given that they rely almost exclusively on alewives as their diet. That much despised little silver fish has been revisited, recognized, and respected for its role in the Great Lakes fishery.

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In early July 2022 we drove to Northern Michigan to drop our older daughter off at summer camp for two weeks. For the weekend we stayed at a house about 25 miles east of Ludington. My husband and I drove up into Ludington State Park on the shores of Lake Michigan. As we drove in, gorgeous white sand dunes lined the road. It was early evening, so a transition time with beachgoers emerging from trails through the dunes, colorful umbrellas, chairs and towels in hand, headed back to their cars.

Ludington State Park (MI), Lake Michigan, July 2022

We parked and got out of the car to walk out on the beach. We were immediately greeted by what I can only describe as, frankly, a strong, unpleasant odor. Putrid is too strong a word, but it was fishy, and rotten. We walked over a dune path and emerged on the beach. The view was incredibly picturesque – gorgeous wide white sand beach and cottonball clouds. But a quick stroll closer to the water revealed the source of the smell – there was a band of dead, washed up small, silver fish stretching down the beach in both directions.  

These fish are alewives, and wash-up like this is, somewhat unfortunately, not an uncommon occurrence on the shores of some Great Lakes. The history of the issue is well-explained in Dan Egan’s book The Death and Life of the Great Lakes that I refer to time and time again. It’s a story of ecological imbalance.

River herring are a species well known to east coast North Americans for centuries. They hatch in the rivers flowing into the Atlantic and then head into saltwater for much of their life before heading back to the freshwater to spawn. 

River herring were first found in Lake Ontario in the late 1800s. It’s unknown how they got there – whether they made their way on their own through the St. Lawrence River or accessed it through the canals dug at the end of that century. For several decades they lived in some ecological balance as the Atlantic salmon and lake trout were natural predators. But once the evolving commercial fishing industry ramped up and overfishing of salmon and trout became an issue, the river herring became massively overpopulated. By 1931 they had been found in Lake Erie and by 1954 in the waters of all Great Lakes. 

The Great Lakes river herring quickly evolved to be a smaller, toothless version of the East Coast river herring. They lacked natural predators, and quickly came to dominate the fish mass of the lakes, especially Lake Michigan, where by 1965 they were likely 90 percent of the lake’s fish mass. By this point they had also come to take on another name – alewives. 

My dad was living in Chicago in the summer of 1967 when the city experienced the most infamous alewife happening of all time. There was essentially a massive die-off of alewives that dumped billions of fish carcasses on the shores of Lake Michigan around Chicago. 30 miles of shoreline were “smothered”, as Egan writes, by piles of decaying fish sometimes shin deep. The cost of management and clean-up in Chicago was pegged at $50 million – $350 million in 2017 dollars. The price tag across the entire summer and all the shores impacted: close to $1 billion in 2017 dollars. 

To most people, the die off was seen, and smelled, along the shore. However, in the water, there were reports of piles of carcasses at the bottom of the lake over 6 feet high and live schools of the fish were so thick that boaters described running into one being like running into a snowbank.

What happened?  

The reason turns out to be to be biological maladaptation. The fact that the alewives, originally saltwater fish, were able to live in the freshwaters of the Great Lakes didn’t mean that they were able to thrive. Their bodies simply didn’t work well due to the lack of salt. They experienced kidney stress, stunted thyroid activity, and an inability to handle the dramatic water temperature changes the Great Lakes can experience. But their mere survival had thrown Lake Michigan completely off-balance with no real predators to keep the population in check.

So what did they do about it? Stay tuned for Part 2 of the story in my next post. 

Photo from Whiting Robertsdale Historical Society

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Perhaps because it is the only Great Lake with all of its shoreline in the United States, Lake Michigan seems to hold a special place in many hearts and minds. 

There are lots of impressive stats to share. Lake Michigan is the second largest Great Lake by volume and the third largest by surface area. It has the world’s largest collection of freshwater sand dunes. Area surrounding the lake is home to over 12 million people, including Chicago, the largest city on the Great Lakes.

Indiana Dunes National Park from Conde Nast

The word “Michigan” is believed to derive from indigenous words meaning “great water” or “big lake”. These include “mishigamaa” or “mishigamaw” in Algonquin “meicigama” in Chippewa and “mishigami” in Ojibwa.

A road trip around Lake Michigan would offer almost too many fantastic stops to list. This itinerary from the roadtrippers site starts in Milwaukee and then heads north towards Door County, Wisconsin, “the Cape Cod of the Midwest”. 

Heading north from Wisconsin leads into Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (UP), which you know I love for its wildness, quirkiness and solitude (and Joe Pera!). After driving eastward on the UP, the route drops you back into Michigan’s Mitten via the Mackinac Bridge.

the straits of mackinac under the mackinac bridge
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The route from there takes you south through beautiful shoreline and quaint, picturesque towns – Charlevoix, Petoskey, Traverse City, and Sleeping Bear Dunes area before landing down on Michigan’s weekend escape towns like South Haven and Saugatuck. Westerly winds blow surface water to the east, making the water on these east coast destinations on the lake warmer in summer months.

At the southern end of the lake one finds a relatively unknown gem – the 45 miles of Indiana’s Lake Mighigan shoreline, which includes Indiana Dunes National Park. 

From there, the route will take you up into Chicago. When one thinks of Chicago, the sprawling built city comes to mind. And maybe deep dish pizza or hot dogs? But make no mistake – the city is inextricably connected with Lake Michigan. In the warmer weather, it really is a beach town with crowds of people at Oak Street Beach, Rainbow Beach and Park and North Avenue Beach. All year round, you can walk and bike miles along Lake Shore Drive or visit Navy Pier’s myriad attractions, food and programs.

photo of city buildings near river
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I would venture to guess that many of you have spent time on Lake Michigan. If you have a favorite memory or place or a hidden gem, I’d love to hear about it! Reply to my newsletter or drop me a message through the website!

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We’re going to continue on our tour of the Great Lakes, moving from Lake Huron to its partner, Lake Michigan. As I’ve shared before, Huron and Michigan are really one body of water, joined at the Straits of Mackinac. 

Southwest from the Straits lie a chain of islands. The two most prominent islands are North and South Manitou. The islands are part of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and can be seen from the mainland – two distinct humps rising out of the water in close proximity to each other. 

There is a ferry from Leland that will take visitors to both islands. South Manitou is the smaller island (8 square miles) and attracts day visitors with a small museum, lighthouse, and old Coast Guard station, and a wagon tour out to the site of a shipwreck. North Manitou is much larger (22 square miles) and, other than a small village where the ferry docks, is managed as a wilderness area. Visitors come for solitude, hiking and camping. Neither island has food or medical services. 

On our visit to Sleeping Bear Dunes in 2019 I bought a children’s book at the National Park Service Visitor’s Center called The Legend of Sleeping Bear by Kathy-jo Wargin, illustrated by Gijsbert van Frankenhuyzen. It has a subtitle “Michigan’s Official Children’s Book”. Given this designation, I was underprepared for the story told but probably should have been tipped off by the dedication: For all mothers, whose love and dedication will be rewarded.

A synopsis of the legend, an Anishinaabe story of a sacred place: Long ago, across the inland sea that is now Lake Michigan, in the forests of what is now Wisconsin, lived Mother Bear and her two cubs. They lived happily along a stream. Sometimes Mother Bear would take her cubs to the shores of the lake and gaze out on its endless horizon.

One day there was a thunderstorm and lightning struck a tree and started a forest fire. Mother Bear and her cubs ran to the lakeshore. They had no choice but to leap into the lake and start a swim across to the other side. The cubs promised Mother Bear they would swim with all their might all through the night. Mother Bear kept checking to make sure her cubs were not far behind her. But by morning, as she saw the sun coming up, she no longer saw her cubs. Mother Bear made it to the sandy shores of the lake, surrounded by dunes. She was exhausted. But she paced up and down the shoreline, calling to her cubs. Eventually she climbed to the top of the highest dune and sat, watching and waiting for her cubs.

She waited as the seasons changed. She waited through the winter. Eventually Mother Bear fell into a deep slumber of sorrow, blanketed by sand. The great spirit of the land felt her sadness, her dedication, and her love. And so the spirit raised the cubs from the water and made them two islands, close together and within view of Mother Bear. They are North and South Manitou Islands, resting eternally near their mother.

Welp. Oh man. You can be sure I was wiping away tears when I read the book. But this story of a mother’s love is deeply touching and adds further life and meaning to this special region on Lake Michigan. The bears’ resting place brings awe, joy and peace to visitors year after year. 

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We’re going to pause from our Great Lakes tour for a post or two. Right after the new year, a number of you sent me this article from the Washington Post – or others on the same topic. The Great Lakes were in the news.

person wearing orange jacket

January 1st, 2024 recorded the smallest amount of ice cover over the Great Lakes in the past 50 years. Only 0.35% of the lakes’ surface area was under ice. The lakes average 9% for New Year’s Day. There is clear evidence of a downward trend likely due to climate change. Between 1973 and 2017, the lakes recorded as many as 46 fewer days per season frozen, which is defined as days when at least 5% of the lakes’ surface had ice cover.

There is variability year to year – 2019 was one of the highest ice coverage years on record (81% coverage at one point!), and things can also change through a season. Highest ice coverage is usually seen in February and early March.  

Why does this matter? The National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) has provided a helpful answer.

There are several challenges to note. Thick ice protects the shoreline from erosion and flooding during winter storms. Animal patterns are disrupted, including those of fish who use ice for protection during their spawning season. Some areas of the Great Lakes have developed winter recreational seasons for things like ice fishing that depend on ice coverage.

But one of the main impacts of this shift for those living in the region is an increase in the well-known lake effect snow phenomenon. Lake effect snow occurs when cold air, often a front from Canada, sweeps across the relatively warmer waters of the Great Lakes. As it moves, warmth and moisture from the lake water rises into the lowest portion of the atmosphere. Because it is warmer and less dense than the cold air, it rises and creates clouds and snow.

Unfrozen lake is a prerequisite for lake effect snow. So, with less ice coverage at the start of January, the region was ripe for the impacts of lake effect snow, and we saw it in the middle of the month when a frigid front came through and we saw substantial snowfall.

For those of us living in the region, there is high variability with how lake effect snow is experienced. It can sometimes bring a light, innocuous, low density snow. But it can also bring strong bands of dense snow that can appear quickly, at times causing dangerous conditions for driving. Climate change and warmer temperatures will likely exacerbate the extremes causing punishing snows like those Buffalo experienced in the closing days of 2022 when between 50 and 77 inches of snow fell around the region.

In sum, climate change is driving a deep irony for the Great Lakes region. Warmer temperatures are moderating the climate overall, but increasing some of the most extreme winter weather that drives stereotypes and boastful declarations about the superior liveability of places like Florida and the Sunbelt. I encourage you to think critically about this sentiment though. Winters here can have some extremes but summers there have some extremes – and in some places dwindling access to freshwater. There is nowhere to escape our warming planet. We all have burdens to bear in the short and long-term. 

And, as I shared in one of my earliest posts about retreating from life on Lake Erie in the winter of 2021, the snow and ice can be mighty beautiful.   

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Manitoulin Island in northern Lake Huron is the largest freshwater island in the world at 2,766 square feet. It is large enough to have over 100 freshwater lakes and multiple rivers itself.    

Manitoulin Island is also the home of an incredible young activist named Autumn Peltier. I was introduced to Autumn in the beautiful picture book Autumn Peltier, Water Warrior, written by Carole Lindstrom with illustrations by Bridget George. 

Autumn is Anishinaabe and an Indigenous Water Protector from Wiikwemkoong First Nation on Manitoulin Island. The rapid evolution of her activism is nothing short of remarkable and Autumn has been nominated several times for the International Children’s Peace Prize, including being a finalist in 2022. 

2012 at eight years old: Autumn learned that many First Nations in Ontario often live on short or long-term boil-water advisories and began speaking out about this in her own community. 

2016 at 12 years old: At the Assembly of First Nations in front of thousands of people, Autumn pointedly asked questions of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about water protection and told him he is not doing enough on the issue.

2018: Autumn addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on the topic of clean water access.

2019, at the age of 14: Autumn was appointed Chief Water Commissioner for the Anishinaabek Nation. She meets with leaders of Tribal Nations and speaks nationally and internationally about Indigenous and water rights. Her voice and messages are often directly about the waters that flow in and out of the Great Lakes.

Autumn is the great-niece of the late Josephine Mandamin, an internationally recognized water and Indigenous rights activity. She was widely acknowledged as the leader of the Water Walk movement. Josephine co-founded the Mother Earth Water Walkers in 2003. The Mother Earth Water Walkers is comprised of women from different clans of the Anishinaabe who work to bring attention to water crises in their own communities and others around the world. They do this by walking the perimeter of the Great Lakes. The first Water Walk was in 2003 when the group walked 2,726 miles around Lake Superior. They carried a copper pail filled with lake water. Over the next 14 years, there were thirteen Water Walks, covering a distance of over 15,000 miles to bring attention to the issue of clean water. 

If one thing stands out in Autumn Peltier, Water Warrior, it is the voice of women and girls. To the Anishinaabe, speaking for the water is a matriarchal act. There is something that seems so right and also deeply ironic about this. Around the globe, it is often women and girls who bear the burden of accessing clean water.  In communities without easy access, women and girls may literally spend their days walking miles to and from sources of water for drinking, cooking and sanitation needs. Here’s hoping that Autumn and other young climate and environmental activists inspire all sorts of people from across the globe to take action.       

In our culture, we look at water as a living being, and we’re taught to treat it with the same respect we would show another human. Water is the lifeblood of Mother Earth. It gives all life, and there is no life without it. Autumn Peltier, Foreword to Autumn Peltier, Water Warrior

water drop photo
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In my March 2023 post about the Great Lakes as the characters of the movie The Breakfast Club, I referred to Lake Huron as the dark horse of the lakes. Despite being the second largest Great Lake, its identity feels less specific, somewhat unknown, perhaps a bit mysterious. I gotta be honest – it took me a while to even find a decent map of the lake to post (feel free to check my googling!). 

Some of this is likely due to the fact that despite having the longest shoreline of all the Great Lakes – almost 3,800 miles – there are only three million people living on or proximate to the lake. There are no large cities on its shores. The west side of the lake is the thumb side of Michigan’s “mitten” with lake waters flowing down towards Detroit where they will pass into the St. Clair river and then on into Lake Erie. Most of the shoreline is in Ontario.

At one point in history, the lake was called La Mer Douce, or “the freshwater sea” by French Explorers. It was later named for the indigenous Huron people who have lived around the lake for centuries. Much of the lake and land surrounding it has remained in a fairly wild state. Like all the Great Lakes, Lake Huron was carved from glaciers. Over time sedimentary and volcanic rocks carved away and what were likely smoother expanses of rock along the shore. Hills and small mountains of jagged rock form what is called the Canadian Shield around the northern side.

Lake Huron has over 30,000 individual islands including the largest freshwater island in the world – Manitoulin (1,068 square miles) – which has over 100 freshwater lakes of its own. The shipping economy on the lake has historically been focused on the lumber industry present in the deep, dense forests north of Lake Huron in Ontario.

The eastern side of the lake is the Georgian Bay, a popular destination for Toronto area residents in the summer months. The bay is created in part by the Bruce Peninsula, home to a popular Canadian national park.

The waters of Lake Huron off the shore of Alpena, Michigan are home to the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, which was formally designated and opened in 2000 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Most people are not familiar with our 15 national marine sanctuaries – essentially national parks in bodies of water. Most are dedicated to protection and advocacy of aquatic life, others like Thunder Bay also pay honor to maritime economies. Thunder Bay protects an area home to over 100 historical shipwrecks that can be visited in glass-bottomed boat, kayak, or with scuba gear. It is also home to the Great Lakes Maritime Heritage Museum.  

For more things to do along Michigan’s “sunrise coast”, see this article from Midwest Living magazine. As I shared in my post two weeks ago, my daughter and I were lucky to witness daybreak over Lake Huron. It remains a favorite memory of 2023. 

Note: Other than above, credit goes to others for pictures in today’s post.

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Our tour of the Great Lakes continues today. We’re going to move eastward, from the deep, cold, expansive waters of Lake Superior, dropping down into Lake Huron.  

The first weekend of November, my older daughter and I went away for quiet time together. I wanted one more Great Lakes adventure before the winter settled in, and I really hadn’t seen Lake Huron other than acknowledging it as we passed over the Mackinac Bridge to the Upper Peninsula in July 2022. Many people don’t realize that Lake Huron and Lake Michigan are essentially one body of water, joined at the Straits of Mackinac which you cross on the bridge. Lake Huron is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by surface area but has the longest shoreline, creating an incredibly diverse geography to be explored in a future post.

I wanted to see the sunrise over Lake Huron. With off-season pricing, we rented a small house right on the waters of Saginaw Bay, a little over a four hour drive from Cleveland. 

Saturday morning, we didn’t get much sun. It was cloudy and overcast at dawn. A weather pattern had churned up the water; the visible and audible effect was every bit inland sea with waves rolling onto the small strip of sand in front of the house patio. My daughter was undeterred by the lack of a picturesque sunrise. Sometimes we don’t get sun. Sometimes we get clouds. We can still find joy from huddling together under a blanket, or romping around on the sand, looking at driftwood. We can still look out, beyond, and know that above the clouds, the sun has brought light and another day.

As I look to 2024, I sit with gratitude for some personal and family milestones that will be reached over the year. But I also sit with a heavy heart and an undercurrent of unease while thinking about our global and national realities. 

As former President Barack Obama once said though, “No matter what happens, the sun will rise in the morning”. And some days it will look like it did the next day, on Sunday morning, November 5, 2023. Simply nothing short of a magical gift.

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While I have shared pictures mostly of calm Great Lakes waters, the late fall and early winter each year brings a reminder: The inland seas are dangerous. Since 1979 there are records of over 8,000 boats and thousands of lives lost on the lakes. One of the most recent, famous, and mysterious wrecks was that of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald in the waters of Lake Superior. 

The “Fitz” was, when it launched in 1958, the largest ship on the Great Lakes at 729 feet long. It mostly carried iron ore from mines near Duluth, Minnesota to iron factories in Detroit and Toledo.

The ship left Superior, Wisconsin at 4:30 PM on November 9, 1975 bound eventually for Toledo, Ohio. By late that night, conditions had changed from what had been predicted. A storm turned into a November gale with waves greater than 35 feet high reported and near hurricane force winds. A November gale, also sometimes called the November witch, is caused by low atmospheric pressure over the Great Lakes pulling cold arctic air from Canada and warm air from the south. When these two collide they can create substantial, dangerous wind conditions. 

The Fitzgerald remained  in contact with another ship, the Arthur M. Anderson, once the storm started. The Fitzgerald came in and out on the radar. The afternoon of November 10th, it reported that two vents were damaged and the boat was taking on water, but said both pumps were working. At 7:10 PM Captain Ernest M. McSorley communicated “we are holding our own”. But by 7:15, the Fitzgerald disappeared from the radar and never reappeared. All 29 people on board were lost including 15 from Ohio. The wreckage was eventually found about 17 miles from Whitefish Bay and the Sault Ste. Marie area. 

The cause of the wreck remains unknown. The boat lies 530 feet below the surface making exploration and investigation hard. The most common theories from government agencies and industry organizations: (1) The boat “shoaled” on an underwater mountain range, essentially scraping itself and potentially incurring more damage than the crew was aware of; (2) The boat experienced leaking hatches (doors) from faulty or improperly closed clamps; (3) The boat experienced hatch damage caused by unknown debris. 

The event was memorialized and inscribed into cultural knowledge by Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot, who was inspired to write his hit “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” after reading a Newsweek magazine article about the shipwreck. After the wreck, new regulations and policies were put in place for Great Lakes ships including mandatory survival suits, increased freeboard (height between water level and deck), depth finders and more frequent inspections.

May we keep the memory of the ship and those lost.

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