Great Lakes Science For Our Future

In a speech at an annual meeting of the American Fisheries Society, University of Minnesota College of Engineering Dean Athelstan Spilhaus recommends the formation of a Sea Grant College system, akin to the Land Grant College system, to forge “a cooperative effort among academic, federal, state and commercial institutions, which would draw upon the intellectual strength of the great American universities to unlock the secrets and develop the great potential of the oceans.” Leaders, including Professor Robert Ragotzkie at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, advocate the Great Lakes also be included in the program. After all, they successfully reasoned, the Great Lakes are inland oceans.

President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Sea Grant College Act, instituting a federal-state-academic partnership that institutes research, education and outreach on behalf of the nation’s coasts, oceans and Great Lakes.

Wisconsin becomes the first Sea Grant state in the Great Lakes region, under the guidance of the University of Wisconsin System. Robert Ragotzkie is named as the director. The Wisconsin program initially concentrates research on all five of the Great Lakes and from the home base of different public and private state campuses.

Summerfest debuts in Milwaukee. It’s billed as the world’s largest music festival and brings people to a lakeshore park each year for big-name acts and favorite local performers with Lake Michigan a physical frame to the entertainment. 

First publication released by Wisconsin Sea Grant, "The Lakes and Seas — New Frontier for Industry: Proceedings of a Conference For Industrial Executives, Madison, Wisconsin, Oct. 14., 1968." A recent analysis of  Sea Grant publications  dating to 1970 finds funded researchers published more than 950 papers in peer-reviewed journals. Those papers have been cited more than 33,875 times. 

For at least the 12th time, the polluted Cuyahoga River near Cleveland and a tributary to Lake Erie catches on fire, becoming a symbol of Great Lakes ecological challenges.

Establishment of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore along Lake Superior, the only national park property in Wisconsin. 

The Wisconsin program achieves college status, becoming the first Sea Grant program in the Great Lakes to achieve that milestone. 

Passage of the federal Clean Water Act.

Production begins on a Sea Grant science and environmental news program,  Earthwatch Radio , which continuously provided free programs weekly from Sept. 11, 1972, through May 22, 2007. At its peak, the program was broadcast by more than 160 radio stations, reaching hundreds of thousands of listeners in the U.S. and around the world. Among its many awards was being named to the “Global 500 Roll of Honor” by the United Nations Environment Program.

Singer Gordon Lightfoot releases “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” It spends two weeks at the #2 spot of the Billboard chart. 

The University of Wisconsin System transfers responsibility for the management of the system-wide and statewide Sea Grant College Program to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In a letter to the then-advisory council for Sea Grant, UW-Madison Chancellor Irving Shain asked the council to assist him in the management of the program. Shain encouraged the Sea Grant program director and the council to maintain its policy of supporting a high-quality and responsive program with broad faculty guidance, drawing on the expertise of all appropriate institutions in the state and with wide public input. 

The  Wisconsin Coastal Management Program  comes to the state. Staff members of this valued National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration partner organization work closely with Sea Grant staff on numerous projects every year. 

Establishment of the Sea Grant Green Bay Subprogram. Hallet J. "Bud" Harris is named as director of the subprogram. He now serves on the program's  Advisory Council .

J. Val Klump, former dean of the School of Freshwater Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and current member of the Wisconsin Sea Grant Advisory Council, becomes the first ever person to descend to the lowest point in Lake Superior, a depth of 1,333 feet. 

Invention of the foam noodle, enabling playful buoyancy in the water. 

Release of FishID 1.0, free software providing an illustrated guide and taxonomic key to all fish found in Wisconsin. It’s built off previously developed computer models of the bioenergetics of fish growth — which were internationally recognized as an advancement of fishery science and a practical tool widely used by researchers and fisheries managers. Now, find Wisconsin fish on Sea Grant's  website .

Cowabunga! The first Dairyland Classic surfing competition takes place in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. 

Estimate of when nonnative zebra mussels had spread far and wide enough in their adopted freshwater environment to be detected in all five of the Great Lakes. 

Anders Andren becomes the second director of Wisconsin Sea Grant.

Completion of a landmark five-year, $12-million U.S. Environmental Protection Agency PCB mass balance study of the Green Bay system. It marks the first complete input-output model of all sources, movement and fates of a chemical contaminant in an aquatic system. Sea Grant contributes significant data and field work to the study. 

A formal and internal scan of the program by federal funders looks at the successes of research focused on aquaculture, living resources, microcontaminants and water quality, policy studies and a program dedicated to the Green Bay ecosystem. Also, a look at extension and communications work. 

The  University of Wisconsin Water Resources Institute  (established in 1964) and Sea Grant combine to form a single entity within the Graduate School, now known as the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education. The new administrative home for the two programs is called the Aquatic Sciences Center, which allows for efficiencies in administering two grant programs devoted to the understanding and protection of water assets across Wisconsin. 

The state of Wisconsin’s record-size burbot caught in Lake Superior, coming in at 16 pounds, 2 ounces. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources reports that sport fishing in the state generates $2.3 billion in economic benefits each year and supports 21,500 jobs. Commercial fishing in Wisconsin is valued at $5 million annually.

Sea Grant’s Jim Hurley, now director, co-hosts the  Eighth International Conference on Mercury as a Global Pollutant  in Madison, Wis. 

Implementation of the  Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact  (originally drafted in 2005). It offers a binational framework for water withdrawals and diversions. Its tenet is sustainability. 

The World Health Organization adopts fish-specific toxicity factors created as a result of Sea Grant research on dioxin-like compounds. It was an assessment of early-life-stage morbidity and mortality caused by contamination of wild fish eggs by compounds like PCBs, PCDDs and PCDFs.

Marshfield High School students emerge as winners in the National Ocean Sciences Bowl. Sea Grant supports the qualifying statewide competition, the Lake Sturgeon Bowl. Marshfield builds a bit of a dynasty, also winning the national title in 2010, 2011 and 2012. 

Sea Grant research in partnership with Pentair Water Treatment leads to a U.S. patent for a drinking water treatment device that removes organics, heavy metals and bacteria. 

Designation of the  Lake Superior National Estuarine Research Reserve , bringing a valued National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration partner to Wisconsin. Sea Grant and the Reserve now share office space, and numerous projects, in Superior, Wisconsin. 

Award of U.S. patent for a technique to get yellow perch to spawn out of season. Sea Grant’s longtime aquaculture specialist refined the technique and secured the patent that will benefit Wisconsin’s $21-million aquaculture industry. Yellow perch is a popular and tasty fish that, if produced domestically, chips away at the national seafood deficit—U.S. consumers import more than 90% of the seafood they put on their plates. 

Release of the comedy “Bridesmaids,” featuring scenes filmed at the Milwaukee Art Museum, situated on the shore of Lake Michigan. 

 Jim Hurley  becomes the third director in the history of the program. 

Cat Island Chain’s “lost” islands begin their reemergence from the waters of Lake Michigan’s Green Bay. Sea Grant's coastal engineer, along with habitat restoration, water quality and fisheries specialists, have provided advice and assistance through the years of islands' planning, construction and management. The islands are really cells holding dredged harbor material. The island chain also provides aquatic, avian and amphibian habitat.

A formal relationship with the  University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Northern Aquaculture Demonstration Facility  is forged, with Sea Grant supporting an outreach staff member at the facility and bringing additional aquaculture assistance to state fish farmers, tribal nations, and K-12 students and educators. 

In the only instance, so far, the city of Waukesha, Wisconsin, is approved to divert drinking water from Lake Michigan under the provisions of the Great Lakes Compact. The city lies outside of the Great Lakes basin and its own water supply is tainted with naturally occurring radium. 

Receipt of written review by the UW-Madison Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education, including these findings: The program is “functioning at a high level of all of its mission areas. It administers pass-through funding to support highly relevant applied research related to Wisconsin coastal and Great Lakes resources in an efficient and equitable manner. It conducts exemplary outreach and education programs for a wide range of stakeholders. It effectively brings together a network of scientists and educators to address contemporary water-related issues.” 

The wreck of the Great Lakes barge the Allmedinger is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Wisconsin has about 780 known shipwrecks and information can be found at a joint Sea Grant and Wisconsin History Society website  wisconsinshipwrecks.org,  which highlights the cultural importance of maritime history. For decades, Sea Grant has supported such archaeological work. 

Most-recent National Sea Grant College Program review recertifies the Wisconsin program. It meets the the Standards of Excellence and scores well on a matrix examining expectations. The recertification letter notes that Wisconsin Sea Grant is well-managed, cost-effective and impactful, providing valuable services to its many stakeholders. 

Sea Grant-funded researcher determines that per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) can be spread through rainfall. 

Designation of the  Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary , bringing a valued National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration partner to Wisconsin. The designation includes the siting of a visitor’s center, from which Sea Grant will offer partner-based and Lake Michigan-focused educational activities. 

Initiation of program-wide and nine-month assessment of equity, diversity and inclusion in all internal Sea Grant functions and partner and stakeholder interactions. 

Four women from Wisconsin selected as finalists for the prestigious John A. Knauss Fellowship that has been sending bright young people to Washington, D.C., to serve for a year, in the federal executive or legislative branch. They are the latest in a line of 34 accomplished scholars coming out of Wisconsin since the fellowship was initiated in 1982. 

Celebration of 50 years of Wisconsin Sea Grant fostering the sustainable use and conservation of Great Lakes resources in Wisconsin, with a vision of achieving thriving coastal communities and Great Lakes ecosystem.