Stephanie Gandulla, a maritime archaeologist at the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, said that, while the team does not have specific dates for events, estimated times have been set for field research.

One of the first things the research teams will do is head out to the many shipwrecks in Thunder Bay and Lake Huron and set up mooring buoys close to the sites so ships will know the wrecks’ whereabouts.

“If there’s not a mooring buoy there, visitors to a shipwreck site could potentially drop their anchor right at the site and then potentially damage a historic shipwreck,” Gandulla said. “But, if there’s a buoy, they simply tie themselves to it. It also makes the shipwrecks much easier to find and it also provides a safer descent and ascension for the scuba divers.”

Gandulla said that the application of buoys will happen in late April, when scuba divers will dive to large anchoring points near shipwreck sites, grab the anchor points’ chains, and attach them to buoys.

Courtesy Photo A Great Lakes Dive Charters boat is tied up to a shipwreck mooring buoy in Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in this undated photo provided by sanctuary staff.

During those expeditions, researchers will also collect samples of water for another project in the works monitoring fresh water and its acidification.

“When we started two years ago, it was the first time researchers were really focusing on answering the question of what a warming atmosphere is doing to fresh water,” Gandulla said. “There are tons of studies on ocean acidification that go back for decades and show the detrimental effects of a warming ocean, but we don’t have a lot of data for the Great Lakes. So the sanctuary is kind of like the center for understanding this.”

Gandulla also said a particular focus of that project is to take water samples at the shipwreck sites in Lake Huron and to see “what a tenth of a degree or tenth of a pH point increase might do to a wooden or steel shipwreck.”

Researchers also document and monitor the shipwrecks annually to observe if any changes have occurred at the sites during the wintertime.

That project is in collaboration with the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, which will find the acidity results for each water sample. The project is set up to look at the long-term effect of increased acidity within the Great Lakes, so Gandulla expects the project to continue on a seasonal basis.

The NOAA team at the Great Lakes Maritime Heritage Center has other plans with collaborators, including the return of engineers and the U.S. Department of Defense for Silent Swarm, a large field work testing event in which engineers and technicians from different military departments, tech companies, or universities collaborate to create efficient machines to detect and potentially interfere with enemy electromagnetic frequencies, according to leaders of the event.

Gandulla expects that event to happen in the middle of July, but did not have any further information.

Gandulla also said officials will research microbial mats in Lake Huron’s Middle Island Sinkhole — a project in collaboration with Bopaiah Biddanda, an aquatic microbial ecologist and professor at Grand Valley State University.

That project looks at microbial mats, a photosynthetic colony of microorganisms that survive in the oxygen-poor, sulfur-rich groundwater. The sinkhole, according to a summary by Biddanda provided by Gandulla, is a modern-day window into the distant past and helps scientists learn more about what Earth was like millions of years ago.

“Who knows? Answers to enduring questions such as life’s evolution, Earth’s oxygenation … and even solutions to carbon burial under a changing climate all may come from a better understanding of how this complex … microbial ecosystem works,” Biddanda said in the summary. “And the best part is that they are right here in our backyard!”