Audrey Richardson

"Pea soup" waters across Michigan caused by algae blooms worry not only residents, but scientists too. That’s why scientists at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor have created an uncrewed surface vehicle system that extracts algae samples and transmits data in real time.

The surface vehicle, SHARC, short for Sea Harmful Algal Research Craft, will change the game for how scientists around the world understand algae in all bodies of water.

Understanding why and when harmful algae blooms arise is important, as hundreds of thousands of people travel to dip their toes in the state's plentiful freshwater — which is a crucial economic driver for Michigan. Unfortunately, the water has become less pristine and more murky over the last decade.

“We’re seeing that the peak of the bloom is lasting longer,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research ecologist Reagan Errera said. “The blooms used to last 10 days, but now they’re lasting 30.” Errera is the project lead for the SHARC deployment.

The icky green water isn’t just an eyesore. Because of the toxin-producing capabilities of these blooms, the stakes are high for understanding and eventually mitigating them. If toxins are present, it can cause health complications for residents and wildlife and require additional treatment for drinking water.

“We’re still trying to figure out why it produces toxins and when,” said Andrew Camerilli, benthic ecologist for the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research.

Great Lakes researchers are primarily monitoring blue-green algae microcystis, a bacterium that produces a liver toxin and skin irritant.

Common symptoms when encountering blue-green algae include skin rashes, burns and blistering of the mouth. Ingestion of a concentrated area of microcystis can cause vomiting, nausea, headaches, diarrhea or fever. No cases of death have been reported among humans, but dogs, wildlife and livestock have died due to exposure.

Algae blooms thrive in warm, slow-moving water and are most common in the summer, but the peak season changes year to year due to unpredictable environmental factors.

“This year’s a great example of an unknown,” Errera said. This year's anomalies include smoke debris from the Canada wildfires and the lack of ice cover last winter. “We have no clue of how that's going to impact the bloom,” she said.

This year, several research efforts are underway to monitor these harmful blooms. The Free Press got an exclusive look into what scientists are working on and the deployment of the SHARC.

The development that will hopefully change the way scientists understand harmful algae blooms is the combination of the third-generation environmental sample processor, which provides on-site collection and analysis of water samples, and a SeaTrac, an uncrewed surface vehicle.

Before SHARC, these systems were being used separately for data collection. A second-generation sample processor has been used in the Great Lakes in a torpedo-like vessel for the last seven years, but it was time for an upgrade.

“The SeaTrac allows you to go in shallow water, where a lot of the time that is where they (the blooms) initiate,” said Greg Doucette, an engineer with the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science.

Prior to deployment, scientists across the country met at the GLERL lab in Ann Arbor to ensure SHARC’s success.

Doucette traveled from Charleston, South Carolina, to help with calibration of the sensors on the environmental sample processor that provide measurements of the microcystin.

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute scientists Bill Ussler and Nadia Allaf traveled from California for their expertise on the sample-processor technology and helped GLERL autonomous surface vehicle engineer Ben Downing understand how to program the technology.

A project like this requires an enormous amount of communication, partnership and teamwork among organizations, all of which have the same goal of understanding the harmful algae blooms.

“We can take the expertise from one place and use it in our particular area to answer our questions that need to be addressed,” Errera said. “It makes the research more meaningful; it allows the research to be more comprehensive and it helps it move faster.”

Once deployed, this remote-controlled vessel will be able to take live samples from anywhere in Lake Erie and transmit real-time data to the GLERL Lab.

“To completely map the blooms is the goal,” Errera said. “We want it to be out continuously, eventually.”

Now, Camerilli collects samples by hand from eight collection sites each Monday morning at Safe Harbor Toledo Beach marina in La Salle, Michigan, and transports them back to GLERL. SHARC’s remote capabilities should help cut back on that manual labor.

“We want to decrease manpower and increase high-quality data collecting,” Downing said.

The weekly testing and the new data brought in by SHARC are “complementary right now,” according to Errera. By using both data sets, scientists can monitor improvements needed for both systems and confirm patterns across the blooms.

“We believe that this routine monitoring is still important when coming up with ways to control the bloom,” Camerilli said. “You can never have too much data.”

On Aug. 7, SHARC was deployed for the first time in the world from the Toledo Beach Safe Harbor marina in LaSalle.

After running into unexpected last-minute challenges, the crew had been working until 2 a.m. that morning.

When debating who got to ride on the boat to watch SHARC in action, Ussler was first to opt-out. “I’m going to take a nap,” he said.

With six spots on the boat, one was allotted to boat Capt. Kent Baker. Four more to Doucette, Allaf, Downing and NOAA GLERL General Engineer Kyle Beadle. The last was given to the Free Press.

Errera stayed onshore and had the job of carefully untying SHARC from the dock. Once SHARC was officially free to swim, or be remote-controlled, Beadle took over.

The crew idled through the marina at 2 knots as Beadle programmed SHARC to follow. After successfully maneuvering the technology out of the marina, the crew wanted to push their success further.

“We’ve got to put some stress on him,” Beadle said. Stress in this case meant bumping up the speed to a whopping 3.5 knots.

After more than an hour, SHARC made it to the desired sampling spot and began collecting water.

The third-generation environmental sample processor is programmed to analyze two things, the first being to characterize which algal community is present in the water and the second being a toxin analysis, extracting the toxin and measuring the level of toxicity.

While waiting for SHARC, Beadle was asked by his colleagues at GLERL to take an impromptu water sample where they were positioned. Not normally a part of his job, as he’s normally manning the computer, Beadle obliged and prepared a niskin — a bottle for water samples — with the help of Doucette.

While Beadle took care of the niskin, Allaf was monitoring the sampling with Downing. At the same time, Allaf was giving Downing tips for managing the ever-complex systems of the sample processor. Allaf and Ussler, being a part of the team that built the processor on the West Coast, were transferring the knowledge to GLERL, which could then run the systems independently.

Once SHARC’s data was transferred, the team was ready to leave. After less than four hours of sleep and a workday already past 12 hours, at 6:30 p.m., the crew sped back to shore, leaving their beloved SHARC in Lake Erie for more sampling.

SHARC was pulled out of the water nine days later, on Aug. 16, and driven back to its home in Ann Arbor. Errera said her team has yet to run a full analysis on the success of the deployment, but that the mission went better than expected.

“We were able to accomplish a number of goals, including testing while we were out there, doing the real-time toxin analysis and driving the SeaTrac both while present and not present,” Errera said.

Improvements to SHARC that Errera and her team are hoping to make next include a better collision avoidance system and collecting additional environmental parameters, like water temperature and turbidity, and organic compounds like chlorophyll A.

Michigan scientists, like Errera and her team, are forging a path to greater understanding of harmful algae blooms and how they might be able to stop them in the future to bring blue waters back to Michigan.

“If we can figure out who (algae strain) is present, who is making the toxin and why they’re present, we can do things like make better forecasts and we can understand how the bloom develops better and quicker,” Errera said. “We can get that information to the public in a more timely manner,” ensuring that Michigan residents are not only safe, but can take strolls along the soft-sanded coastline, luxuriate in the saltless crystal blue waters of Torch Lake and Mackinaw City and enjoy Petoskey stone collecting forevermore.

To learn more about the projects NOAA and the GLERL scientists are involved with, go to GLERL’s website.