Great Lakes Daily News

Fifty years after the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald sank into Lake Superior, 68 open water swimmers will symbolically complete the ship’s failed voyage. Read the full story by MLive.

The Sail Detroit Festival will showcase tall ships of various sizes and styles. They will arrive to Detroit on August 7 and tie up on the Detroit River for three days of public access.  Read the full story by WXYZ-TV – Detroit, MI.

The U.S. shipboard maritime workforce is projected to turn over in the coming decades and have more than 35,000 job openings for sailors and marine oilers; 29,000 captains, mates, and pilots; and 9,500 ship engineers. Read the full story by Detroit Free Press.

Great Lakes piping plovers hit a record count of 85 nesting pairs this year, which is four more pairs than in the last two years. Since being put on the Endangered Species Act list in 1984, the plovers are recovering, but only with the protection and assistance of a significant coalition of people and organizations. Read the full story by Michigan Public.

Ohio’s two-year operating budget was officially signed into law by Governor DeWine, solidifying a massive cut to DeWine’s own H2Ohio program, a statewide water quality initiative. The cut has resulted in worries about environmental causes across Ohio, particularly those involving Lake Erie. Read the full story by the Akron Beacon Journal.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has added four new K9s to their staff, including Jet, a four-year-old black lab trained to detect and track zebra mussels, an aquatic invasive species. Read the full story by KBJR-TV – Superior, WI.

The advisory council for the Lake Ontario National Marine Sanctuary will meet later this month amid the specter of massive budget and staff cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is charged with managing the sanctuary. Read the full story by Oswego County News Now.

The Great Lakes whitefish population is in steep decline, particularly in the main waters of lakes Michigan and Huron. Invasive quagga and zebra mussels are largely to blame for the decline, as they have gobbled up the vast majority of the small creatures such as shrimp-like Diporeia that were critical to the Great Lakes food web. Read the full story by The Detroit News.

Several Great Lakes advocacy groups have called for a second Great Lakes icebreaker which could help open up commerce on the Great Lakes during the winter. The funding was briefly included in the U.S. House-passed version of President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill – a sprawling reconciliation package – but appears to have been removed from the Senate’s version and what was ultimately signed by Trump. Read the full story by MLive.

The Robinson Bay, a historic tugboat, was donated by the U.S. Great Lakes Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation to the Great Lakes Maritime Academy in Traverse City, Michigan, providing cadets with new training opportunities. Read the full story by WPBN-TV – Traverse City, MI.