SUNY Plattsburgh’s Lake Champlain Research Institute has a new boat. WAMC North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley has more on what scientists are hoping the new vessel can help them discover.
The institute had been operating a 32-foot-long boat for 30 years.
SUNY Plattsburgh Lake Champlain Research Institute Director Timothy Mihuc says after that long on the water, it was time to replace the old research boat.
“It was at the end of its life cycle. A very good boat, we did a lot of work with the Gruendling. We’re very happy with that vessel. But after 30 years it was time for a new vessel, a new piece of equipment.”
Enter the R/V Leptodora, a 36-foot-long, 12-foot-wide vessel named after one of the largest native planktons and a keystone species in Lake Champlain’s food web. With state-of-the-art equipment, Mihuc likens the boat upgrade to changing from analog to digital.
“We have an A-frame boom which can deploy very heavy gear. The vessel also has a bow door at the front which allows us to actually be a landing craft if we needed to. It’s got very advanced electronic systems including a Furuno side scan sonar system and hi-tech helm system with joy stick control. It’s very hi-tech. The entire boat is sort of today’s version of technology versus the other vessel. I always like to say the other vessel was analog, this vessel is digital.”
The Great Lakes Fisheries Commission provided the funding for the RV Leptodora. Commission Executive Secretary Marc Gaden traveled from Ann Arbor Michigan to attend this week’s dedication.
“A new modern and well-equipped research vessel was needed to fully support the LCRI’s increased activity and fortunately the Fisheries Commission was able to provide funding for the construction of this vessel.”
In 1998, former Vermont U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy included a line in a research funding bill that then-President Bill Clinton signed, officially declaring Lake Champlain the sixth Great Lake. Two weeks later, the designation was nullified, but National Sea Grant funding has continued. Mihuc notes that the lake separating New York and Vermont is ecologically similar to the larger Great Lakes.
“One of the main features of Lake Champlain research is it’s a very good microcosm for the Great Lakes. It’s smaller than the five main Great Lakes but it has very similar ecology. It has basically a similar fishery. So when we do work on Lake Champlain we can ask questions that can apply to all of the rest of the Great Lakes.”
The R/V Leptodora will also be a training ground for new researchers. Incoming SUNY Plattsburgh graduate student Kylie Kress is working with the Lake Champlain Sea Grant.
“We will be taking Fresh Water Ecology in the fall, so we will have the opportunity to use the boat, go out on the lake and get some data. Very excited to have this opportunity.”
Middlebury College associate professor of biology Erin Eggleston is part of the Lake Champlain Research Consortium, which coordinates undergraduate and graduate research on the lake.
“It’s an incredible resource to just have on the lake and certainly the data that are generated for the long-term monitoring data sets are used by students across Vermont and New York. I love the A-frame at the back, opens up a whole set of instrumentation that you can use with the vessel. It’s a medium sized boat, not too big, not too small. So I think it seems a little bit more easy to navigate some of the shallower regions of the lake.”
As small groups are brought on board to see the new technology, two individuals are working on the dock next to the boat. Lake Champlain Research Institute research assistant John Hanosek pilots a remote operated vehicle that is being used on the new research vessel.
“It’s essentially just an underwater drone that we’re able to take pretty much anywhere in the lake. It has a maximum depth of 200 meters, so that gets us pretty far. We can just look around anywhere in the water. It’s got a camera on it. It’s got lights on it and it allows us to do different studies such as fish surveys. You can see what habitat is at the lake. Something we haven’t done yet that we are really interested in doing is taking it to look at different wrecks that are in the lake to get images and video of those wrecks and maybe even find some new ones that haven’t been discovered yet.”
