For the first time in roughly a decade, the lakebed under the Munising City Marina has been cleaned of any garbage. The project comes from a collaboration spearheaded by the Alger Conservation District and Superior Watershed Partnership.
“The cleanup went very well,” ACD Director Matt Watkeys said. “We brought up at least 50 tires alone. It was definitely a job well done.”
To remove all of the debris, diver Tyler Penrod of Superior Watershed Partnership swam around the marina floor and attached debris to a winch on the side of the Alger County Sheriff’s Office boat. Watkeys and Deputy Eric Brock hauled the trash up and transported the debris back to the lakeshore.
Cleaners were able to fill up a roll away dumpster with just the various sizes of tires pulled up from the lakebed with another half dumpster filled with random trash. According to ACD staff, the oddest thing found was a 20-inch piece of angled steel and multiple ladders that had fallen overboard from the various boats mooring in the marina.
A city utility box was also hauled from the lakebed. That box went missing two winters ago and it was initially thought it was stolen as part of a stretch of TikTok challenges promoting vandalism, but the location of the box showed that it was pushed into the marina by the weather.
While there were plenty of beer and pop cans, no cell phones or cameras were brought up as part of the clean up.
“Surprisingly there was not a lot of other debris down there,” said ACD Program Coordinator Christy Foye.
In addition to cleaning up the marina, the situation allows the conservation district to observe the marina from a different viewpoint. Amongst all the trash recovered from the bottom was a zebra mussel. This kind of mussel is an invasive species from Eastern Europe and can incapacitate local varieties of the species to steal algae-based food sources. Fish with evidence of scarring from sea lampreys were also observed when cleaning the marina.
ACD officials did not have an exact date for the last cleanup event of the marina lakebed, but knew that it had been at least ten years. They attributed funding issues as one of the main barriers to the cleanup, but will try to find new ways to keep the area clean.
Also working with the ACD, Superior Watershed Partnership and Sheriff’s Office was NOAA and Munising City Department of Public Works.
With the city marina now cleaned, Watkeys said they will attempt to get more grant funding to do cleaning at the Brown’s Addition boat launch and locations around Grand Marais.
