By Dan Patrinos

Great Lakes commercial mariners played the hand they were dealt last year.

“2020 was a year that caught everyone by surprise,” the Great Lakes Maritime Task Force says  in its recently released annual report. “Maritime commerce on the Great Lakes was expected to keep on rolling like 2019 with big cargo numbers for the U.S. fleet and strong cargo numbers moving through U.S. ports from domestic and international carriers.”

But Covid-19 changed that course.

Cargo numbers were generally down, GLMTF reports, as users of the raw materials moved on the lakes scaled back production.

“That meant less steel for industry, but demand started to crawl back in the last quarter of 2020,” the report says. “Large-scale construction that relies on Great Lakes stone and its products kept going but slowed considerably. In the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic last year, energy production saw its lowest numbers since the late 1980s. These aren’t trends, these are market reactions to a dramatic episode that impacts all of us.”

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The industry took early and effective action to mitigate the spread of the virus, the report states.

“Ports across the Great Lakes set up screening procedures for workers, limited non-essential visitors, reduced personal interactions with vessels and vendors, and created plans to mitigate outbreaks if they occurred.” With assistance from state, local and federal agencies protective equipment was supplied “so essential port operations could continue and vital cargoes could continue to be delivered.”

Great Lakes shipyards responded by creating procedures to protect their workers, the report adds. “Captains and crews of the vessels shined with leadership driving home the importance of taking care of their shipmates.”

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Founded in 1992, GLMTF is a trade association, promoting domestic and international shipping on the Great Lakes. Its seventy members constitute the largest coalition to speak for the shipping community, drawing its membership from labor and management representing U.S.-flag vessel operators, shipboard and longshore unions, port authorities, cargo shippers, terminal operators, shipyards, and other Great Lakes interests, per its website.

Through the coronavirus malaise the bright spot was U.S. domestic grain being exported across the world and wind turbine parts moving through many Great Lakes ports, according to GLMTF. The report states that the eight Great Lakes states, having the “heart of America’s manufacturing strength,” was poised for a return to robust output. “We look to 2021 as a year of economic rebound.”

Quoting a July 2018 economic analysis sponsored by a coalition of U.S. and Canadian Great Lakes and St. Lawrence marine industry stakeholders, GLMTF says lakes maritime commerce supports 147,000 U.S. jobs providing nearly $10.5 billion in annual wages. The study by Martin Associates of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, said the commerce results in $25.6 billion in economic activity in the U.S. and supports local, state and federal programs. This activity results in $4.6 billion in taxes.

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Other highlights from the report:

• Covid-19 prevented cadets at the Great Lakes Maritime Academy, Traverse City, Michigan, from getting their required observation time aboard a vessel to acquire their Great Lakes pilotage license. This has results in not enough deck officers to back fill retirements and those who have left the industry. This shortage will affect all maritime commerce.

• The maritime industry faces a shortage of licensed merchant mariners with “profound commercial and national security implications.” Congress should appropriate funds for state maritime academies, including the Great Lakes Maritime Academy, with sufficient federal money to continue their role in educating and training cadets to become licensed officers.

• Funding “must be provided now for a second heavy icebreaker that is at least as capable as the USCG MACKINAW to be built and operated on the Great Lakes.” Bipartisan bills have been introduced in the House and Senate to codify the Coast Guard icebreaking mission into law and define the requirements that must be measured. The report states that the bill would “correct the chronic issue of false performance measures that have covered up the Great Lakes icebreaking atrophy over the past 40 years with nearly a 50 percent reduction in the number of icebreakers compared to the fleet in 1979.”

• In general, GLMTF supports proposed discharge rules, including how ballast water is regulated in the Great Lakes. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency published its proposed regulations for the Vessel Incidental Discharge Act, part of a Coast Guard authorization act of 2018. The regs were published Oct. 26, 2020.

• GLMTF supports adequate funding for dredging of the sixty federally maintained deep-draft ports on the Great Lakes.

Wisconsin members of the the Great Lakes Maritime Task Force listed on its website are:

• Bay Shipbuilding Company, Sturgeon Bay
• Brown County Port & Resource Recovery Department, Green Bay
• Fraser Shipyards, Inc., Superior
• Hallett Dock 8 LLC, Superior
• Midwest Energy Resources Company, Superior
• Roen Salvage Company, Sturgeon Bay

Photo at top:
This photograph by Bob Kuhn shows the USCGC MACKINAW on March 10, 2015. Photo Source: Great Lakes Marine Collection – Milwaukee Public Library / Wisconsin Marine Historical Society

More Photos:

Story resources:
Great Lakes Marine Task Force
The Great Lakes Seaway Partnership Study
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

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Dan Patrinos is a retired journalist and a member of the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society. He lives in Milwaukee.