PUTTING #45013 INTO THE LAKE FROM THE PURE CLEAN WATER

By James Heinz

“I don’t plan on sinking today.”

Those are probably the most reassuring words I have ever heard from a ship captain. And I was listening to them coming from Captain Max Morgan of the UW-Milwaukee research vessel NEESKAY.

NEESKAY was built in 1953 as hull #11952 at the Higgins Industries shipyard in New Orleans, Louisiana. Higgins was the company that developed the Higgins Boat landing craft for World War II.  WMHS files show that she is made of steel and is 75 gross tons, and is 71 feet long, 18 feet wide, with a draft of 8 feet. She has a top speed of 9.5 knots and a range of 750 nautical miles. Max exclaimed that the ship can only conduct scientific work in waves of four feet or less, and that the boat can withstand waves of six to eight feet.

She was built as a coastal freighter and tugboat for the US Army.  Just as the Navy has its own army, called the Marine Corps, the Army has its own navy in the Transportation Corps, consisting of small cargo vessels.  NEESKAY was one of 82 vessels built to the specifications of Design 2000 and known as T-boats. She was designated #T-494.

T-494 apparently served the Army in Korea.  At some point she may have ended up in the Hudson River. WMHS files show that she was named NORTH STAR when she was owned by now defunct Mackinac College. The files show she was obtained by UW-Milwaukee from Mackinac College in 1969 and renamed NEESKAY.  NEESKAY is a name derived from a Ho-Chunk Native American word that means “pure clean water.”

UW-Milwaukee has used NEESKAY for research since 1969.  WMHS files show that she was converted in 1970 at Peterson Brothers shipyard in Sturgeon Bay, Wis. The UWM website describes her facilities as:

“The Neeskay’s research capabilities include a full range of wet and dry lab facilities for chemical, physical, biological and geological sampling and analysis, including Seabird CTD profiler, rosette sampler, hydrographic casts, current meter deployment, surface water temperature chart recorder, vertical and horizontal net tows, trawling, dredging, box coring and sediment sampling. The Neeskay is also equipped for support of scuba-assisted research and small ROV operations.”

And her current captain is Max Morgan, who told me “I worked on boats all my life.”

Max has a B.S. degree in conservation and a M.S. degree in freshwater science.  I asked him if he became captain of the NEESKAY because he loved boats or science and he said, “a little of both. I really love science.” Max grew up on Lake St. Clair on the St. Clair River that connects Lake Huron and Lake Erie.  He was watching boats sail by as well as driving boats from an early age.  He previously had worked on the Environmental Protection Agency research vessel LAKE GUARDIAN, which docks at the same dock as the NEESKAY. Max has a 100 ton Coast Guard master’s license.

Max’s current scientific interest is the Mysis shrimp.  Wikipedia describes this order of shrimp thusly: “Mysida is an order of small, shrimp-like crustaceans. Their common name opossum shrimps stems from the presence of a brood pouch or “marsupium” in females. The fact that the larvae are reared in this pouch and are not free-swimming characterizes the order. Mysids are found in both marine and freshwater environments, the deep sea, estuaries, shallow coastal waters, lakes, rivers and underground waters. There are about 72 freshwater species in total.”

Max explained that these shrimp, at an overage size of one tenth an inch to one inch are too small to make the menu at a seafood restaurant, are at the bottom of the food change.  Prey to many other species, they primarily eat zooplankton.  Max reports the mysis are doing well, despite the introduction to the Great Lakes of the zebra and quagga mussels, which eat the zooplankton mysis depend upon.

And so I found myself on the dock at the UWM Great Lakes Water Institute, on Milwaukee’s inner harbor, at 600 East Greenfield Avenue, in the shadow of the largest four sided clock in the world.  I was ready for the day’s mission, which Max explained, is “one of the coolest things we do.”

The coolest thing they do is to install buoys that are part of the Great Lakes Observing. One buoy is deployed off Shorewood’s Atwater Beach. And our mission was to install the Atwater buoy.

The UWM website describes this program as:

“These monitoring programs produce a variety of data including over-lake weather measurements, wave height, current speed and direction, and water quality measurements such as temperature, conductivity, oxygen concentration, carbon dioxide concentration, pH, and chlorophyll concentration. Each buoy is also equipped with either a surface or benthic camera, which transmits images at 10 minute intervals to our Dashboard page.

“The overall objective of this GLOS effort is to increase Lake Michigan observing capacity, which will lead to improved wave forecasting, over-lake weather forecasting, and circulation modeling.  The monitoring systems also provide data for the validation and improvement of air quality (ozone) forecast models, monitoring of long-term changes in nearshore water quality, and water quality decision support tools for managers at the municipal, state and federal levels.”

And as Max explained the buoy’s data can be viewed online in real time by sending it a text to:  https://glos.org.

So one fine June morning we set sail from the UWM dock for what Max described as a three hour cruise. That was an unfortunate choice of words since the theme from Gilligan’s Island suddenly began running through my head (“a three hour cruise, a three hour cruise”). I also reflected that, like the fictional ship from the TV show, our boat was carrying our own version of the show’s professor, who could make a radio out of a coconut but couldn’t patch the hole in the boat.

We were accompanied by the other boat in the UWM fleet, a gray 26 foot Osprey boat, which is called simply, OSPREY.  It was commanded by UMW Professor Harvey Bootsma. Dr. Bootsma told me he would be leading a team of SCUBA divers who would find the two railroad car wheels at the bottom of the lake and attach chains to them that would hold the buoy in place.

And so our little flotilla set sail.  Nothing else was moving that day except the Milwaukee Police boat making its rounds and a small blue tugboat pushing an impossibly huge barge in the Inner Harbor.  Lake Michigan was almost glass smooth, for which both I and my stomach were grateful.

I inspected the object of our expedition, the buoy, which was standing upright on the ship’s stern beneath the stern A frame crane that would lift it into the lake.  I also interviewed the buoy project manager, UWM research technician Kathryn Johncock.

Kathryn, who also has an M.S. in freshwater science, described the buoy as having “a ton of sensors” that measure temperature, currents, and turbidity. She explained that the orange cable is the temperature sensor.  The yellow cylinder is made of plastic and provides flotation. She said that UWM has emplaced buoys in Green Bay and at Sleeping Bear Dunes on the Michigan side.

Kathryn introduced me to the buoy project manager and keeper, Jessie Grow. Jesse told me “The Atwater buoy is a CB-1500 (for coastal buoy with 1500 lb buoyancy).  It is 115 inches tall or about 10 feet from ballast to the top of the weather sensor above the solar panels. The yellow hull is 48 inches in diameter.” It was built by Fondriest Environmental.

It has an oxygen sensor, is powered by solar panels, and has a camera mounted on the top that takes a picture every 10 minutes as well as a nautical beacon.  The camera is next to a wind speed and direction monitor, which is the tall white thing on top. The orange temperature string hangs down from the buoy to the bottom, with a temperature sensor every meter down to 18 meters or 55 feet. The buoy also has a wave sensor that measures wave height, direction, and period, as well as a water quality sensor that measures PH balance.

The buoy bears ID number 45013.

Jesse said that buoy project “has taken over her life” and that she had been working very hard to get all the buoys ready, which is like “building a race car a week before the race.”  There is one additional buoy, which the NEESKAY puts in and takes out, off Racine.  It is sponsored by Salmon Unlimited.

Our flotilla cruised slowly up the shore line for about 75 minutes until we came to a point a couple of miles southeast of Atwater Beach.  We cruised north past the point where the buoy was to be placed, and then slowly drifted southward with the longshore current as the OSPREY’s divers searched the bottom of the lake for the railroad wheels.  This took some time, but eventually they located the wheels and connected the chains to a lift bag, which lifted the chains to the surface. A three point mooring is used to ensure that the temperature sensor can hang free down into the water.

By this time we had drifted much closer to the OSPREY. The NEESKAY then used its stern crane to lift the buoy off the deck and into the water. The crew moved the buoy around to the port stern quarter and held it there while the OSPREY divers swam over and then and swam it directly over the wheels and connected the chains to the buoy. The buoy was placed 1.3 nautical miles southeast of Atwater Beach in 70 feet of water.

Eventually, we set sail back to the UWM dock, our mission accomplished. On our way back I spoke with deckhand Craig Cornelius. Craig retired after 42 years as a commercial electrician and is now in his fourth year as a deck hand on the NEESKAY.  Craig also has his captain’s license and like me is a former recreational SCUBA diver.  He likes “helping scientists with what they do and helping these young people learn.”  Craig predicts that “water is going to be the next oil.” I think he is right.

Eventually we arrived back at the UWM dock.  Safe and sound, after a three hour cruise.

Although the Covid pandemic has caused much university teaching to be done virtually, lake research cannot be done over the internet. The NEESKAY is not getting any younger and UWM hopes to replace it.  NEESKAY is the only Great Lakes research vessel that sails all year long, but it can no longer be trusted to break ice.

In 2019 an anonymous donor of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation donated $10 million to UWM to cover roughly half the cost of a new research vessel.  The anonymous donor obtained the naming rights, so the new vessel will be named MAGGI SUE. The UWM website describes the new vessel:

“Measuring 120 feet in length, the new vessel also will be the first dynamically positioned boat on the Great Lakes, a feature that allows the vessel to stay in one place despite the current, wind and waves. Other technology includes a complement of sensors that collect real-time data, interchangeable lab “pods” that can be switched out depending on the scientists’ needs, and the space to give whole classes of students the opportunity to learn together at sea.

Unlike the NEESKAY, the MAGGI SUE will have sleeping accommodations for up to 18 people, allowing scientists and crew to remain on the water for longer periods of time to gather continuous data without needing to return to shore.”

So, if you have about $10 million to donate, you could not find a better cause than helping to replace the Pure Clean Water.

Photo at top of page:

Buoy #45013 at anchoring site, divers are connecting buoy to anchor chains.

Other photos:

Photo Credit:  James Heinz.

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James Heinz is the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society’s acquisitions director. He became interested in maritime history as a kid watching Jacques Cousteau’s adventures on TV. He was a Great Lakes wreck diver until three episodes of the bends forced him to retire from diving. He was a University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee police officer for thirty years. He regularly flies either a Cessna 152 or 172.