A team of aquatic scientists and engineers headed onto Lake Michigan early Tuesday, hoping to launch a 610-pound buoy into waters off Winnetka for a six-month mission to collect data about Lake Michigan, according to a Purdue University scientist involved in the project.
Once the buoy is anchored about four miles offshore, roughly equidistant between its Lloyd Park launch site and Wilmette Harbor to the south, it will begin mapping the lake’s wind, waves, and weather, officials say.
It isn’t the first time the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant buoy has been deployed, according to project engineer Ed Verhamme. It had a roughly three-month maiden tour of the lake last summer, after being launched at Wilmette Harbor. However, this will be its first full season, he said.
Choppy Lake Michigan waves scuttled the first plan to launch the buoy last week, but Purdue University aquatic ecology specialist Jay Beugly said Tuesday that he and the team hoped to complete their job that day.
From May through October, sensing equipment on the buoy will beam lake conditions in real and near-real time to several websites, making it useful for boaters, kayakers and fishermen, Beugly said. That includes 10-minute updates of lake conditions, and photos taken hourly during daylight, as well as video footage.
The data will also be fed into the federal government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration files, allowing scientists to improve both lake condition predictions and their understanding of near-shore waters, he said.
The buoy, officially known as the TIDAS 900 Wilmette buoy, is a joint project between Sea Grant, one of 33 publicly- and privately-funded programs whose missions are to address Great Lakes’ and coastal needs, and LimnoTech, an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based ecological engineering consulting company. Indiana’s Purdue University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are participating.
The buoy cost roughly $50,000 to build in Holland, Mich., Purdue IISG research associate Carolyn Foley said last September, shortly after the buoy was launched for its partial season. It joins another buoy in the lake near Michigan City, Ind.
Funding was through the Great Lakes Observing System, which is part of the NOAA’s greater Integrated Oceanic Observing System network, according to information from Purdue University.
The program eventually hopes to put more such buoys in the water.
For now, information provided by the Wilmette buoy will be available to anyone who wants it, Verhamme said. Keeping the public informed about the project was one reason he and Beugly held what he called a small but successful open house on April 26 at Lloyd Park to introduce area boaters and other residents to the buoy.
“We’re trying to engage the public, since it’s really a buoy for the local community to take advantage of,” he said.
To access current lake conditions provided by the buoy and to learn more about the program, visit the IISG Wilmette Buoy page at iiseagrant.org/buoys.php To access other buoy data, visit the National Data Buoy Center at
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www.ndbc.noaa.gov/.Twitter: @pioneer_kathy