Superior Harbor News

The first "saltie" of the 2024 Great Lakes shipping season entered the Port of Duluth-Superior on Monday,Oceangoing vessels that visit the Great Lakes are called "salties".This year, the first to call the Port of Duluth-Superior is the Portuguese-flagged Barbro G, a 623-foot bulk carrier operated by Sweden’s Brochart KB, which completed the season’s first full transit of the St. Lawrence Seaway en route to the Great Lakes’ westernmost port.By tradition, this first full transit from the Atlantic Ocean marks the annual opening of the Duluth-Superior Harbor…

This week, NOAA's Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R) scientists worked with the U.S. Coast Guard during ice-breaking in Lake Superior Harbor in Duluth, Minnesota, aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Spar. This project is the first set of experiments funded by the newly developed Great Lakes Center of Expertise.Teams from both Coast Guard District 9 and NOAA deployed uncrewed aircraft system (UAS) with multispectral, thermal and LIDAR sensors to collect data while the Spar was breaking ice in the harbor.

At 12:01 a.m. today, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officially opened the Soo Locks for the start of the 2016 shipping season. The locks at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan are among 16 locks that form the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway navigation system which extends from Duluth, Minnesota to the Atlantic Ocean. Together these 16 locks lift or lower ships 600 feet – the height of a 60 story building. Since the Soo Locks closed in January, the Corps has been busy executing winter maintenance, repair and rehabilitation projects. Projects included the installation of a hydraulic system for the Poe Lock; anchorage repairs and dewatering bulkhead coating replacement on the Poe Lock; and work on the MacArthur Lock’s electrical modernization.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Detroit District awarded a contract for dredging at Duluth-Superior Harbor in western Lake Superior on the Minnesota-Wisconsin border. The $1,393,900 contract was awarded to Roen Salvage Co. of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. The firm will dredge 114,000 cubic yards of material from the harbor and deposit the dredged material at the 21st Avenue West embayment, a shallow cove on the Duluth side of the harbor. The dredging will begin in mid-August and be complete by mid-November. Lt. Col. Robert Ells, District Engineer, said, “North America’s industrial and manufacturing heartland relies on the low-cost waterborne transportation of commodities such as iron ore, coal and limestone from Duluth-Superior Harbor.”

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration (MARAD) announced that it is providing $4m to help prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species found in cargo ships plying the Great Lakes and America’s inland waterways. “This funding demonstrates the Obama Administration’s commitment to protecting the Great Lakes while supporting economic revitalization of the entire region,” said Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. The funding is part of the Administration’s Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, the largest federal investment in the Great Lakes in 20 years. The initiative’s priorities for action—developed by a task force of 16 federal departments —are combating invasive species, cleaning up toxics, protecting wetlands from pollution, and restoring wetland and habitats.

The Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration has awarded a $350,000 contract to the Northwest-Midwest Institute’s Great Ships Initiative to develop appropriate protocols for ballast water discharge sampling. Ballast water has been a major factor in the spread of invasive species. Proper and standardized ballast discharge sampling protocols are fundamental to verifying that ballast water treatment technology is effective aboard a working ship, as well as in the laboratory. The new contract is for targeted, empirical, engineering and biological research to design and validate a ballast sampling method that is reliable, replicable, and cost-effective for both the ship owner and the regulatory community.

Ports of Indiana officials will join industry and government leaders in Duluth on Wednesday to announce the launch of the Great Ships Initiative, a $3.5m research center that is the first in the Great Lakes region designed to specifically focus on developing the technology necessary to prevent the introduction of aquatic nuisance species into the Great Lakes by ocean-going ships. Leaders of over a dozen major U.S. and Canadian Great Lakes ports will be joined by scientists and federal agency officials at a ceremony in Duluth/Superior harbor to announce the project. Research efforts will be based within the University of Wisconsin-Superior. The project will be co-managed by the Northeast-Midwest Institute, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, both of Washington, D.C.