MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Jennifer Boehme grew up scouting beaches around her home in St. Petersburg, Florida, for whatever she could find.
Rocks, sand dollars, coquina mollusks — anything the ocean gave up. Now, 40 years later, Boehme wants to launch another treasure hunt. As executive director of the Great Lakes Observing System , she’s leading a campaign to map every meter of the lakes’ bottom.
The effort, the marine scientist says, will pinpoint hundreds of underwater shipwrecks, illuminate topographical features and locate infrastructure. The map, she says, also will help ships avoid submerged hazards, identify fisheries and inform erosion, storm surge and flooding models as climate change intensifies. “One of the things that keeps me going is the idea of the discovery aspect of it,” Boehme said.
“There’s a lot we don’t know about the lakes. We know more about the surface of the moon.” Only a fraction of the Great Lakes’ bottom has been mapped, and those low-resolution charts were completed decades ago, according to the Great Lakes Observing System, a non-profit that manages data from a network of lake observers and makes it easily accessible.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration certified the Great Lakes Observing System in 2016 as meeting federal standards for data gathering and management, allowing the federal government to use its data without further vetting. The organization has been pushing since 2018 to create high-resolution maps .
