Lake Superior, USA

My name is Phyllis Green, I’m from the Hope Michigan area. I work for the National Park Service as Superintendent of our national park. The water body I love on the Great Lakes is of course Lake Superior because I grew up alongside and now I manage a park where two thirds of the park is actually Lake Superior.

I grew up right next to the lake, probably played in it until my fingernails turned blue. When you grow up in a beautiful natural environment you really want to know and understand how it works and what makes It special so that led me to a career in natural resources. As part of protecting our national park, one of our biggest potential threats is aquatic invasive species. I run a ballasted ship for the park. That led me to develop a research program to take on some of the technology issues that are taken on by permanent systems. The national park service has been working on emergency treatment systems for ballasts that can go on and off different ships under different circumstances. I am also working with great industry partners in the Great Lake on finding solutions for the really larger ships that are on there. The thing that got me going was viral hemorrhagic septicemia. I manage about 500 coastal brook trout that are part of the restoration of coastal brook trout in the Lake Superior basin. They take our fish to become brood stock. And when that disease hit the lower lakes, it could kill fish by the tons. With only 500 populating the population I was very worried about that. So that’s what made me want to make sure our ballasted ship wasn’t going to transfer anything. So that is kinda what led me down this whole technology track.