Change is coming to the lakebed and waters of the Great Lakes. Two more units of the National Marine Sanctuary system are on deck for federal approval. The question is whether Michigan will take additional steps to protect its own Great Lakes lakebed and waters.
Administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a federal agency, the sanctuaries are described as a network of underwater parks encompassing more than 629,000 square miles of marine and Great Lakes waters. Michigan became the first Great Lakes state to host a sanctuary when the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary off Alpena was designated in 2000. The primary rationale for the park is the abundance of historic shipwrecks that lie in the area’s waters, known as Shipwreck Alley.
Although local residents were initially skeptical about the value of a sanctuary, acceptance has grown. Thunder Bay has become a magnet for tourism and an important site for environmental education.
Now there are two new Great Lakes marine sanctuaries. The Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast sanctuary (designated in 2021) protects 36 historic shipwreck sites and the Lake Ontario sanctuary (2024) protects both shipwrecks and underwater archaeological sites in eastern Lake Ontario offshore of the State of New York. Designation of a Lake Erie sanctuary is in progress.
As this history implies, the bottomlands of the Great Lakes and the waters above them are public trust resources that cannot be privately owned. Governments have an affirmative duty to protect them.
Michigan has also established a system of underwater preserves of its own, protecting 7,200 square miles of lakebed and safeguarding shipwrecks. But there is little to no funding for the program, and much of the effort to monitor the preserves is the result of volunteer work.
The question is whether Michigan and/or the federal government should extend protection of public trust bottomlands through an expanded sanctuary and/or preserve program. Significant geological, biological, environmental and archaeological resources, including indigenous sites, are known to exist on lakebed that was above water millennia ago. It’s an issue worth exploring.
