Today was a great day! We started our busy day with a visit to Mercyhurst College to see Steve Mauro. Steve does e.coli research in Presque Isle. His research looks at the sources of e.coli entering into the lake and along with his students, he measures the e.coli levels twice a week to determine swimming advisories. He showed us how to conduct the tests and how we could conduct similar tests in our classrooms. He was an amazing teacher and I think all of us were wishing that we would have had him as a professor when we were in college.

After our talk with Steve we met with Jeanette Schnars to talk about turtles in Presque Isle State Park. She looks at nesting behaviors of the local turtles and contaminant levels in their shells. Check out the pictures of her “friends” that she brought along.

Helen finished up our talks for the day by giving us a rundown on invasive species in the Great Lakes. Our students love talking about animals so we were all excited about incorporating invasive species into our curriculum.

This evening we had some free time and several of us used the time to enjoy the beautiful beaches of Presque Isle State Park. A lot of visitors to the park were combing the beaches looking for sea glass, so we joined in. It was a great treasure hunt. We also had the opportunity to explore the Tom Ridge Environmental Center. We saw the movie “Mysteries of the Great Lakes” on the big green screen and then we climbed the tower to get a birds-eye view of Lake Erie.

To end our night we had a great discussion on personal care products and how they end up in our water systems. Think of all of the products that you put on your body in a day…lotions, shampoo, condition, deodorant, etc…Where do they go when you wash or when you go swimming? Do our water treatment facilities filter those products out before recycling them water back into the system? What about medicines? Pharmaceuticals get into out water system by direct flushing or by passing through our bodies unused and they are not filtered by our water systems either. What are the consequences to this? Unfortunately we do not know yet.

Did You Know?
- There is more bacteria in us and on us than the number of cells in our entire bodies
- The sex of a baby turtle can be determined by the temperature of the egg in the clutch
- The world releases more than 2 million gallons of personal care products into our water system every day