I can see for miles...

Davis-Besse nuclear power plant from 10 miles away. (Rich Norgard photo)

I've written before on this site about the ever changing nature of Lake Erie. It's a fact that the lake never looks the same on any two given days -- each one has its own special beauty. Well this past Tuesday was truly one of a kind because the visibility out over the water was as remarkable as I can recall seeing. I don't know if it had anything to do with those several days of continuous wind and rain perhaps clearing the air, but it was truly a sight to behold.

The Davis-Besse nuclear power plant, roughly ten miles distant, looked much closer, as the photo I snapped above will attest. My first realization, though, that this was a special day was when I looked out over the lake and saw that West Sister Island was not only visible but was clear as bell. Now on most days you can't see the island at all. The island is about 18 miles as the crow flies across the water. Even on fairly clear days it's just not there. More astounding still, just to the left of West Sister I could see quite clearly the huge smoke stacks at Monroe, Michigan, and adjoining structures. (See photo below) Now often times you can see the tops of the stacks but almost never the buildings themselves. I'd always attributed the inability to see more as due to the curvature of the earth. But on Tuesday some phenomena was at work that flattened the earth, metaphorically, allowing objects normally over the horizon to be visible. If you are a tekkie and happen to know what this is, please let me know and I'll share it.

The smoke stacks on the left, located in Monroe, Michigan, visible to the naked eye from 36 miles away. West Sister Island, on the right, at a distance of 18 miles. (Rich Norgard photo) 

As sunset neared, the sun itself had a brilliance to it seldom seen. I was driving into Port Clinton with a friend along the Sand Road and we both remarked how bright and white the sun appeared to be.

Lake Erie reveals many wonders, but Tuesday was a very special day indeed.

Killing Cormorants

When I returned to the Lake Erie shore last year after an absence of several decades, one of the things that surprised me was the explosion in the number of cormorants that had taken place. In fact, I don't recall seeing any when I was a boy. Now they're so plentiful that for the past several years the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service have been culling their numbers on three Lake Erie Islands. I wanted to find out why.

As it turns out, there was apparently a healthy supply of cormorants - specifically the double crested variety - back in the 1930s and 40s, but gradually, chemical contaminants in the environment caused fatal deformities and reproductive failures and these large, dark, fish-eating waterbirds had all but disappeared from the Great Lakes by mid-century.

But pollution controls led to a remarkable cormorant resurgence. On West Sister Island, Ohio's only chunk of federal protected wilderness, the cormorant population went from zero pairs in 1990 to 3,813 in 2005. Great colonies of great blue herons, black-crowned night herons, and great, snowy, and cattle egrets were threatened by the cormorant invasion.  The cormorant's high-nitrogen feces, or guano, burned up vegetation on the island and cormorant numbers as well have crowded out other, less prolific colonials. Cormorants also strip vegetation and break down trees.

On Ohio's tiny, 17-acre Green Island, a state wildlife refuge, cormorant numbers exploded from no pairs in 2003 to 857 by 2005. The ODNR's goal is to eliminate cormorants there entirely. Otherwise, officials fear, the island could be destroyed in another year or two.

Turning Point Island, a long manmade spit of about five acres in Sandusky harbor, had 409 pairs of cormorants a year ago, along with the lake's second-largest colony of black-crowned herons is situated there, along with a fledgling snowy egret colony. Officials want to cull about 40 cormorant nesting pairs there.

Nationwide, cormorant numbers have blossomed to about two million, with nearly 70 percent living in interior areas such as Ohio.

This was the fifth year for cormorant control efforts on West Sister, Green and Turning Point islands. This year nearly 2,200 of the fish-eating birds were killed with noise suppressed rifles in late April and early May before spring foliage took hold. Last year 2,300 cormorants were culled, and in 2008, the number was 2,600.