• Quinn Rerucha, Courtney Sanders, Lanie Wood, and Julia Vickers with trash collected near Fort Meigs along the Maumee River shore.
    Quinn Rerucha, Courtney Sanders, Lanie Wood, and Julia Vickers with trash collected near Fort Meigs along the Maumee River shore.
  • Members of the Hull Prairie Intermediate Environmental Club proudly show off the 42 pounds of trash collected near the Maumee River in Perrysburg.
    Members of the Hull Prairie Intermediate Environmental Club proudly show off the 42 pounds of trash collected near the Maumee River in Perrysburg.

    Students in Hull Prairie Intermediate School’s environmental club and Maumee’s Gateway Middle School’s seventh grade spent a recent morning cleaning up marine debris along the shores of the Maumee River.

    As part of a grant project funded through the Center for Great Lakes Literacy, teachers Mike Dick of Gateway Middle School, and Amy Boros of HPI are leading students through lessons about marine debris and its impact on local waterways, specifically the Maumee River.

    Every spring, thousands of anglers arrive in northwest Ohio to fish for walleye in the river. Students learned the economic benefits the fishing run brings to the local communities by interviewing Mario Campos of Maumee Bait and Tackle.

    To determine the environmental impact anglers have on the river, the students went on a trash-finding expedition in early March.

    Perrysburg students collected more than 60 pounds of litter between Fort Meigs and Orleans Park along a one-mile stretch of the Perrysburg side.

    Maumee students collected more than 56 pounds of litter along the shore between White Street and the I-475 overpass. Both groups did a thorough item analysis, documenting each piece of trash.

    Students will return to the same locations in May to collect and analyze litter data. They will then complete a pre/post survey for the annual event to answer the question: how do the anglers during the walleye run impact the shoreline?

    The purpose of grant is to develop a community of Great Lakes-literate educators, students, scientists, environmental professionals and citizen volunteers dedicated to improved Great Lakes stewardship. The program originated as the Center for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence Great Lakes, which was funded for five years by the National Science Foundation and NOAA Sea Grant.