Built as for fishing in 1985, the Blue Heron was purchased by UMD in 1997 and converted to a research vessel.

“The importance of the vessel is that you can physically get your hands wet, get out there on Lake Superior, see what’s actually going on,” said Large Lakes Observatory intern Amelea Hauer. “The most important thing is you can put the equipment on this vessel, get it out there and put the buoys in the water to collect the raw data. Most colleges or facilities don’t have this huge resource, but we do. So we utilize all that we can.”

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