OEL: Ocean Engineering Laboratory

All environmental buoys have been deactivated for the winter. The buoys will be redeployed in the spring.

The University of Michigan Ocean Engineering Laboratory (OEL) Upper Great Lakes Observing System began with the deployment of Station 1 in 2005. With support of many partners, the local community, and the Great Lakes Observing System (GLOS), the OEL has added two more stations (Station 2 and Station 3).

Through partnership with Northwestern College's Water Studies Institute with funding from The Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, the OEL designed and fabricated a thermistor buoy for deployment in Grand Traverse Bay during the summer of 2009. Plans are currently in the works for the deployment of several more environmental monitoring buoys to bring the total to eight.

One of these buoys is deployed in Little Traverse Bay. The fabrication of this buoy was funded by GLOS and the buoy maintenance is supported by Little Traverse Bay local communities. Another two buoys will be funded by Michigan Tech University and GLOS and are deployed in Lake Superior off shore from MTU's new Great Lakes Research Facility (one is still pending as of June 20, 2011). All of the U-GLOS data is available real time, updated every ten minutes on our website. The data is also available and archived on the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) website.