 I would like to now introduce Chad Palaszczuk. He's the director of planning and development of the city of Shebawegan. And Chad, I apologize, because I'm going to stop myself for just a second. I forgot something. I actually would like to introduce that we have our congressman, Glenn Rothman, here today. So, Glenn, come here. Thank you. And we also have our representative, Terry Cotsman, who is here. Thank you both for coming. And we also have near-vanderskin in their house. I'm missing, I apologize. And Adam Payne, thank you, Adam. I'm not missing anyone. Adam, I don't mean to miss you. So what will let you all give me a round of applause for Chad Palaszczuk. He is our city planning and development director. And thank you, Chad, for coming. I'm sure to be here and talk about the National Marine Sanctuary process that's been going on in the Shebawegan area for probably the last, hmm, this is part of my introduction for Ellen. I've known her since she first came to Shebawegan, I think, in maybe 2007, 2008. And we were going to start this national marine process. And it was only going to take five years. And we were going to be up and running. So here we are in 2015. Sorry. 2014 was a successful year for the sanctuary program. National Marine Sanctuaries, there's 13 of them, I believe, in the world. And before I begin, how many of you have heard about the National Marine Sanctuary, just so I know of the other? OK, so most of you are on board with it. For those of you that aren't, we fly for a nomination. The NOAA opened up National Oceanic. OK, that's her presentation. So let me just talk about, so is your presentation going to talk about the nomination in our package? OK, so let's skip all that. We'll move ahead to something else. So we're looking at how to brand ourselves. I know she won't be talking about this because she hasn't seen this. We're looking at how to brand ourselves here locally for the National Marine Sanctuary. And there's been a group out of the Waterfront Discussion group that meets once a month. And it's chaired by Mike Fro. And we have talked about how to look at moving forward and seeing what each of the communities, their strengths and weaknesses are. So we know that our good friends, we've got some representatives from the Wisconsin Maritime Museum out of Manitowoc. They're a partner in this. Two Rivers is a partner in this. Port Washington is a partner in this. And the Three Counties are a partner in this. And they have a historical component in Manitowoc. Port Washington has a historical component just actually opening this weekend. The Port Explorium, if anybody is interested. It's supposed to be excellent. I haven't seen it yet. But it's worth a trip to Manitowoc that's kind of preserving the heritage of the Great Lakes. And then we have Sheboygan. And where is Sheboygan going to line ourselves up? And we're looking at science and technology. The reason we're doing that is because Spaceport, Sheboygan, as we know, has moved into a new building in Salt Pier. It has set up some exhibits and is doing well. We would like to see how to bring that to the next step. So without further ado, as before we start, we just finished a film that's about three minutes that will lay out kind of the vision for Sheboygan science and technology. And then after the film is done, we'll follow up with a few things related to that. So direct your attention to the screen. Known as the spirit on the lake, Sheboygan, Wisconsin graces the coastline of the planet's largest surface freshwater system. The community's coastal lifestyle embraces waterfront exploration and adventure, making Sheboygan a much desired balanced life destination to live, work, learn, and play. Presently, there are 14 national marine sanctuaries dating from 1975. Located in the center of a proposed freshwater national marine sanctuary, Sheboygan's freshwater coast is positioned to become an epicenter of discovery and innovation. Our community has always been bonded with the Great Lakes with the rich heritage of maritime activity and natural resource recreation. We are poised to move forward in response to the increasing global concern with freshwater resource management and conservation. Sheboygan's South Pier has become a premier Midwest destination for innovative startups. The future science and technology exploratorium will feature interactive exhibits demonstrating what is and what could be. Our multinational companies have made notable advances in robotics, production, and research and development. Immersed in this culture of science, technology, and creation, next generation inventors can thrive. Space travel evolved from nautical science. Space Port Sheboygan, with the embedded NASA Space Lab, affords travelers a space-inspired journey. A new science-on-the-sphere exhibit promotes consciousness of nature's systems, while the annual Rockets for Schools is the largest rocket launching program for students in the Midwest. We are a community where children can have the ultimate freshwater sailing experience. The Sailing Education Association of Sheboygan exists to make this experience possible for present and future generations. Our thriving Scuba community probes the depths for numerous shipwrecks suspended in clear fresh water, bringing the past alive through journeys of exploration. Our community offers truly endless possibilities for residents and visitors to engage in freshwater experiences from science and technology to education, recreation, and exploration. The Sheboygan Fresh Coast is our community and now is the time to establish its direction for future generations. So that's kind of the direction. So with that, I would like to, and Arbor, that we've been working with for a number of years. She's gonna be talking about the whole Marine Sanctuary, the proposal and everything, and then there'll be, like Lynn said, questions and answers after that. So without, as soon as she gets her PowerPoint up, hopefully. Introduction. So my name is Ellen Brody. My just, in terms of a little background, I've worked for an hour for quite some time. I've been in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for almost 20 years in my NOAA career, and I based at the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab. So thank you very much for inviting me. I'm not sure that the second Friday forum has the same ring as the first Friday forum, but I do appreciate you being flexible in accommodating my schedule. So I have spent my career with NOAA and I've worked with amazing people. Just very energized by the people I work with, the programs I've had the opportunity to work on, but with this new opportunity for new sanctuaries, I am incredibly energized by this. I'm inspired by your passion in the Great Lakes and your passion for a potential national marine sanctuary. Bottom line is that we all care deeply about places, and it's been a privilege for me to learn about your place here. So with that said, let's step into some history to start off with. Chad can be able to advance the slide. So the senator was built in 1896 in my home state of Michigan in Wyandotte, Michigan, 400 foot steel steamer, that actually had a fairly long career in terms of how long ships last. Next slide. But on Halloween night of 1929, she collided on southeast of Sheboygan. It was a foggy night and she collided with the steamer Marquette, went down quickly, and unfortunately there was a loss of life between seven or 10 crew members out of the 30 did perish that night. So I'm here because we care about shipwrecks. And why do we care? What do we learn about shipwrecks? So, you know, he starts asking questions about the senator. What was she carrying? Where was she going? What, you know, place in history? Well as it turns out, the week that she sank was a very bad week because two days prior to that was the stock market crash of 1929. Okay, so the senator was carrying 241 Nash automobiles. So, where were the Nash automobiles, where were the Nash automobiles built? Kenosha. Kenosha. So, you know, obviously a great with constant connection. So, you know, imagine that. What would those automobiles look like now on the bottom of Lake Michigan? So, the senator was found in 2005 by a couple divers. She is very, very deep, probably about 450 feet deep somewhere between Chicago and Guetta and poor Washington. The divers know where she rests, but it's not a known, the location's not known to really anybody else. It's very deep, it's hard to get to. But, I don't know, you just start thinking about it. What are those cars look like? What does that ship look like? And one thing, most of my colleagues are managed sanctuaries in the oceans. But here in the Great Lakes we have the privilege of working with these shipwrecks and resources that are protected by the freshwater of the Great Lakes. So, if this shipwreck was in the ocean, it would look very different. But my guess is that it's an incredible state of preservation. Okay, so what I'd like to do today is give you a sense of NOAA, because when you get the national made sanctuary program, you also get NOAA. And I really rely on other parts of the agency in what we do. And interesting to see the space component. Well, NOAA does space, we do from the surface of the sun to the depths of the oceans. I'll talk about our system. I will talk about the Thunder Bay Sanctuary as an example of, let's say, a great success example in our program. And then talk about the Wisconsin nomination, just to spare a chat from having to talk about that. Okay, so NOAA is, it's a very, very diverse agency. We have five line offices. The National Weather Service is the most well-known line office. I'm in the National Ocean Service and we're more on the kind of the stewardship side of things, protecting areas. We also have a number of products that I'll talk about in the next slide. So I'm just gonna go through about five or six slides that give you a sense of what NOAA does. We do your nautical charts. So I know that many of you are using our nautical charts. We do bathometry. I think this is one of the best, if you're a visual person, to look at the bathometry and see how the lakes differ. See what's there in Southern Lake Michigan. Next slide. We have boats. We have buoys. That map on the right is a system of our med station or a meteorological station that gives real-time data. We have one in Milwaukee. We have remotely operated vehicles. We have equipment that takes multi-bean images or sonar images so we can see what the shipwrecks look like in another way. As I mentioned, I'm housed at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab. We do research on ice. Next slide. Water levels and the public interest in ice and water levels is very high. We've got probably the most public requests and media requests on those two issues. Also harmful algal blooms, which are not as much of an issue on Lake Michigan, but certainly, as noted in that slide of Lake Erie, a huge public health concern and Great Lakes ecosystem concern. Habitat restoration and Shibuagan has been a recipient of federal dollars, including some NOAA dollars to clean up your river and get your area of concern off the list now. Okay, hopefully soon to be off the list. Also in the NOAA family, NOAA funds the state coastal management programs. I am sure you're familiar with some of the products and public access projects from the Wisconsin Coastal Management Program, Wisconsin Sea Grant. There's a relatively new national estuarine research reserve in Lake Superior, Wisconsin. And I just mentioned the habitat restoration. Okay, so on to national marine sanctuaries. So this is the definition. I don't want you to get alarmed by the term marine, which most often means saltwater. But our definition in the Sanctuaries Act is that marine means the Great Lakes and they're connecting waters. But I point out this definition to show the range of resources that we care about. So it's aesthetic, it's natural resource ecology, it's historic, it's cultural. It really runs the gamut of resources that can be national marine sanctuaries. Our system, which is mostly on that slide, is comprised of 14 sites. They are very diverse. And that's a message that I want you to take away from this is that there's no single approach to a sanctuary. We have sanctuaries that protect, we have two sanctuaries that protect only cultural resources, Fogger Bay in Lake Huron and the Monitor Sanctuary off the coast of North Carolina. We have sanctuaries that protect natural and cultural. We have big, we have small, we have continuous, we have ones that are more, have kind of pods. So we work with the resource we're protecting, we work with the communities that are part of sanctuaries. The smallest sanctuary used to be a quarter of a square mile in American Samoa, which is why we have to make the scale of this so large. That was recently expanded to 13,000 miles to include significantly more waters in American Samoa. Next slide. So I, you know, becoming part of the National Marine Sanctuary system means that those other sites, you know, they're the brothers and sisters, you know, we're all part of the family. So we have this relatively new social media campaign called Earth is Blue and it's based on what the astronauts saw when they went up, first went up into space and, you know, recognized that so much of our planet is covered with water. So I just wanted to, I'm very, I don't know, I was skeptical about this campaign. Like, yeah, you're gonna do a photo a day and a video a week, but I'm actually very, very impressed with what. So I'm just gonna go through some, chance going to go through some slides here to show you images of our system. And when you're watching this, you can think about what, you know, Wisconsin images could be portrayed in this collection because that's really what it's all about. I'm starting in the far Pacific, in this new American Samoa Sanctuary. So I will say that there are a lot of colors in the ocean, we don't have as many beautiful underwater colors. The Monterey Bay, Hawaiian Island, Humbag Whale National Sanctuary. Recently, Wonderland, a large expansion of the Cordell Bank and Gulf of the Feralon Sanctuary off the coast of San Francisco. Up to Olympic Coast, here are our local sanctuary in the Great Lakes. Whale watching activities in the Stellwagon Bank off the coast of Massachusetts, the USS Monitor. And if you could hold here for a sec because this is a very meaningful shipwreck in our nation's history. And when we were, we actually brought up significant portions of the monitor because it was degrading and it would have been gone. So in the turret, we did locate some human remains. We were unable, it was sent to the Naval Research Lab in Hawaii, we were unable to identify those remains but we did have a burial ceremony at Arlington Seminary, Arlington Cemetery, very, very poignant, very, very moving ceremony. I don't know how this happened, I don't know if it was. But Grace, we're off the coast of Georgia and then Coral Reefs in the Florida Keys. Okay, so what is a sanctuary? In many ways, I would say we are like the National Park Service or like National Parks. This is kind of our model of what we do. We protect resources. We have education and outreach programs. We have research and monitoring programs so we can understand the resource that we're protecting. And we have, we've worked with communities. And this is all geared toward protecting a resource whatever that resource is in that particular sanctuary. So what I'm going to do is to talk about Thunder Bay as it applies to those different goals. So designated in the year 2000, it was recently expanded from sizable expansion from 448 square miles to 4300 square miles. I wanna note that this was a community-based effort to interest in expanding the sanctuary. So this was not Noah coming in and saying we think it should be bigger. Communities that were not part of the sanctuary said we want this to be bigger. Protect shipwrecks, we don't know of 200 but we believe they're based on historical records. There could be up to 200. Okay, so what does it mean? When we hear the term sanctuary, many of us think that means you can't do anything in an area that is preserved. So in some ways I think that term is unfortunate because of where it leads people to think about what it means but really there is multiple use in sanctuaries. So I often get the question, can we use it? Can I fish in a sanctuary? Can I dive? If it becomes a sanctuary, will I be able to do what I can do now? And it depends on the sanctuary but I'll talk about Thunder Bay and Thunder Bay is focused on shipwrecks. So we're looking at activities that affect shipwrecks. So there's no impact on fishing activities because fishing isn't impacting the shipwrecks. Next slide. So we do promote access to the Great Lakes. There's no user fee, we want people to use these areas. So we encourage responsible diving. We don't want people to damage the wrecks. We want people to get out there. So this is one of our brochures that says, here's some ways you can get out there to dive, to kayak, fish, glass bottom boat. We try to do as much as we can for the divers to make it accessible in terms of having different site plans so they know what they're looking at. Okay, so one bubble was the education in outreach. We do, it's a huge part of what we do because we need, frankly, there aren't that many divers. There aren't that many people who are going to experience this resource firsthand. So we need to get that experience to other people and it's youth, it's lifelong learners, it's really everyone that we try to reach in different ways. And we do more than just shipwrecks because I mentioned early on about the passion for the Great Lakes. Well, you don't talk about shipwrecks without talking about the Great Lakes. So we really do that as one and we get kids out. Maybe we start off with a shipwreck story but then talk about, hey, what's happening with those? Why is the water so clear? Well, it's because of the zebra and quagga mussels. Well, what does that mean for the ecosystem? It's fantastic for tourism. It's fantastic for taking great pictures of shipwrecks but what does it mean for the Great Lakes ecosystem? We don't really know but it's a conversation that we have in our education programs. So one program that we started was really one of our first programs was having a regional competition for underwater robotics. And this has turned into a huge program in Alpina run by the Sanctuary and last summer we were very fortunate to host an international underwater robotics competition. I don't know how many countries were represented but to have kids from Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Japan in this community of 10,000 people in northeastern Michigan that's 100 miles away from the interstate, it was phenomenal. So bringing not only national attention but international attention to this area. We have a program with the Alpina Community College where we work with them on a marine technology program. So training people to use the ROVs and other instrumentation. And the first graduating class was last year. It was a small class, I think five or six of them but they all got jobs working for ocean technology companies, so a real success. This is our building, there was really nothing in Alpina that existed, so this is our kind of destination that houses both our education programs. We have a conservation lab, we have our offices in this building that are just no logo in the world, I believe, inside our building. We also do documentation, and we do this for our education programs, again, to show people what these shipwrecks look like. We do it so we can get baseline data to see if there are, what changes are occurring, whether it's artifacts that have gone missing or impact from the quagga mussels if there's any sort of degradation. And we have a lot of different tools that we use for our documentation, next slide. So this is multi-beat images. And I just, you know, if you take a set of our different ways of documenting shipwrecks, it just speaks, you know, people see these in different ways. I mean, some people look at a photo and they're blown away by that. You know, this is a little harder to look at, but you know, look at the shadows from, you know, that, you know, the height of the wrecks. And then you can see, in some cases, you know, the standing mass. We work with different companies. They seem to have an interest in coming to the National Marine Sanctuary because it is a sanctuary. This is a firm that has this new technology for laser scanning. So underwater laser scanning, so you can take measurements of boats. This is the Monahansa, then the upper photo there is the product from that. Resource protection. So we do have, so sanctuaries do come with federal regulations. That's part of our resource protection program. In Thunder Bay, our regulations prohibit the taking of artifacts off a wreck or any damage to a wreck. They also, we have a provision that if there is a mooring buoy, NOAA mooring buoy at a site, a shipwreck site, then you can't use your anchor to drag it on the bottom and, you know, where it hooks onto a shipwreck and that's how you're anchoring. Because we know what sort of damage that can cause to shipwrecks, especially wooden shipwrecks. So those are the regulations for Thunder Bay. As a result of this mooring buoy regulation, we have a robust mooring buoy system. We're up to about 35 buoys that are put out in the spring by NOAA staff and they're taken out in the fall. And then this really is a win-win because it's safer for the divers and it's safer for the shipwrecks. Duty engagement. Deeply held value, a core value of our program. And I know, I mean all government agencies are required to consult with the public and consider public input. I really believe that we go way beyond quote unquote requirements and we work with communities. We do it through various ways, through our volunteer programs, our advisory councils, bringing people to visitor centers and other kinds of engagement. One of our mechanisms is our sanctuary advisory councils. We have an advisory council at every one of our sanctuaries comprised of 15 numbers and 15 alternates. The representation varies depending on the sanctuary. We have divers and fishermen and if we need to have commercial fishermen and recreational, it really depends on what the uses are in that sanctuary. So yes, they are advisory to us but we don't do our jobs without our advisory councils. Like I said, it's just, it's a core value of our program. I think if you talk to other communities and members on these councils, you would find that to be the case. You know, we need from them to bring issues to us. There are connections to the communities. Okay, so I wanted to go through this than just I was thinking last night. So what does the sanctuary mean to Alpina, Michigan? Town of 10,000 people, 100 miles from the interstate. So national recognition. I hope you've gotten a sense of what it means to be on the part of a national system. It is definitely an attraction. People do like to go to nationally recognized places. I didn't add national and international but I do believe that it does go beyond the region. It has resulted in investment in the Alpina community. Just a couple examples. The ability to get grants to support a Great Lakes Maritime Heritage Trail. So Wisconsin has the Maritime Trails with signs and this is somewhat similar to that but with a lot more signs. We were lucky enough to get the bestowed a collection of archival materials. So we have a really excellent collection of historical materials on shipwrecks. Hyperbaric chamber. We were able to get a chamber that's used for diver or decompression. We hope to not use that very often but what is meant is that the hospital uses it and it's an incredible asset for treating wounds and diabetes. So again, talk about win-win. It's there for diver safety and it's there for the use by the hospital. I mentioned the other water robotics. So the students in Alpina, they just consider themselves, the culture is that they are experts in building ROVs. That's just the way it is. So the kids in the second grade are doing it and they work up. So that's really been a change in how they think about themselves. It's still a passion for the Great Lakes and it's rich history. You have the Great Lakes off your shore here. I know that many of you appreciate that but there are greater connections that can be made and people don't really know the shipwrecks and the stories. I'm sure that some of you have your relatives that were on the ships in some capacity but it's really a strong connection that's been made in Alpina. The personal connections. So I really have to talk about pride and hope. In 2000, when the sanctuary was designated, the paper mill that had been there for a hundred years closed down. Really devastating for a community. The loss of jobs, really the loss of their industry has always been represented by Alpina. So I would say it's fair to say that there wasn't a lot of hope about what Alpina could do. And this sanctuary for a variety of factors. I mean, because it's a sanctuary, it doesn't mean there's going to be all the success but the people bought into it, they took advantage of opportunities and it's just incredible for me who worked on the designation process to see this change in attitude about how they think of themselves and really believe now that things can get done rather than believing that nobody would ever want to come to Alpina because why would they? Branding. Alpina has undergone a branding program and this used to be their motto, their logo, a warm and friendly port. And this is what it is now. And I said, well, you can't be the only sanctuary in the Great Lakes because I'm working with other communities on sanctuaries. But sanctuary in a broader sense, kind of that place to come, that peaceful place. They've worked a lot with this and I think they're very pleased with how this is working as they're messaging for their community. So what does it mean for Alpina? A lot of partnerships with businesses. We got a glass bottom boat from Picture Rocks National Lakeshore. The same company came into Alpina and started the glass bottom boat tour. We sell tickets out of our visitor center and we're able to get a small cut of that of the ticket price and we also send our staff out on all of the glass bottom boat tours to talk about the ethics, to talk about the Great Lakes and to tell the stories. So we have sanctuary advisory councils. We also have a fairly new business advisory councils, just recognizing that we need to make connections. So I listed who's on that council right now. That's okay. It's fairly new but I don't have a lot of, I don't know that we have successes yet but we really are trying to engage these national groups, yeah. So the through process. The old way that we designated sanctuaries was selecting areas off of a list that was generated by experts. But in the mid 1990s, we had just designated a group of sanctuaries and we said, we really have to focus on managing those sanctuaries. And on the new sanctuaries, we can't look at potential for new ones. So we deactivated that list which resulted in a 19 year period where we were unable to even consider new sanctuaries. So as we're talking about it, we wanted to have a different approach. Let's leave the scientists out of this one. They're experts. Let's have this be community driven. Because we understand that communities, we are successful because of communities. So this is a community driven process now where they submit nominations. In the nominations, I mean there are actually 11 criteria but to summarize, have to demonstrate that the resources are of national significance because it is a national or a sanctuary. And we're also looking at things like community based, broad based community support. We're looking at opportunities for partnerships and education and research. The things are gone where no one just comes in and we promise to do everything. That's not the way. No, but partnerships are, getting people engaged in partnerships really makes everything, the end product is more successful. So this is the roadmap and we'll be glad to know that this area has reached the end of this road in terms of submitting the nomination and having it accepted to our inventory of places that we will consider as national or a sanctuary. Now it's really an outstanding nomination. You should all take pride in what the state was able to put together. Chad and Amy were on this community working group that contributed content. It was, the lead was the Wisconsin Historical Society and the nomination was submitted by Governor Walker. We had both, you had both US senators, right letters of support. So it certainly met the threshold for broad based support. I mean we have been, as Chad mentioned my first came here in 2007. So I've been working with communities here. I've been working with the state. The state had done a report analyzing the shipwrecks. So there was a fair amount that was already done but I just want you to know that it's recognized by NOAA as just an outstanding nomination package from, you know, from the shipwrecks describing the significance of the shipwrecks to really build in the case for why your communities should be part of this. Okay, so the nomination, yes, submitted in December. We accepted it in January. Just, you know, some numbers here, 875 square mile area. This was an area that the Wisconsin Historical Society recommended in their report. It's kind of cool, you know, the two oldest shipwrecks, you know, the number of wrecks with standing mass, which is not, you know, sort of rare in the Great Lakes. The Historical Society is very active in putting the shipwrecks on the national register of a store in places. And that is clearly an easy way to measure national significance. And I understand that they're submitting three more shipwrecks for the national register and one of those is in the proposed sanctuary, the Pathfinder. So, you know, I keep having to up this number, but hopefully it'll be 16 pretty soon. I'm gonna skip my lab, because I'm not online. So just a couple images of shipwrecks. This is the Northern Earth. I was just down in Fort Washington this morning taking a ride on the old coal dock in Coal Dot Park. And an Eagle Scout project was construction of an interpretive sign at Coal Dot Park for the Northern Earth. Home, built in 1845, thought to be the oldest shipwreck until the Galliper was discovered and this was built in 1833. So really an unbelievable collection of shipwrecks that you have here. So I just wanted to go through the goals of the nomination package, because it's sort of instructive about, it sets forth a vision for Wisconsin. So expanding on the state's commitment, you have an amazing underwater archeology program in Wisconsin, it's one of the best in the country. So we're excited to partner with the state of Wisconsin and build on that 60 year investment. A regional approach. I am so pleased to see the cooperation between the four communities that are in this proposed sanctuary. I don't know if it's unprecedented, but I think it is, it's very special on how these communities are viewing this as a region and it's not a competition. So I think there are some huge benefits from that. Each community has something different to offer, but it's a very powerful package, a set of communities. I've talked about installing the passion and appreciation of the Great Lakes because it's a very special resource. Building on existing state and local tourism initiatives. Building on Noah's presence and I talked about what we are in the region. And then, you know, some amazing opportunities for educating the public on shipwrecks and the Great Lakes and the oceans. So the nomination package has, you know, a number of partnerships, potential partnerships and, you know, the obvious ones are, you know, if you look at organizations or structures the Wisconsin Maritime Museum, the Port Explorium, Space Port, Sheboygan and, you know, just a collection of research and education institutions. And, you know, not only in this area, but the Milwaukee, you know, the UW Milwaukee School of Fresh Water Sciences. Very excited about the opportunity here. So it does, you know, the benefits and the involvement by organizations beyond this area are significant. Okay, so what's next? So this area is, you know, this nomination is now on our inventory. So these are my talking points. It sounds very bureaucratic. But just because you're on the inventory does not mean that we automatically start a sanctuary designation. It can remain on the inventory for five years and I guess, you know, reapply, but at some point, in that point to be determined, no one decides, you know, how to move forward with the areas on our inventory. And just for a status, there are two sites on our inventory, Wisconsin and a site in Chesapeake Bay called Mallows Bay. We have received three nominations that we declined for various reasons, not enough information or not, you know, demonstrating enough support. We have a very transparent process on all of our, the nominations and our letters, our feedback letters are posted on the website, nominate.noa.gov, so people can see, you know, what's good and, you know, what's lacking. So I can give you an answer. The people who know me in this room know that I will never make a promise that I can't keep and I won't tell you something that I don't know, but what I have said pretty consistently is that I'm very optimistic about Wisconsin moving forward. I don't know when, I mean, this is a new process for us. So, you know, stay tuned. I am your advocate and you are also great advocates and I do hope we are able to move forward. So moving forward, just very briefly to close this up, it's a, you know, nothing, everything takes a long time. Okay, so that's kind of the reality. We have to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, which means we go through the environmental impact statement process. The first step of that is holding public scoping meetings, where we just, we lay out some issues and we get, we hear from the people who would be affected by this and we use this feedback to draft our first document, which is the draft environmental impact statement. Next slide. So this, what we call a DEIS, contains a lot of information, you know, looking at the impact of the environment. It also has our management plans, kind of a combined document, where we lay out what our resource protection programs or education, our research programs are. We also have our draft regulations in this document. In the Thunder Bay Sanctuary, DEIS, we had a draft with a memorandum of understanding between NOAA and the state, just so people could see, you know, how we were working with the state. When these are state waters, the state is our partner in this. Then we hold public hearings and then we eventually publish the final environmental impact statement. So it's a two to three year process, you know. I just, it takes time. I mean, my personal philosophy is that some things take time because it's the right thing to do to involve people in a meaningful way and I think our process does that. So that's my contact information. I want to invite you to like our new Facebook page, Mid-Lake Michigan Proposed National Men's Sanctuary and there are some relevant websites there. But I really wanna thank you for, you know, being part of this journey and, you know, the journey in some ways is just beginning and asking hard questions, asking easy questions. People do have questions about what this means and I really, I invite all of those questions because we all learn from when we have that dialogue. Oh, good question. So sanctuaries are funded by NOAA. There is no match requirement, which is something, you know, people do ask. Our program system-wide is $45 to $15 million a year that supports our 14 sites, our headquarters office and four regional offices. And depending on the complexity of the sanctuary, there's a great variability in how much each sanctuary gets funded. I think our lowest, I think our $1 million for the one we get the least amount of money and maybe up to $8 million for the highest funded. Will our sanctuary, the multi-focused history, conservation, et cetera, you mentioned that Under Bay was a historic preservation. Oh, yes. I really did not mention that the Wisconsin nomination is also focused on shipwrecks, which is why I was using Under Bay as an example. So, yeah, I mean, not that, you know, if there was an interest in going beyond shipwrecks, that's something that we could consider in our process. But right now the nomination is focused on shipwrecks. Are there any other great link sanctuaries being considered and are there any other nominees for brain sanctuaries? If so, we're a long process. Okay, yes, I, so my area is the Great Lakes and the Great Lakes are feeling very large to me at the moment because I feel like I've been drawn in very many different directions. So yes, there are other communities that are interested. They're working with Erie, Pennsylvania. They're looking at their, all of their Pennsylvania state waters, which isn't that much. They're 60 miles of shoreline. We're working with Oswego, New York, and also Buffalo. And Buffalo has an interesting thought that they would include both Lake Erie and Lake Ontario and the Niagara River. And actually I was just up in Ashland Bayfield earlier this week and there's some very, you know, considering what would this look like? So a first meeting. So yes, there is interest. Wisconsin with this area was in a very good position in terms of thinking about it and putting together the package because they're coming here for years. So I'm not expecting anything, nothing is imminent from these other communities. It really does take time to build a support and answer the questions and put together the package. So that's kind of the landscape, Great Lakes wide. I mentioned there were a couple around the country. We don't really know, we don't always know when one's coming in. Well, let's see, some people would perceive that they don't want the federal government in their backyard. So, you know, I, that's fine. That was certainly a concern during the Thunder Bay designation. And I will, you know, I will confess that that designation was very controversial. The state was concerned about NOAA coming in and the locals were concerned about NOAA coming in. Now that, I mean, it's been just a miraculous turnaround and it could not be more beloved in that community now. But yeah, I would say that, you know, that's one thing that I've heard. You know, some people would question, you know, again, it's more online lines of, why do we need this? You know, should we be spending federal money on this? Cars be rusty, what can you learn and why are you interested in the HTO of 2.0 level? Would the cars be rusty? I don't know, what do you think? Do we have any chemists in the room? I mean, I would have to think that they are rusty. No, they'll only be rusty if they're exposed to the air. To, okay, to air. Well, they would sort of be rusted because there's oxygen in the floor. Yeah, but it's minimal until it comes out of the water. Okay, excellent. So that is the thing about things that are underwater. When you, which is why we like to keep them underwater because when you bring them out, they need, with the conservation that we had to do for the monitor, it's really expensive and very long. I can learn some chemistry. Yeah. Great. Why are we interested in water levels? Wow, well, how are you, they're expecting that, I think the Lake Michigan water levels this year are going to go up a foot. I mean, it has tremendous implications for the economy from the amount of cargo that a ship can carry to whether boats can get out, whether the ramps are long enough with low light levels. At the other extreme, with high light levels, you have severe erosion that causes houses to fall into the lake. I mean, there is a natural cycle of lake levels. It's really fun to work with these scientists who try to predict based on the forecasting and a lot of it relates to the ice cover and how much evaporation. Can you speak to the economic impact of the nomination package? And I'm not saying that because I was involved in it. I'm saying that because in the back of it, you'll see that there's 110 support letters from this region, from Manitowoc to reverse Sheboygan and Port Washington. And I think that's a real testament to the fact that there's support for this from everybody from commercial fishermen to sea dye clubs, to everybody that would be related to it, Conservancy Group, Sierra Club, all of those groups. So that, in my mind, is a true testament to the application, the nomination, and the support for it. And I would encourage you to just take a look at it and learn more about it as you're moving forward. Thanks. I'll stick around afterwards if anybody wants to. Ellen, thank you again. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I hope everybody got a wonderful bit of information coming back to the communities. We thank you for being here today. Just a reminder that we will be doing on May 20th, there's a focal point with Pat Dolan coaching for accountability. And on June 5th, we'll be back here for, we'll be hosting our state legislators. So we'll be seeing Mr. Patsma and Mr. Grossman back here at that time. If anybody has any time and would like to ask some more questions of Ellen, she's sticking around for a little bit. And once again, we thank you all for coming. Have a lovely afternoon. I see you again. You look good.