School of Freshwater Sciences

Littered with the remains of a once thriving industrial sector, Milwaukee’s Walker’s Point neighborhood spawns dense clusters of rusted-out warehouses and long-forgotten telephone wires.

The sights along Greenfield Avenue are awash with urban decay. To the north lies a sprawling vacant parking lot, slowly being reclaimed by thickets of yellowing prairie grass. A cracked and gravely sidewalk meanders under a crumbling railroad bridge, lit underneath by a smattering of flickering orange lights.

Towering over the windswept inlets and wharves of Milwaukee’s Lake Michigan harbor, a soaring cement silo shoots up from the bleak terrain, tattooed with years of unintelligible neon graffiti. Similarly jutting through the desolate landscape, UWM’s School of Freshwater Sciences building stands almost out of place among the smokestack-laden skyline.

It’s nearing 6 p.m., and the last rays of sunlight glint merrily across the glassy turquoise panels of the newly minted research facility. Originally the Center for Great Lakes Studies in 1966, the $53 million expansion project officially opened in summer 2014, its exterior inspired by the rippling waves of Lake Michigan. The university’s 11-acre Harbor Campus is divided in two; its north end a catacomb of labs and docks, and its south end having pristine classrooms and offices.

Housed on the second floor, Ph.D. student Emily Tyner focuses her studies on aquatic ecosystems. “Right now I’m looking at the impact of invasive species muscles,” says Tyner, a native of Ann Arbor, Mich. “Specifically, quagga and zebra mussels which we hypothesize are lowering levels of oxygen in the lake.”

Avian botulism, a paralytic bird disease triggered by low oxygen levels, is the basis for Tyner’s research. Snuggled in a warm red sweater, Tyner frequently slips into a “dry” suit, plunging as far down as 20 meters into the depths of Lake Michigan to collect her specimens. “In the spring the bottom of the lake gets down to around 5 degrees Celsius,” says Tyner. “That does restrict how much time you can spend in the water. I’m pretty comfortable for about 30 minutes, then you start to lose feeling.” Tethered to the buildings dock is Tyner’s research vessel, a menagerie of ropes and pulleys christened “Neeskay.” Derived from a Ho-Chunk Native American word, the phrase epitomizes the goal of the facility…“pure, clean water.”