As heard on Friday Edition, May 11, 2012, 9 a.m. Eastern, on Delta College Q-90.1 FM …

March in May

Students in the Bay City area will be marching for clean energy on Saturday, May 19.

The Students March for Clean Energy will begin at 11 a.m. at Pershing Park in Bay City, and go to Veterans Memorial Park.

The march is being organized by area environmental group the Lone Tree Council.

The march is meant to support conservation, and the development of green energy sources. The group says such sources can be substituted for the coal plants and gasoline that’s now consumed for electric generation and transportation.

The group is inviting students to join in the march at Pershing Park, just east of the Sage Library, and march down Midland Street to John F. Kennedy Drive and south to Vets Park.

A Spring 350 Picture Event will be held at the park at noon. The Saginaw Valley Sustainability Society also is participating. The event is meant to bring attention to climate change. Students, families and area residents are invited.

The 350 refers to a global grassroots movement to combat climate change, involving thousands of volunteer organizers in more than 188 countries.

Take a Cruise for $10-25

You can learn about the Great Lakes by floating on the Great Lakes.

Michigan Sea Grant Extension has announced Summer Discovery Cruises for 2012. This is the 11th year that Sea Grant has organized the cruises.

Cruises depart from Lake Erie Metropark, with cruises on the lower Detroit River and Lake Erie, and Lake St. Clair Metropark, cruising Lake St. Clair.

There will be more than 20 educational cruises around themes including Fisheries, Wildlife, Wetlands, Shipwrecks, Lighthouses, Weather and Shipping.

Cruises for educators wanting to enhance the use of Great Lakes content in their teaching also are available. The cruises run from 2 and a half to four hours, and cost $10-15 for children and $20-25 for adults.

More information is available online at discoverycruises.org.

The Beachmaker

There’s a new weapon in the fight against zebra mussels.

It’s a zebra mussel crushing machine called the Beachmaker.

As reported in Great Lakes Echo, the Beachmaker sucks up invasive zebra mussel shells and crushes them into sand-like particles.

The device, invented by a Wisconsin man, can reportedly crush a dump truck’s worth of dead mussels in an hour.

And the crunched up remains only take up a third of their original space.

What to do with the crushed up mussels, environmental impacts, and legal and permit requirements still remain for the device.

But it’s something that Great Lakes beach managers will be investigating this summer.

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