Water Lettuce on Lake Onalaska: Thursday's Events Date: 10/16/2015 08:20 AM From: Fritz To: Participating Natural Resource Agencies and Volunteers Good thing we have been cleaning up plants in areas at risk for distribution from Brice Prairie across the lake - Thursday afternoon's strong winds had a modest offshore component. Shawn Giblin (Wi-DNR) covered a huge amount of shoreline Thursday and really tightened up our potential search area, reporting: "I covered from Nelson Landing to the French Island Spillway first thing this morning- zero plants found. Next, I searched from Fred Funk Landing southeast inside the island to the wild rice beds outside of the barrier islands- again zero plants found. With the wind, it was a real character builder paddling back to Funk Landing! Finally, I dropped in at the "tubes" and searched to the public walk-in access on ZB and back to the tubes- 12 plants total. Certainly a huge reduction from the 5 garbage bags I collected on Sunday near ground zero and the 1 bag we collected at the same location on Tuesday." French Island resident Bob Kiesau also walked the southern French Island shore and docks in the area near and north of the upper Spillway Landing. He didn't see any lettuce, but reports the windrows of celery are pretty thick. He planned to check the upper Spillway landing itself and walk all the way out the spillway in the afternoon. Ben Lachecki reports not finding anything in the area of Brice Prairie where his dock had entrapped a lettuce plant the last 3 days in a row. I found 7 plants on the exposed Brice Prairie shoreline (see map below) in the morning. The easternmost plant was near the Z/ZB intersection, but disturbingly offshore about 100-200 feet in an isolated patch of floating veg - not in the nearshore band. All the other 6 plants were found in the outer edge of the nearshore floating veg mat, consistent with being new wind-transported arrivals. My little outboard is back in action, so I plan to survey the Brice Prairie exposed shoreline again this morning. Will add in parts of Rosebud and other areas that were lee shores in yesterday's (and todays) winds. Joni Welda plans to do some foot surveys, likely north end of French Island. Marc Schultz plans to search inside the barrier island from Blackdeer's Cut to the source at the tubes. Winds have a pretty good offshore component this morning, so lets hope we got anything that might otherwise be setting sail! Fritz Thursday morning survey of Brice Prairie exposed shore: