Originally published by GLOS

Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians (LDF) have been leaders in manoomin research for many years. They are foundational members of an initiative called “STRONG Manoomin” that brings together tribal, academic, and government partners to improve management of manoomin.

Through a partnership with GLOS, LDF has deployed additional monitoring equipment to increase their capacity for manoomin monitoring, as well as provide additional insights into important resource questions. In 2025, LDF deployed two Sofar Smart moorings, often called “Spotters”, in two different lakes – Little Trout and Big Crawling Stone. Notably, both of these Spotter buoys were unique, not just to LDF and the Great Lakes region but to hundreds of Spotters globally, in that they were two of a dozen that were equipped with dissolved oxygen sensors, a feature launched in June 2025.

This year, LDF Department of Natural Resources has continued to advocate for the need of these types of platforms and getting the information they are collecting into the hands of users. Joe Graveen, LDF Wild Rice Technician and Program Manager, noted that they are starting to integrate Seagull and other data sources into the high school science courses.

GLOS looks forward to continuing to build on this partnership with LDF and exploring data patterns to understand what types of additional observing capacity would best support their overall goals. See LDF buoy data on SeaGull here.