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Spooky Waters or Learning Limnologist?

 

October is known as a spooky month for a multitude of reasons beginning primarily with Halloween but not limited to the diminishing daylight and changing of woodlands from colorful to well, brown and evergreen. The reason October is spooky for me is due to the wonderful and at times terrifying viral video series by Geo Rutherford.

 

Rutherford is a Wisconsinite who spends her summers at an art camp and works part time as a professor at UW-Milwaukee. She started a video series affectionately named Spooky Lake Month: 31 Days of Haunted Hydrology in 2020. Every year, during the month of October, the TikTok and Instagram accounts @geodesaurus are filled with new insights about places on our planet that contain waterways of powerful and at times deadly force. Ironically, Rutherford herself lives on a spooky lake, Fish Lake in Dane County, Wisconsin, which is a young lake that officially formed in the early 2000s, permanently flooding the houses in the area and leaving behind a unique paddle experience.

 

 

Recently, Geo’s book Spooky Lakes 25 Strange and Mysterious Lakes that Dot Our Planet was published, with her illustrations providing a beautiful compliment to the information inside. As she states, “The lakes featured in the book aren’t spooky because of ghosts or ghouls, but rather due to natural phenomena, scientific oddities, human interactions, environmental disasters, and the mysteries lurking beneath the surface.” 

 

Lake Superior is the featured Great Lake, with tales of shipwrecks and the remains of the crew lurking deep below the surface. Other featured lakes explore the impact of humankind on ecosystems. Lake Karachay in Russia and Toxic Lake in Romania are notorious examples of what irresponsible mining production can do to our waterways. Historically significant lakes, such as Spirit Lake next to Mount St. Helens in Washington state, show how natural events can reshape a landscape for decades afterwards.

While not everything you find online is true, there are multiple steps taken by Rutherford to fact check her information and ensure accuracy. She considers herself a hobby limnologist due to the time she spends researching for her videos. A limnologist is a scientist who studies the biological, chemical and physical features of inland aquatic systems, including lakes, rivers, springs and wetlands. Overall, her videos provide educational insights into waterways around the world while engaging her audience with actual visuals and illustrations.

 

Indigenous people such as the Ojibwe, Ho-Chunk, and Menominee in Wisconsin had a strong connection to the waters in their homelands. Many names still used today relate back to their understanding of the water, such as Neenah, Sheboygan, Oconomowoc, and Manitowoc. In fact, Wisconsin is the Ojibwe word for “[place of] the gathering waters.” Their stories may or may not be spooky, but they certainly had a strong respect for the waterways that impacted their lives.

 

Although most Wisconsin waterways are not considered spooky by Rutherford’s standards there is still importance in understanding the power of water. Unfortunately, there are deaths on Wisconsin’s waterways every year. Remember to always follow proper safety procedures when recreating on waters. Wear a life jacket while boating, avoid swimming in areas of strong current or in contaminated water, properly care for any boat before and after visiting a waterway, and check the weather prior to going out on the water. For more information about Wisconsin boating safety including life jacket fitting and boat responsibilities visit the Wisconsin DNR website.

 

Rutherford’s use of technology to connect her passions of limnology, art, and all things spooky allows people around the world to discover aspects of water that they never knew before. From the skeleton-filled Roopkund Lake in the mountains of India to the nightly lightning of Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela to the hot springs of Yellowstone to Lake Kaindy’s underwater preserved forest there are all sorts of spooky lakes that inspire learning more about haunted hydrology and this world that we live in!

 

Written by Casey Sprotte, Environmental Educator, Trees For Tomorrow