Those who love Georgian Bay are invited to a new event next weekend. The Georgian Bay Biosphere Reserve, Sail Parry Sound, and the Town of Parry Sound are spearheading a local event to involve people who care about the Great Lakes in a historic day of water sampling. A team of scientists have organized the Great Lakes eXXpedition to test waters for microplastics in each of the Great Lakes and August 20th will be the largest simultaneous water sampling for microplastics in history.
The local event is being called Love Your Bay Day and will include a shoreline cleanup at Waubuno Beach beginning at 11:00am with the town providing gloves, bags, and recycling facilities to remove garbage from the shoreline. Sail Parry Sound will be hosting the microplastics sampling from noon until 3:00pm where biosphere staff will be on hand to help people in taking a sample from the Sound whether they want to take it from shore, from a sailboat, kayak or Stand Up Paddleboard.
People interested in taking samples for microplastics in other parts of Georgian Bay, including rivers flowing into the Bay, are asked to register at http://exxpedition.com/greatlakes2016/ so they can receive sampling instructions.