Shipping

A new study explains how the bloody red shrimp -- and other non-native species -- can travel across the Great Lakes. It's pretty simple: They hitch a ride in the ballast tanks of "lakers," the ships that travel around the lakes, but never make it out to the ocean.

Prolonged arctic cold is wreaking havoc on the maritime industry across the Great Lakes. The latest problem: A commercial freighter is stuck in ice in a lock near Massena, N.Y., and it's preventing the St. Lawrence Seaway from closing for the winter.

The St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corp. said in a news release that the Federal Biscay is “immobilized due to the heavy ice build-up on the lock wall as well as on the vessel’s hull,” but there is no damage.

The Christmas spirit is popping up along the waters of the Great Lakes region.

In Port Huron, Mich., Santa Claus rode to shore on the Huron Spirit, a boat operated by the Lakes Pilots Association. In Toledo, Ohio, the tug Josephine brought him to the National Museum of the Great Lakes.

But the most poignant event of the holiday season was in Chicago, where the sinking of  "The Christmas Tree Ship" was remembered recently.

For the anniversary of the Edmund Fitzgerald's final voyage, mlive has put together an interactive graphic about the doomed freighter. It provides some of the radio chatter that surrounded the freighter as it was pummeled by a powerful storm on Lake Superior.