GLIN==> Ohio Sea Grant Educator Receives Multiple Awards for Outdoor Writing

Ohio Sea Grant Educator Receives Multiple Awards for Outdoor Writing

 

July 28, 2011

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

PUT-IN-BAY-John Hageman, Co-Manager at Ohio State's Stone Laboratory and
Ottawa County Extension Educator, received three awards for his magazine
writing at the Outdoor Writers of Ohio Conference on May 12.

 

His article, "Dead Zones May Lead to Mayfly Declines in Lake Erie," won
First Place for Best Magazine Article, beating 30 other entries, and he won
a Second Place award and an Honorable Mention for two other articles.

 

"Dead Zones" form in areas of Lake Erie over the summer when warm surface
water separates from cold bottom water. As animals and decaying algal blooms
use up the bottom water's limited oxygen, there isn't enough oxygen left to
support fish and other animals, including mayflies, which serve as food for
important sport fish, like walleye and yellow perch. "Mayflies are canary in
the coalmine," he says. "If there were widespread mayfly deaths one year,
that shows we had low oxygen in the lake the previous summer. Nobody is
coming out and saying this, but there's plenty of evidence."

 

Last July, students working on independent research projects while attending
Stone Laboratory classes measured areas with low oxygen in several Western
Basin locations around the Lake Erie islands. Later in the month, Ohio
Division of Wildlife biologists cited low oxygen as a possible reason for
low young-of-year walleye catches in their July trawls.

 

A member of the Outdoor Writers of Ohio since 1995, Hageman has the
background to write about outdoor activities from first-hand experience. His
love for the outdoors and outdoor magazines stretches back to when he was 13
years old, learning how to hunt, fish, and trap. He only had to walk down
his street to hunt pheasants and the four days of high school he missed were
the opening days of pheasant season every year.

 

Around the same time, he began trapping animals to sell their fur. "I
trapped on my bicycle and checked the traps every day until I got a car," he
says. "The magazines I started getting then were a great avenue to teach me
new skills and techniques."

 

He got good enough that one year, he paid his tuition at Ohio State just by
trapping muskrat along the Olentangy River. 

 

Now, he subscribes to about 30 publications-one from as far away as South
Dakota where he used to go pheasant hunting-and writes for a handful,
including Ohio Outdoor News and Great Lakes Angler. He saves some and throws
away others, but has every issue of Fur-Fish-Game since 1973. "I'll need to
sell some of them on eBay soon," he says.

 

Ohio State University's Ohio Sea Grant program is part of NOAA Sea Grant, a
network of 32 Sea Grant programs dedicated to the protection and sustainable
use of marine and Great Lakes resources. For information on Ohio Sea Grant
and Stone Lab, visit  <http://ohioseagrant.osu.edu> ohioseagrant.osu.edu.

 

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Contact:

 

John Hageman, Stone Laboratory Co-Manager, Ohio Sea Grant Extension
Educator, 614.247.6500, hageman.2 at cfaes.osu.edu.

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