Did you know it takes 400 years for a drop of water to travel from the headwaters of Lake Superior to the edge of Lake Ontario?
That is just one of the fun little facts you’ll learn from Mysteries of the Great Lakes, the latest IMAX movie to hit the World Golf Hall of Fame IMAX theater.
There are more than 10,000 miles of coastline surrounding the Great Lakes — Lake Superior, Lake Huron, Lake Erie, Lake Ontario and Lake Michigan. These five lakes make up the largest group of freshwater lakes on the planet. In this new film from Science North Productions, three species, one each from land, sea and air, are profiled against the magnificent splendor of the lakes.
As with most IMAX films, the six story high screen is remarkable. The sweeping scenes of the scenery around the five lakes were breathtaking and the wide shots, on the 80 foot wide screen, make you feel like you are right in the middle of the environment.
The story centers around the bald eagle, the lake sturgeon and the caribou and how environmental factors effect them and the Great Lakes.
The film spends a lot of time tracking the lake sturgeon, which is the world’s largest freshwater fish. The sturgeon population was reduced to virtually zero due to pollution in the Lakes from the early 19th century. "Mysteries of the Great Lakes" follows a group of sturgeon enthusiasts who’s aim is to help beef up the population, with the hopes that more sturgeon will help bring the Great Lakes back to their splendor.
Shots of the massive fish under the Wolf River are pretty incredible. The huge screen really provides the viewer with a birds eye view of how large these fish are. The scenes where the fisherman catch and tag the sturgeon in order to track the number of times they spawn and how many eggs hatch into viable baby fish are mesmerizing. The technologies used are also really interesting, from inserting tracking devices into the bellies of the fish, to using their bare hands to catch and measure the length of the fish.
In addition to the fish, the IMAX team on "Mysteries of the Great Lakes" follow two bald eagle nests on the banks of the lakes. Wildlife photographer, Neil Rettig, captured a tremendous amount of footage of two active nests from blinds set up in the trees.
One of the nests held baby bald eagles who thrived due to two parent bald eagles who brought back fish. The other nest was not as successful because the fish brought back to the nest was parasitic, and without knowing it, the parents were poisoning the babies. From his vantage point atop the trees, Rettig’s photography is as majestic as the eagles themselves.
Some of the neatest scenery comes from the story line of the woodland caribou. The Slate Islands off the coast of Lake Superior are home to the largest remaining caribou herd in the Great Lakes region. There is one beautiful scene with two male caribou’s battling for dominance on the bank of the lake set against the sunset which was incredible. Both the proximity to the animals and the scenery on the massive IMAX screen made the scene amazing.
"Mysteries of the Great Lakes" is a relatively short movie, about 40 minutes long, but it is well worth taking the trip to the IMAX at the World Golf Hall of Fame to go see. The movie opens today. For information about show times, visit www.wgv.com/imax
