Sturgeon Bay is an arm of
Green Bay extending southeastward approximately 10 miles into the
Door Peninsula at the
city of Sturgeon Bay, located approximately halfway up the Door Peninsula. The bay is connected to
Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan ( ) is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume () and depth () after Lake Superior and the third-largest by surface area (), after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. To the ...
by the
Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal
The Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal is a ship canal connecting Sturgeon Bay with Lake Michigan across the Door Peninsula in Door County, Wisconsin, Door County, Wisconsin. A dredged channel continues through Sturgeon Bay to Green Bay (Lake Michigan), G ...
. The Potawatomi name for Sturgeon Bay is "Na-ma-we-qui-tong".
Origin
The bay seems to represent the pre-glacial path of the
Menominee River
The Menominee River is a river in northwestern Michigan and northeastern Wisconsin in the United States. It is approximately long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed Dec ...
, with the valley deepened by glacial carving and then submerged into rising lakewaters.
Bridges
Three bridges cross the bay, including the historic
Sturgeon Bay Bridge, and the recently finished Oregon Street Bridge.
Fish
Sturgeon Bay and Little Sturgeon (just to the south of Sturgeon Bay) are considered
biodiversity hotspot
A biodiversity hotspot is a ecoregion, biogeographic region with significant levels of biodiversity that is threatened by human habitation. Norman Myers wrote about the concept in two articles in ''The Environmentalist'' in 1988 and 1990, after ...
s because they support a large number of different fish species.
Researchers collected
viral hemorrhagic septicemia
Viral hemorrhagic septicemia (VHS) is a deadly infectious fish disease caused by Viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus. It afflicts over 50 species of freshwater and marine fish in several parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Different strains of the v ...
viruses from 184 different fish from 2003 to 2017. Two were found from 2007 to 2010 infecting smallmouth bass within Sturgeon Bay. Each of them was a different variant of a type not found in the middle or lower Great Lakes.
Mayflies
In June 2016, an estimated several thousand mayflies hatched in Sawyer Bay (within Sturgeon Bay). This was the result of an experiment to stock millions of eggs from the species ''
Hexagenia limbata'' and ''
Hexagenia bilineata'' in the lower Green Bay area in an attempt to reintroduce the species. The last mayfly from the genus ''
Hexagenia'' had been collected in the lower Green Bay area in 1955. As mayfly populations can be unstable and not all stocking locations appeared to be successful, as of 2017 it was not yet known whether it would be possible for populations of ''Hexagenia'' mayflies to become self-sustaining.
Evaluation of lower Green Bay benthic fauna with emphasis on re-ecesis of Hexagenia mayfly nymphs
by Jerry L. Kaster, Christopher M. Groff, J. Val Klump, Danielle L. Rupp, Suneil Iyer, Ashely Hansen, Samantha Barbour, and Louisa Hall, doi.org/10.1016/j.jglr.2018.06.006, ''Journal of Great Lakes Research'' (2018), p. 14
Climate
Gallery
Notes
Bays of Wisconsin
Bodies of water of Door County, Wisconsin
Bays of Lake Michigan
{{DoorCountyWI-geo-stub