Lake Michigan is known for chinook salmon, coho, walleye and trout, hosting anglers from Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan. Now there’s something new for anglers to target.
I lived, boated and fished on Lake Michigan for many years, but never caught an e-bike. Karina Atkins, writing for the Chicago Tribune, brought to light that a growing number of Divvy rental bikes are being dumped into the lake along the Windy City.
Divvy is a bikeshare system, with hundreds of stations and thousands of e-bikes and scooters available for rent across the city. An unknown number of these bikes are already in the lake, and its feared the count will grow.
A group whose motto could be “Not in My Lake” is fighting back, taking it upon themselves to remove the sunken bikes from the lake.
Dubbed The Divvy Fishers Society, the group was founded as the Alternative Anglers Association by Glenn Rischke, a 50-year-old Chicagoan and hairstylist who first noticed a blue Divvy in the lake during one of his daily polar plunges last winter. He’s also a diving partner and friend of local Dan O’Connor, who’s known as the Great Lake Jumper for his daily winter plunges. Rischke says he started the cleanup crew in a last-ditch effort to advocate for better waters.
O’Connor, accompanied by Rischke and friend Molly Kavanaugh, recently took a morning plunge at Montrose Harbor, continuing O’Connor’s more than three-year streak of starting his day off in the lake, regardless of weather.
“On days where it was super calm and clear,” Rischke says, “we were able to see the bottom of the lake. And as we were just walking up and down the ledge area near the Montrose bird sanctuary, it was undeniable bikes were in the water.”
Over a few mornings, these friends pulled 17 Divvy e-bikes out of the lake in the Montrose Harbor area. And that covered only their first 500-yard search of Chicago’s 26-mile shoreline. They removed 15 more from the lake near the Shedd Aquarium while passersby cheered and the bukes stacked up. On another dive, they removed more than a dozen bikes from 40-foot section along Oak Street Beach.
Still another day found Maria Larkin, a decorated cyclist, tugging on a rope with other volunteers. “We found another one, and another one, then another one,” Larkin says. “They just kept emerging.”
“This is our bounty,” Rischke says. “It’s almost comical how many bikes we’ve pulled out. There must be hundreds of them in the lake — some have clearly been out there for over a year.”
There are so many bikes littering the lake that the fire department, the rideshare company and the Divvy Fishers Society can barely keep up. Since June, the volunteers has removed more than 60 e-bikes from the lake.
Divvy is a program of the Chicago Department of Transportation, which owns the stations and vehicles. Initial funding for the program came from federal grants for projects that promote economic recovery, reduce traffic congestion and improve air quality, as well as additional funds from the city’s Tax Increment Financing program.
Divvy obviously faces issues protecting its fleet of more than 15,000 e-bikes and scooters. Many have been reported stolen and damaged — even popping up in Mexico. Yes, each Divvy has a tracking device, but the water damage can affect the ability to locate it.
Chicago isn’t alone in this problem. In Amsterdam, it’s estimated more than 15,000 bikes are annually removed from canals by a full-time crew operating industrial-size magnetic claws.
But in the Windy City, good people who love the lake join the Divvy Fishers Society to do what they can to protect Lake Michigan, and surely deserve recognition and a tip-of-the-cap from Dealer Outlook.
