The Great Lakes are home to 5 million birding enthusiasts who frequent shoreline hotspots during all seasons. The Great Lakes shoreline offers many excellent birding oppoortunities, due in part to the desireable landcape features and abundant food supply found at the water's edge. Spring and fall migration seasons bring tremendous numbers of diverse song birds to shoreline forests. Waterbirds visit marshes and nearshore waters, and fascinating marsh birds breed in coastal wetlands. Winter bird sightings include ducks, gulls, and raptors.

Recreational boating and boating-related expenditures in the U.S. Great Lakes totaled an estimated $16 billion and directly supported 107,000 jobs in 2003. We used the locations of marinas to represent the spatial distribution of recreational boating and the number of boat slips at each marina location (aggregating adjacent marinas) as a relative measure of the use or value of each marina location.

Lake trout are highly valued by recreational and commerical fishers in the Great Lakes. As a native species in decline, lake trout are stocked in several locations to encourage recovery. Spawning areas are extremely important to natural recruitment.