Most of Lake Erie and all of St. Clair are now covered with ice. But there are some ships that still move around on the Great Lakes, and they couldn't do it without help from the Canadian Coast Guard.

If President Donald Trump's threat to tariff Canadian imports by 25% goes forward, 200 years of peaceful and profitable Great Lakes maritime trade will be at risk.

Freighters in the Great Lakes often encounter surface ice in ... officials said a second ship arrived to help free the freighter. The Canadian Coast Guard also had a ship assisting with the ...

The Manitoulin, a 663-foot vessel, remained stuck just offshore of Buffalo, New York for the second day on Thursday. An ice-cutting barge, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Bristol Bay, was dispatched earlier today to help free the freighter from the snow and ice field.

The ice coverage in Lake Erie has rapidly expanded to 80% this week. February and March are peak maximum ice coverage periods for the Great Lakes.

Ice coverage for all of the Great Lakes combined was 23.21% – the highest since February 26, 2022, when it was 56.1%. At the beginning of this month, ice coverage was less than 2% across all the lakes.

The American and Canadian Coast Guards are sending additional ice-breaking vessels to assist the Manitoulin but it's not known how long it will take to free the stranded ship.

A Canadian freighter with 17 people on board got stuck in ice on Lake Erie while departing Buffalo. The Coast Guard called in icebreaking equipment Thursday to begin freeing the vessel.

President Donald Trump is continuing his first-term focus on building a big, new American icebreaker fleet. Days after his second inauguration, the president broke from a North Carolina hurricane-recovery briefing and made a surprise announcement that, “we’re going to order about 40 big icebreakers.”

A freighter heading to Canada was freed after being stuck in ice on Lake Erie for several days, the U.S. Coast Guard reported

The U.S. Coast Guard intensified ice-breaking efforts on January 25 to free the motor vessel Manitoulin, trapped in thick ice on the frozen lake. A helicopter crew from Air Station Detroit conducted overflights to assist the rescue,