OK, so did I mention the guy I dated that was a Marine and on the local scuba search and rescue team?? His hobby was to dive on shipwrecks in Lake Erie. Some amazing "finds" he would retive from the wreckages.
An article recently sent to me regarding the shipwrecks of Lake Erie.
A very wealthy lake in that regard.
Clearer Water Reveals Sunken Ships
nytimes.com
LORAIN, Ohio -- A decade ago, only a few, intrepid scuba divers
plunged into the murk of Lake Erie. Parts of the lake were periodically
glazed green with algae, and others were fouled with the same pollution
that helped set ablaze the Cuyahoga River in 1969.
Now, the lake is clearer than it has been in decades, and hundreds of divers
are coming from as far as Florida to explore its best kept secret: a vast
underwater paradise of well-preserved shipwrecks.
"When I first started diving in the 1970s, you could only see out to here,"
said Sue MacNeal, stretching a well-tanned arm in front of her. She and her
husband, Russ MacNeal, operate a diving shop and two charter boats in
Elyria, on the lake, and on a recent warm day they were steering one of them
down Lorain's Black River toward the sun-dappled open waters of the lake.
"Two feet was good visibility back then," Mrs. MacNeal said. "Sometimes
you'd feel the wrecks before you'd see them. Now, we can see up to 50
feet."
There is much to see. Only a few years ago, estimates of the number of
wrecked ships in Lake Erie hovered around 250. Now, 1,700 wrecks have
been documented in the lake, and researchers like Charles Herdendorf believe
there could be as many as 3,000.
"We know that 50,000 commercial ships were constructed around the Great
Lakes, and it's not unreasonable to believe that 10 percent of them are now
on the bottom," said Herdendorf, an oceanographer and underwater
archeologist. "During the panic of 1857, a lot of ships were allowed to just
sink in the harbors because their owners didn't have the money to operate or
maintain them."
There are other reasons Lake Erie has so many wrecked ships. It is the
shallowest of the Great Lakes, with a maximum depth of 212 feet versus
Superior's 1,333, so there are more spots for ships to run aground. In
addition, storms get particularly nasty on Lake Erie, with the wind quickly
whipping the shallow waters into punishing waves.
Collisions claimed other ships, like the Morning Star, a side-wheel steamer
that sank in 1868, taking 23 to 32 people down with it.
Lake Erie's wrecks have been obscured for decades by algae at the top of the
water and sediment swirling below, but two factors have changed the lake's
complexion. The United States and Canada have spent $5 billion on the
treatment of waste water and other pollution controls since the 1960s,
reducing phosphorus, a primary nutrient for algae.
And in a quirky twist of fate, the zebra mussel, one of 140 nonnative species
that have conquered Lake Erie, has proved a blessing for divers. These
thumbnail-sized shellfish, which officials believe arrived in the ballast water
of oceangoing ships, absorb particles in the water, including algae and
sediment.
"We saw our first zebra mussels on Oct. 15, 1988," said Jeffrey Reutter,
director of Ohio Sea Grant and the Stone Laboratory, the nation's oldest
freshwater biological field station. "Two years later, the density of zebra
mussels was 30,000 per square meter. The increase in water clarity was
equally dramatic."
Divers have taken to the newly clear waters with zeal. There is now a Lake
Erie Wreck Divers Club, and hundreds of divers not in the club explore the
more accessible wrecks and artificial reefs, three created from the remains of
the old Cleveland Stadium. Two club members, Michael and Georgann
Wachter, have published a book, "Erie Wrecks" (Corporate Impact, 1997),
about some of the best-known sites on the western side of the lake.
The MacNeals take more than 100 divers each year to well-known sites, and
they know as much about the contents of the western side of the lake as
most people know about their basements. MacNeal, who is chairman of
Ohio's Submerged Lands Advisory Council, also follows clues from history
books and Coast Guard records and explores deeper waters with sonar for
undiscovered wrecks. The MacNeals have found eight wrecks, some of
them old wooden boats that look as they probably did when they sank. The
chill of the lake's water preserves them and there are no worms to gnaw
them, as there are in the seas.
"There are 140-foot wooden schooners out there with their bowsprits still in
place and their chains hanging over their sides," MacNeal said, seemingly
unaware of the sudden back and forth pitch of his own boat as he gazed
toward the center of the lake. "They're just sitting on the bottom looking like
they're about to set sail." |
