On the weekend of February 17, the Great Lakes Shipwreck Preservation Society will hold its annual "Dive Into the Past" event. Friday night is an informal movie night, during which anybody can screen a film or TV show (no, you can't show Ferris Bueller's Day Off; it has to be relevant to the theme). On Saturday, the event really gets rolling with presentations ranging from an overview of the wrecks and geography in the Straits of Mackinac to a discussion of The Wreck of the Rouse Simmons. There will even be a talk concerning the sinking of the Oriskany, which isn't in the Great Lakes -- but should be.
The event will be held at the AmericInn Hotel and Mermaid Entertainment & Event Center in Mounds View, Minnesota. Tickets are $12 in advance, or $15 at the door. Check out the complete list of speakers and exhibitors if you're curious.
This 4-and-a-half minute clip presents some excellent footage of the Windiate freighter. Lying bolt upright 190 feet below the surface of Lake Huron, the Windiate is in incredible shape, despite having sunk well over 100 years ago. Shot by Dale Kreiner, this intriguing video shows the boat's deck and rigging, as well as a well-preserved yawl boat.
I don't know about you, but my memory could use some help when it comes to fish identification. Black tip reef sharks and the bright orange Garibaldi are easy to remember but the variations of damselfish and triggerfish can be overwhelming.
Fish ID guides, like those by Paul Humann, are a critical part of any divers bookshelf but they're not always the easiest to use if all you can remember is the general size or markings on a fish. What I've always wanted to see is a fish guide which cross-references their characteristics in greater detail and It looks like the folks at WikiDivers are doing just that.
Their fish identification guide begins with describing the characteristics of fish: body shape, fins, markings, gills, size, and body/fin configurations. Each of these includes a link to fish which have those characteristics. If your unknown fish had vertical bands, click the Bands link and a list shows you those with vertical bands.
There is a growing number of fish species already in the guide but it's a work in progress. While the main page is a great starting point with photos and links, the search results don't generate thumbnails. Bummer, because clicking through links for individual photos is no better than paging through Humann's book. The founders of WikiDivers have voiced their commitment to the site so hopefully their hard work will continue and produce an intuitive and thorough resource.
I love a great conspiracy theory and we can add this one to the list. In late September we ran a story about the discovery of an Air Force F-89 fighter and UFO in Lake Superior. Recently, Divester reader Chad commented the Great Lakes Dive web site has gone missing. No page about the discovery of the jet and UFO. Not even a home page. Nothing.
After some quick Googling it seems that Great Lakes Dive may have pulled one over on us. According to a message forum I came across, MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network, covered this story in their November journal. The investigation failed to reach anyone from Great Lakes Dive so they're classifying the discovery as a hoax until the evidence can be substantiated.
Perhaps the discoverers went into hiding when (allegedly) threatened by a TV production company to "tell us the location of the dive site or else." The production company in question denied this but said they were "no longer interested in the story."
Chatter on the 'net labels it a hoax or an attempt to fraudulently raise money. Or maybe the "TV production company" was a nefarious black-ops military unit. Like I said, I love a good conspiracy!
The first time I saw Jellyfish Lake was the IMAX documentary, The Living Sea. For some reason I've been thinking about it, well Palau actually, with all this doom and gloom in the news. I find scuba diving a serene experience (when there's no current or surge) and these jellyfish are testament to that.
Jellyfish Lake is located at Palau and was created when the lake was closed off from the sea due to geological evolution. The jellyfish dined on the abundance of algae in the lake and lost their ability to sting over time. Their numbers are vast, almost overwhelming, and visitors are allowed to swim (but not scuba) among them.
Minnesota's Quarry Park & Nature Preserve claims to be the most unique county park in the US. It's certainly among the most picturesque. Featuring granite reflecting pools; mountain bike paths over billion-year-old bedrock; trout fishing; geocachers running amok; and a swimming hole 116 feet deep, four of the park's 20 quarries are now ready for scuba divers! Among the park's new dive rules, expect to:
sign the typical permits, releases, and liability waivers;
present your C-card and a photo ID to obtain a free Quarry Park dive permit;
have a parent or guardian cosign the permit if you're younger than 18;
use diving flags to alert other quarry users to your presence;
pay for parking.
To see all 9 pages of the (pretty typical) guidelines for divers, check out this PDF. If you want to see a promotional video of the park, you can. If you want me to dive in the park's waters in the wintertime, you've got another thing coming! Brrrr.
British Royal Navy diver Lt. George Wookey dived 600 feet below the surface of a lake near Sorfjorden, Norway on October 12, 1956, breaking the previous record. Breathing a helium-oxygen mix, and wearing a Siebe Gorman helmet and a flexible dress standard diving suit, divers have gone deeper since then, but never using the Siebe Gorman helmet.
In conjunction with a dive show this week in Norway, a plaque commemorating Wookey's achievement will be unveiled near the site where he achieved the record. Wookey, who is now 83 years old, is scheduled to speak at the plaque's unveiling. Sadly, his sister says she asked if she "could go and help George celebrate but because of all the red tape involved, it would have been very difficult." Come on, somebody couldn't arrange for this woman to fly from Australia to Norway?!
If you've got a minute, definitely check out Wookey's first-person account of the dive, in which he simulated working on a sub in water temperatures approaching 33°F. According to Wookey, "Cold crept steadily through me and I had a passing thought, 'One of these days they'll invent heated suits!'" Claiming his fingers swelled to the size of sausages, I bet Wookey was delighted to get out of that cold lake water.
Starting this Friday (the 13th!) -- and running through Sunday -- San Antonio's Dive World Scuba will be sponsoring a weekend-long Halloween-themed, dive-friendly blowout. Held at Texas' North Park Canyon Lake, in addition to ample grilling-out, a gumbo cook-off, and "fun dives," the event also features an Underwater Haunted House, a Costume Party/Contest, an Underwater Pumpkin Carving Contest, and an Underwater Pumpkin Hunt. Twenty bucks gains you entry to the entire event and a 1 in 10 chance of winning a spankin'-new reg, BC, tank, and more. If you live in the San Antonio area, and you love diving, this sounds like where you should be this weekend. If you go, please let us know what an underwater haunted house looks like, so I can design one for next year!
I'm pretty sure everyone knows the US Navy has divers in its ranks. But did you know the Army has divers, too? And that many of them are working in the desert? Army divers belong to the U.S. Army Dive Company, based out of Fort Eustis, Virginia. The Company has about 120 divers worldwide spread among five dive teams, two of which are deployed in Kuwait to support Operation Iraqi Freedom. In reality, both the 544th Engineer Team and the 74th Engineer Team have served in the Middle East since 2003, working in Kuwait, Iraq, and the Persian Gulf.
Though limited to shallow waters, the teams have performed a variety of operations in Iraq, including inspecting and destroying bridge sections, salvaging sunken equipment, doing maintenance on Iraqi oil platforms, searching for soldiers who have accidentally fallen into Iraqi waters -- even recovering Marine Cobra helicopter pilots from a lake. They also manage Kuwait's two military-authorized decompression chambers serving both Iraq and Kuwait. (Only one has been used, by an American contractor in Kuwait who got bent after a dive trip in Thailand.)
If you'd like to learn more about the day-to-day work the dive teams perform, check out this journal excerpt (PDF). Although it's dated 2003, the work is probably typical for military divers working in Iraq -- if that's possible.
Dive Zero is a brand new "youth-oriented scuba diving/extreme sports video magazine." Filmed in high-def, this video magazine has the same components as a traditional, print magazine -- gear reviews, trip reports, destination profiles, etc. -- except the content sits on a DVD, and you "read" the magazine by watching your TV.
Recently, I viewed the premier issue. At just under an hour long, the Dive Zero team has assembled a very engaging product that was both entertaining and informative -- which is more than I can say for most of the stuff I see on TV. If you like looking through your dive magazines during lunch breaks, while traveling, or at the beach, a DVD video magazine probably isn't going to interest you. However, if you believe the static nature of a magazine doesn't lend itself to the beauty of the dynamic, underwater world, getting your dive news via a high-def DVD will really appeal to you.
In August, Jeff Rice, owner of Ohio's 23-acre Portage Quarry, tried to break the record for most divers diving in a single location. Although he hoped to attract 1000 divers to his quarry to jump in the water and thereby shatter the world record -- currently owned by the Maldives -- he only managed to attract 303 divers. Undeterred, he claims he'll try again next year.
In the meantime, Rice has recently had his sights on something bigger: sinking a Hamburger Flugzeugbau GmbH-manufactured Hansa jet in the quarry. In fact, last weekend, Rice and a team of divers from Michigan's Great Lakes Wrecking Crew Dive Club stripped, washed, cleaned, saturated and submerged the aircraft. Envisioned as the core of a training program for local rescue agencies, including the Toledo Fire Department's dive team, the jet now rests in 50 feet of water with the tail assembly starting at the 30-foot level. Although there are other submerged planes in the area (including in Portage Quarry), the Hansa jet offers a wider cargo area, making it more suitable for rescue and recovery training. Although there's no word on whether your average rec diver will get to explore the aircraft, since it rests in the center of the quarry within convenient recreational limits, my guess is: Yes.
Last night was the final installment of Jean-Michel Cousteau's six-part series called Ocean Adventures. Ending a journey that began in April, Cousteau and his team -- which included son Fabien and daughter Celine -- completed a whirlwind tour of America's National Marine Sanctuaries, exploring 7 of the 13 sites and documenting the successes each site has seen. Filled with great undersea footage and some interesting researchers to comment on the work they were doing, the episode was good but, again, light on the science: I could've dealt with some more facts and analysis. That said, the show was nevertheless an excellent introduction to the Sanctuary system and overview of some of the major successes we, as a population, have achieved in trying to protect our environment.
On the night of November 23, 1953, an F-89 all-weather interceptor was flying over upper Michigan. Oddly, a ground control radar station saw the blips of the plane -- as well as the blips of some other, unidentified object. Soon, the blips merged on the radar-scope: the F-89 and the object were "locked together." Suddenly, the blips disappeared, suggesting the objects crashed. Although both US and Canadian officials searched for the F-89, nothing was ever discovered. An initial press release indicated the second blip was that of a UFO, but the "official" newspaper report indicated the blip had been mis-read by the radar operator and that the blip represented a Canadian airliner. All Canadian airlines quickly denied any flights in the area. Later, although the Air Force told one of the pilot's widows that the plane had been flying too low and had crashed into Lake Superior, when she asked if her husband's body could be recovered, she was informed that the jet had exploded at a high altitude, destroying the plane and its occupants. Huh? Was it flying too low or too high?
Recently, Great Lakes Dive claim to've discovered the wreckage of the F-89 in Lake Superior. Using wide trajectory side scan sonar, the group made 28 passes of the area that yielded impressive images. Surprisingly, the images are of a largely intact jet -- not one that exploded and crashed in a fiery ball of flames. Moreover, Great Lakes Dive claims they've located the wreckage that may be the alleged UFO, er, Canadian airliner, er, whatever. GLD plans to send an ROV to the lake floor in early 2007 to investigate further. In the meantime, the few "UFO"-images feature round-ish, gray blobs, which may or may not look like a UFO. Without a doubt, though, they don't look like a jet. What do you think?
Sixty feet below the surface of Scotland's Loch Fyne rests a gnome garden, which is similar to a coral garden. Sort of. Just watch the video. In 2 minutes, you'll understand.
In addition to showcasing the Sanctuaries' beauty, Cousteau and his team will also document how these sites are conservation challenges. Over the course of the expedition, Cousteau and his team will dive among goliath groupers; humpback whales; the giant Pacific octopus; spawning coral; and numerous shipwrecks. If you want to whet your appetite, check out the video preview available on PBS.
On the weekend of February 17, the Great Lakes Shipwreck Preservation Society will hold its annual "Dive Into the Past" event. Friday night is an informal movie night, during which anybody can screen a film or TV show (no, you can't show Ferris Bueller's Day Off; it has to be relevant to the theme). On Saturday, the event really gets rolling with presentations ranging from an overview of the wrecks and geography in the Straits of Mackinac to a discussion of The Wreck of the Rouse Simmons. There will even be a talk concerning the sinking of the Oriskany, which isn't in the Great Lakes -- but should be. 
I don't know about you, but my memory could use some help when it comes to fish identification. Black tip reef sharks and the bright orange Garibaldi are easy to remember but the variations of damselfish and triggerfish can be overwhelming.
I love a great conspiracy theory and we can add this one to the list. In late September we ran a story about 
The first time I saw 
British Royal Navy diver Lt. George Wookey dived 600 feet below the surface of a lake near 
Starting this Friday (the 13th!) -- and running through Sunday -- San Antonio's 
I'm pretty sure everyone knows the 
Dive Zero
In August, Jeff Rice, owner of Ohio's 23-acre 
Last night was the final installment of Jean-Michel Cousteau's six-part series called 
On the night of November 23, 1953, an F-89 all-weather interceptor was flying over upper Michigan. Oddly, a ground control radar station saw the blips of the plane -- as well as the blips of some other, unidentified object. Soon, the blips merged on the radar-scope: the F-89 and the object were "locked together." Suddenly, the blips disappeared, suggesting the objects crashed. Although both US and Canadian officials searched for the F-89, nothing was ever discovered. An 
Recently, 
Episode 5 of the Jean-Michel Cousteau's excellent 6-part 
