The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald 

Photo : Doug Bell

When, many, many years ago, I moved from Florida to Michigan to go to school,  I stopped scuba diving entirely.  I had learned to dive in the warm and clear waters of the Florida keys. Why would I want to dive in the cold dark waters of the Great Lakes?   When it comes to ship wrecks, however, cold and dark may not be such a bad thing.  Unlike in salt water, ship wrecks can often be unusually well preserved in the dark, deep, fresh water of the Great Lakes.   Apparently, Michigan is a great place for wreck diving.  Perhaps I should have invested in a dry suit, all those years ago.

Michigan’s Great Lakes offer ‘the best shipwreck diving in the world’

Experienced divers know a little secret about Michigan: it has a corner on the world’s scuba diving market. Instead of heading to the Caribbean or the wreck-rich waters off the Carolinas, thousands of divers choose to jump with both flippers into Michigan’s Great Lakes waters.

Doug Bell, owner of Traverse City’s Scuba North, said Michigan ranks among the top 10 states in the number of certified divers and is considered world class for wrecks.

“In my opinion, and I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to quite a bit to a lot of locations to dive, the Great Lakes offer the best shipwreck diving in the world,” Bell said.

Four of the five lakes touch state boundaries and had ship traffic for nearly 400 years. That’s 400 years of wrecks available. Many are perfectly preserved having sunk in fresh and relatively cold water.

Last February we posted

Is the St. Lawrence Seaway safe for nuclear shipments?

Thanks to Phil Leon for passing the news along.

Ghost Ships of the Great Lakes

The discovery of a human skull in the depths of Lake Superior begins a story that will take historian and author Brendon Baillod across two Great Lakes and a century of history. It takes him and a team of elite technical divers more than 20 miles off Milwaukee where they discover the wreck of one of Lake Michigans lost queens. It takes them to the remote waters of Lake Superior where they risk their lives to determine the identity of yet another lost ship. And it takes us into the forgotten life of a brave and stubborn woman who lived, and died, on these wild waters. Whether her presence cursed these lost ships, or a more earthly explanation can be found, the Great Lakes reputation as a graveyard for mariners stands firm.

Thanks to Phil Leon or pointing the program out.

The wonderful thing about the US Great Lakes is that being fresh water, the ships on the lakes don’t rust like they do in the saltier oceans. Of course being fresh water, the lakes do freeze close enough to solid in the wintertime, so shipping comes to a halt.  In recent weeks the ships have started moving on the St. Clair River . Earlier this week the  St. Lawrence Seaway and the Welland Canal opened for business and today the Soo Locks between Lake Superior and the lower lakes are scheduled to ocean.   The Great Lakes are a wonderful if sometimes confusing place.  The water is fresh and there are no tides. The ships, even the 1,000′ bulk carrier,s too large to fit out of the locks, are referred to as “boats” and every travels in miles per hour.

Ships get warm welcome

Seaway Opens 53rd Season, 7% Increase Projected

Thanks to Phil Leon for passing the article along.

Ontario First Nation says planned nuke shipment through Great Lakes ignores law

Grand Council Chief Patrick Madahbee says First Nations have to be accommodated on activities that could have an impact on their traditional territories.

Madahbee, speaking for 39 member communities of the Anishinabek Nation, notes that Anishinabek First Nation communities occupy all of the Great Lakes shoreline and a significant part of its basin.

“When it comes to transporting nuclear wastes through such an important resource as the Great Lakes, there is no such thing as too much consultation,” Madahbee said Tuesday in a release.

“Look at what happened with the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico,” he said. “It´s irresponsible to take chances with the transport of hazardous goods.”

Canadian environmentalists are also not pleased:

Shipping waste across lakes nukes old rules

Under a 2006 environmental assessment prepared by Bruce Power and approved by the CNSC, the generators were declared to be radioactive waste that could not be recycled and would therefore be stored at the Bruce station in the Western Waste Management Facility owned and operated by Ontario Power Generation as low-level radioactive waste. They would be stored on the surface until 2043, and underground thereafter.

There was an acceptable plan for managing these wastes approved in 2006. Yet five years later, Bruce Power wants to transport these components halfway across the world.

Accidents can happen. Like the Gulf of Mexico, the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River are a tremendous resource and an economic engine for North America. We should not support proposals that potentially threaten these precious waterways, the source of drinking water for almost 40 million people, especially when there are alternatives.

As the shipment will take place in part through US waters, the United States government will also have a say.

U.S. could stop planned Great Lakes nuke transport

The agency responsible for oversight of nuclear shipments in the U.S. is DOT’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, an agency that has come under criticism recently for its failure to prevent oil and gas pipeline ruptures.

In the final days of his tenure as a U.S. Senator, Democrat Russ Feingold of Wisconsin spearheaded an effort to ensure that the agency doesn’t simply rubber stamp the plan.

Feingold, together with Sens. Robert Casey Jr.(D-PA), Kirsten Gellibrand (D-NY), Carl Levin (D-MI), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Charles Shumer (D-NY), asked PHMSA to explain how it would handle the request to move the nuclear waste through U.S. waters.

In a Nov. 8, 2010 response PHMSA Director Cynthia Quarterman said the agency would begin considering Bruce Power’s application for a “special arrangement” once the shipping plan was approved by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

Over the past two decades the agency has made special arrangements for the shipping of approximately 40 large nuclear power plant components, she said, but “almost all of the prior U.S. consignments had a lesser radioactive hazard than the proposed Canadian steam generator transport.”

All but one of the previous nuclear shipments appear to involve ocean shipping rather than transport over the Great Lakes.

Quarterman said that PHMSA would solicit input from the U.S. Coast Guard and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before granting Bruce Power an exemption from safety regulations.

Feingold asked whether PHMSA be complying with the National Environmental Policy Act [which requires formal environmental review of federal actions with significant environmental impact] and how the agency would ensure public participation and transparency.

Quarterman stated that the agency would comply with NEPA, but offered no details on actions to engage the public.

“It should be noted that although Canada may approve the initial certificate, the U.S. is in no way bound by their approval,” she said. “The U.S. could require additional conditions or elect not to validate.”

Thanks to Phil Leon for passing the articles along.

Carp-Pocalypse: The Great Lakes Asian Carp Invasion Begins?

There’s an underwater war underway in the Midwest – an offensive to keep the ravenous Asian Carp out of the Great Lakes. On Wednesday, it became clear: The carp are winning.

Late Wednesday night, the Associated Press reported that federal officials have, for the first time ever, discovered a carp swimming beyond the multiple electric barriers that were erected along the Chicago waterways to keep the fish out of the Great Lakes system. A 20-pound bighead carp was caught by a fisherman in Illinois’s Lake Calumet, on the South Side of Chicago.

That’s beyond the electric fence, and only six miles from Lake Michigan.

For decades, the carp have been making their way up the Mississippi, and then through Illinois rivers and canals that form an artificial link between the Mississippi Basin and the Great Lakes. The problems with this migration stem from the fact that the carp can grow into 4-foot-long, 100-pound monsters who devour 40 percent of their body weight daily. They destroy ecosystems by gorging themselves, and starving out other species.

Plenty of people seemed surprised by Wednesday’s news; a little less clear was now what was to be done next.

The Army Corps of engineers is studying alternatives to the current electric barriers, but it says it will take years to complete the analysis. Meanwhile others like Joel Brammeier, president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, is demanding that the connections between the river systems and the Great Lakes be closed permanently.

Robinson shares story behind Privateer Lynx

Robinson will speak on “The Making of Privateer Lynx.” He spent the last 18 months working on a book about Lynx that is scheduled for publication next year. This will be his first public talk on the topic. In his informal presentation, Robinson will discuss the making of both the historical and modern Lynx, and the “lonely voyage” of writing nonfiction books.

In 1997, West Coast businessman Woodson K. Woods had a dream — literally. He woke up one morning and decided to build a tall ship. Fascinated by the War of 1812, Woods spent $3 million to create a wooden boat designed after the swift, rakish privately-armed schooners built in Baltimore during “The Forgotten War.” The historical Lynx was a “letter-o-marque” built at Fells Point and captured by the British in 1813.

Woods’ goal was to build a modern schooner, inspired by the original, to teach children about history through active sail training aboard a real wooden sailing ship. This living museum was completed in 2001, and to date has welcomed more than 10,000 students aboard for adventure sails, sail training and dockside tours.

The modern Privateer Lynx was built at Rockport, Maine, and visited its official homeport of Portsmouth in October 2001. After eight years touring the West Coast, Canada and Hawaii, Lynx is now back east to celebrate the upcoming War of 1812 Bicentennial. It is currently en route to a tall ship celebration in the Great Lakes.

While there have been locks on the Saint Lawrence River since at least 1862, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the current series of locks, canals and channels that permit ocean-going vessels to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the North American Great Lakes, only fully  opened in 1959.

Seaway Concludes 50th Anniversary Season

The St. Lawrence Seaway concluded its 50th anniversary season on December 28 with the passage of the JW Shelley. The vessel transited the Iroquois Lock at 7:37 p.m. on route to Lake Ontario. The Seaway navigation season for 2009 spanned 274 days.

Total Seaway cargo volume for 2009 is estimated to amount to 30.5 million tonnes, the lowest volume witnessed since the early 1960’s. The 25% decrease in cargo volume compared to 2008 can be attributed to the depth of the recession, which sharply curtailed movements of iron ore and steel on the waterway.

“Given the Seaway’s reliance upon the steel industry for a substantial portion of our business, the economic downturn during the last year has certainly impacted our traffic level” commented Richard Corfe, President and CEO of The St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation (SLSMC). “The depth of this downturn underscores the importance of the SLSMC’s efforts to diversify our cargo base, and we are working diligently on a number of fronts to attain this goal”.

Thanks to Dexter Donham for the reference.