The Clarion, lost on Lake Erie in 1909. Photo credit C.
Patrick Labadie Collection / Thunder Bay National Marine
Sanctuary, Alpena, MI.
November 2015 marks 40 years since
the sinking in Lake Superior of the SS
Edmund Fitzgerald. Listen to Gordon
Lightfoot’s ballad of this tragic tale by
clicking here
has travelled the world diving and one of his suggested
cold-water dives can be located just outside of Grand Bend.
“The Wexford is one of the ships that went down in the
great storm of 1913 and was only discovered maybe 20
years ago. It is pretty well intact, sits at the bottom, is not
very deep and visibility is usually excellent.”
The problems with diving in Lake Erie are twofold. The
first is anything you find could be covered in zebra
mussels, the invasive species that made headlines nearly 20
years ago. The second problem is that because Lake Erie is
shallow, as it warms up, algae causes visibility problems for
divers.
“In order to get visibility [in Erie] you have to go as
soon as the ice melts, you need that 42-degree water, then
you might have that 10-to-20-foot visibility where you can
actually enjoy the dive,” said Waxman. “Right now if you
and I were to go and dive in Lake Erie, you put your hand in
front of your face, you’re lucky to see your hand, so how
much of a wreck would you be actually seeing?”
Not a pastime to be taken up in a weekend, learning to
dive takes some time and energy and a little bit of money.
There are a couple of things you need to know when it
comes to diving wrecks. First, you have to be a licensed
SCUBA Diver. Costs for the course vary but range anywhere
between $400 and $1000 to become fully certified. The next
is if you want to enter a wreck you should have some extra
training to do so safely. Diving within a wreck can bring
unique challenges.
“If you go in one door and get into a room and your
flippers start to kick up silt, you could easily block your
visibility of the exit...Divers have died swimming around
and around in circles trying to find their way out of a
wreck,”says Waxman. He urges
people that want to dive wrecks
Left: The Algoscotia, an
oil/chemical carrier,
navigates the Detroit
RiverAdvances in
technology and weather
prediction have made
shipwrecks very rare.
Photo by Dan Gray
Want to see
underwater footage
of Shipwreck Alley
in Lake Huron?
Click here!