Anyone have more information on this incident and the finding? From the article it sounds like it was on/near the shipwreck Lakeland. I dove this wreck back in July. Not sure if I would want to find this on any dive that I am not expecting to see.
Body found off Door County is diver who disappeared in 1999 - WBAY
Door County - A body found in Lake Michigan off the shore of Door County this weekend is confirmed to be a diver who disappeared almost 13 years ago.
The Door County Sheriff's Department confirms it was the body of Dirk Kann from Guttenberg, Iowa.
The 52-year-old was scuba diving with two friends at the site of the Lakeland shipwreck near Whitefish Bay in September, 1999. He didn't resurface.
Two men diving near the shipwreck found a body in a wet suit Saturday, one mile east of Whitefish Point and 225 feet under the water, and notified authorities.
Alan Pahnke is an experienced diver and owns Green Bay Scuba. He says he's heard of divers being recovered years after disappearing, but 13 years is rare. "That's a long time," he says.
Pahnke says two factors can keep a body in place and preserved underwater.
The first is depth.
"The compression of the water will take a diver and the diver's suit and keep him on the bottom."
The second is water temperature. It must be cold, like the 36-degree water at the bottom of Lake Michigan.
"That's part of what's going to keep him down, too, because the gases in a decomposing body won't expand because of the temperature and the pressure."
Pahnke has trained a number of police dive teams but says their limit is around 130 feet deep, so even though authorities knew roughly where the body was, recovering it in more than 200 feet of water was nearly impossible.
"In a dive that deep, you don't have the time to search for something," he said. "They need technical divers that are trained to do that and also want to go down and find a body underwater, and there's very few people that want to do that."
In this case, police say the divers weren't searching for the body, yet they've appeared to have solved a mystery more than a decade old.
---------- Post Merged at 11:19 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 08:30 AM ----------
A little bit more info... I had no idea this body had been seen occasionally on the wreck over the years. Sounds like the incident in 1999 was probably medical related. Interesting comment about the hang bottles. Would be interested to know more as the "typical" deco gas choices would be 50% and 100% which if they were left on the line would be at 70ft and 20ft.
Diver's body recovered after 13 years | Door County Advocate | doorcountyadvocate.com A scuba diver missing since Sept. 4, 1999, was found by a group of divers in Lake Michigan Saturday in Door County.
Dirk C. Kann, 52, of Guttenberg, Iowa, was reported missing while diving with two other men at the wreck of the Lakeland, a steamer that sank with a load of cars in 1924. Kann’s body was one one mile east of Whitefish Point in the town of Sevastopol near Whitefish Bay. Whitefish Point is located between Whitefish Dunes State Park and Lily Bay along the Lake Michigan shoreline.
Divers reported seeing what was believed to be Kann in the past but until Saturday efforts to recover it were unsuccessful. In July of 2002 divers found a body believed to be that of Kann, but underwater attempts to again locate the body, weather or equipment problems prevented recovery.
On Saturday divers found a middle-aged man, still in his wet suit, about 200 feet below the surface, and brought the body to the surface. They then contacted the U.S. Coast Guard who contacted the sheriff’s department around 3:15 p.m.
His body was taken to Green Bay for an autopsy where it was positively identified Monday.
“We had known he was missing. In fact we had made numerous attempts (to recover the body),” Door County Sheriff Terry Vogel said.
On Sept. 4, 1999, Kann was surfacing from a dive in 175 feet of water when he was last seen by his dive partner, a 49-year-old Appleton man, according to a Door County Advocate account at the time. Both Kann and a dive partner experienced problems on their way up and Kann was last seen at the 80-foot mark on the dive line, where he remained to compress – a requirement in deep dives to prevent the buildup of harmful nitrogen bubbles in the blood.
His partner continued to the 40-foot decompression mark and after surfacing, he and a 60-year-old Delafield diver who remained in the boat, pulled in the dive line, but Kann was not there. Bottles for decompression and emergency air, fastened at the point where Kann was last seen, were functional and still contained air.
All three men were experienced divers, but the site is hazardous due to the depth and strong currents in that area.
Besides being an avid scuba diver, Kann was an inventor and had several business ventures. He founded a recumbent bicycle company, Linear Mfg., in Iowa in the mid 1980s. That company has since been sold but Kann Mfg., started by his father, still manufactures marine boats, barges and garbage trucks in Guttenberg, Iowa and is a major employer in that small community. A son and daughter work at Kann but declined comment. He is also survived by his wife, Rose.
The sheriff’s department was assisted at the scene by the medical examiner’s office, the Sturgeon Bay Police Department and the Coast Guard. The scene was cleared by 7 p.m.
Body found off Door County is diver who disappeared in 1999 - WBAY
Door County - A body found in Lake Michigan off the shore of Door County this weekend is confirmed to be a diver who disappeared almost 13 years ago.
The Door County Sheriff's Department confirms it was the body of Dirk Kann from Guttenberg, Iowa.
The 52-year-old was scuba diving with two friends at the site of the Lakeland shipwreck near Whitefish Bay in September, 1999. He didn't resurface.
Two men diving near the shipwreck found a body in a wet suit Saturday, one mile east of Whitefish Point and 225 feet under the water, and notified authorities.
Alan Pahnke is an experienced diver and owns Green Bay Scuba. He says he's heard of divers being recovered years after disappearing, but 13 years is rare. "That's a long time," he says.
Pahnke says two factors can keep a body in place and preserved underwater.
The first is depth.
"The compression of the water will take a diver and the diver's suit and keep him on the bottom."
The second is water temperature. It must be cold, like the 36-degree water at the bottom of Lake Michigan.
"That's part of what's going to keep him down, too, because the gases in a decomposing body won't expand because of the temperature and the pressure."
Pahnke has trained a number of police dive teams but says their limit is around 130 feet deep, so even though authorities knew roughly where the body was, recovering it in more than 200 feet of water was nearly impossible.
"In a dive that deep, you don't have the time to search for something," he said. "They need technical divers that are trained to do that and also want to go down and find a body underwater, and there's very few people that want to do that."
In this case, police say the divers weren't searching for the body, yet they've appeared to have solved a mystery more than a decade old.
---------- Post Merged at 11:19 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 08:30 AM ----------
A little bit more info... I had no idea this body had been seen occasionally on the wreck over the years. Sounds like the incident in 1999 was probably medical related. Interesting comment about the hang bottles. Would be interested to know more as the "typical" deco gas choices would be 50% and 100% which if they were left on the line would be at 70ft and 20ft.
Diver's body recovered after 13 years | Door County Advocate | doorcountyadvocate.com A scuba diver missing since Sept. 4, 1999, was found by a group of divers in Lake Michigan Saturday in Door County.
Dirk C. Kann, 52, of Guttenberg, Iowa, was reported missing while diving with two other men at the wreck of the Lakeland, a steamer that sank with a load of cars in 1924. Kann’s body was one one mile east of Whitefish Point in the town of Sevastopol near Whitefish Bay. Whitefish Point is located between Whitefish Dunes State Park and Lily Bay along the Lake Michigan shoreline.
Divers reported seeing what was believed to be Kann in the past but until Saturday efforts to recover it were unsuccessful. In July of 2002 divers found a body believed to be that of Kann, but underwater attempts to again locate the body, weather or equipment problems prevented recovery.
On Saturday divers found a middle-aged man, still in his wet suit, about 200 feet below the surface, and brought the body to the surface. They then contacted the U.S. Coast Guard who contacted the sheriff’s department around 3:15 p.m.
His body was taken to Green Bay for an autopsy where it was positively identified Monday.
“We had known he was missing. In fact we had made numerous attempts (to recover the body),” Door County Sheriff Terry Vogel said.
On Sept. 4, 1999, Kann was surfacing from a dive in 175 feet of water when he was last seen by his dive partner, a 49-year-old Appleton man, according to a Door County Advocate account at the time. Both Kann and a dive partner experienced problems on their way up and Kann was last seen at the 80-foot mark on the dive line, where he remained to compress – a requirement in deep dives to prevent the buildup of harmful nitrogen bubbles in the blood.
His partner continued to the 40-foot decompression mark and after surfacing, he and a 60-year-old Delafield diver who remained in the boat, pulled in the dive line, but Kann was not there. Bottles for decompression and emergency air, fastened at the point where Kann was last seen, were functional and still contained air.
All three men were experienced divers, but the site is hazardous due to the depth and strong currents in that area.
Besides being an avid scuba diver, Kann was an inventor and had several business ventures. He founded a recumbent bicycle company, Linear Mfg., in Iowa in the mid 1980s. That company has since been sold but Kann Mfg., started by his father, still manufactures marine boats, barges and garbage trucks in Guttenberg, Iowa and is a major employer in that small community. A son and daughter work at Kann but declined comment. He is also survived by his wife, Rose.
The sheriff’s department was assisted at the scene by the medical examiner’s office, the Sturgeon Bay Police Department and the Coast Guard. The scene was cleared by 7 p.m.
