Hi Kidsdream. You may be hearing some of my frustration. We are coming off a very long battle about this Great Lakes State Park and the result remains uncertain.
Anyway, I'd like to tell you more to answer your concerns.
Our Association has been in existence since the 1980's. It was formed when the preserve was created. It is a member of the Michigan Underwater Preserve Council. I am usually around the air station at St. Ignace and often pump air there. Either through the MUPC or with our own booth, we attend tradeshows at Sandusky, Chicago, Milwaukee and Alpena (this year). We are not trying to hide our existence. We run a Treasure Hunt in August (you are welcome to come and hear more about all this) with flyers sent to every dive shop in Michigan to to publicize it. Notice is posted at the St. Ignace air station. It has been a regular event for years..We have published a guide book and distributed it and we have done presentations about the wrecks in the Straits. The last couple of years we have had t-shirts for sale at the dive shop with the Straits and our name on them. I have stood there and told divers the money goes for buoys and they passed on it - some just say they can get something similar at the local dive shop. That is well and good but it does not help put up buoys.
Still, I do not think that either our preserve or any other has done what it needs to do to bring all this to everyone's attentions. Actually, it was not until I saw the photo in this thread that I got to talking about it on the internet. I am glad I did. As I said, you would have heard a lot more about this if we were not tied up wasting time going to hearings, preparing testimony and the like to make our preserve's (and the MUPC's)view known about this silly "Great Lakes State Park." Frankly, I am sorry we have to waste time on it.
On marking the wrecks at the same time, you probably misunderstood me. We have enough buoys to do it all but they do not all match or are in a used condition. The last 5 years, we have tried to mark every wreck in the preserve plus the McBrier, Ellsworth and St. Andrew. Many of the wrecks have had 2 or 3 buoys (Young, Cedarville, Ward and Barnum). We have usually succeeded but there is a high rate of attrition so buoys may be down part (sometimes all) of the season. What I meant about the new buoys is that we have close to enough new cone style ones to retire the mismatched ones now in use and place a uniform set of buoys throughout the preserve. That would take it back to the condition it was around 1990. It will just look more uniform and the retired ones can be stored for emergencies or sent to other preserves.
On punitive, that was never the intent and still is not. This whole thing was meant to be addressed in this last spring. Other things intervened. We thought about the impact on diving and that is why enough materials were available to buoy 5 wrecks with the association buoys and about 4 more with PVC pipe buoy. This is enough to buoy most of the wrecks in the preserve one way or another. It just does not use the better quality buoys the association has. And we do not want our materials used to buoy the Sandusky until something is done for it. Once we turn these things over to the charter operator, he controls where he takes his boat and puts them. We can ask that something specific be done but the Sanduasky is popular and a money-maker for charter operators and, sometimes, shops.
One thing we are exploring is finding more than one boat to deploy buoys. This eliminates reliance on a single boat to do it and may allow more control of where our supplies go. It will also allow us to range farther out and attend to the Ellsworth. But any changes will require us to start paying for gasoline unless something else can be figured out.
On the PVC buoys, in our experience, they wobble in rough water. The ferry boats asked us last month to remove the one over the Stalker because it disappears in whitecaps. They are also brittle and the rate of loss makes them not especially cost effective. One was hit a few years back over the Maitland. I know when I went down to it, I thought it was full of broken china. The (small) pieces were scattered everywhere. We took mesh bags down and cleaned it up. It has been the feeling of most of us involved that professionally made buoys are superior to these homemade ones.
On grappling the Sandusky, this was discussed among us and with the DEQ and state archealogist. The best guess (and that is what it is) is that most recreational dive boats are unlikely to have a hook and enough line to successfully grapple it. If they do, it will eat up time more easily used on something else that is buoyed. So, the hope is that they will look, not find a buoy and move on. Certainly everyone will figure this out in time but we were hopeful we would be farther along than this by now.
On tying a bad mooring line, I guess that is a risk to take. No one can stop diving on a wreck and they should never be stopped. We are just coming off 3 months opposing this "State Park" for exactly that reason. On the otherhand, we do not have to enable it. Small boats (or divers) do not really pose much risk to the Sandusky or much anything else. It is primarily big displacement steel hulls that do. If someone places a 3/8 or 1/2 line, a big boat will not even try to tie off. The real problem here is not divers or small boats, it is big boats tying to it with the ability to pull it apart.
On removing a mooring, we have only removed something we provided. In the case of the one taken off last month, it was our buoy and line. We will check before disturbing it but if the current line is ours (we can tell because we weave the eyes), it will be removed as soon as convenient. If anyone or thing wants to put its own materials on any wreck in the preserve, they will not and never have been disturbed. They belong to someone else (the two exceptions are if they entangle the association's lines (usually better made) or pose a risk of entanglement inside the wreck - too many sloppy divers leave them).
On trying to raise money, you are so welcome to propose anything you want. As I said earlier, this spring, instead of being allowed to devote time to this, we spent incredible hours working on this "State Park". Not for sympathy, but we have spent long hours on that - sometimes more than 60 hours in a week. It has not helped that the politicos in Lansing tend to never give us notice of hearings so we are kept off balance trying to deal with them and a lot of falsehoods by proponents.
We have done an estimate to buoy each shipwreck in the Straits. It was prepared for the May House of Representatives Tourism and Natural Resources committee hearing when we testified on the "State Parks" bills. The cost is higher per buoy block if only one is done as opposed to several. The placement cost, using our own materials, was estimated at +/- $2000 for a single block (professionally placed at the convenience of the contractor). The cost is substantially reduced if multiple ones can be placed.
Certainly if you want to get involved and organize anything on the net or anywhere else or have any suggestions, please contact Janet Peterson at the St. Ignace Chamber of Commerce, or pm me, or email me at
straitsdiver@hotmail.com. Or come to our Treasure Hunt in August where this issue will be discussed.
The preferred solution here is one provided by divers acting themselves in concert. The problem, entirely our fault, is not making this plain a lot sooner. The Sandusky has just brought it to a head.
I will be happy to tell you or anyone more about all this and our association will take any suggestion you have to offer and you can get involved with it yourself and anyone else can. We do not and cannot reject any method to raise money or solve anything. We are the first to admit we do not have all the answers (really should not) and do not want anyone telling divers how to do things.
Best wishes.
The temp abouve the thermocline was mid 60's and below was 40. Great diving except for the current and waves on the Barnum. I'm going back in Sept. but the shop is using a charter out of Mackinaw city. The Saint Ignace boat, Captian's, and crew were just awsome but I didn't book the charter. We are going to do 4 dives/day for 2 days, really looking forward to it!
