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Community Corner

Annual Festival Offers Rare Glimpse of Underwater Shipwrecks

Great Lakes Shipwreck Festival benefits Ford Seahorses Scuba Diving Club.

Eighteen different programs were offered Saturday at the 30th annual Great Lakes Shipwreck Festival, held at Washtenaw Community College in Scio Township. The event benefits the Ford Seahorses Scuba Diving Club, a member of the Ford Motor Company's Employees Recreation Association.

Eight of the programs took those attending on a video tour to explore shipwrecks fathoms deep beneath the Great Lakes. Roughly 300 people attended the event.

Lori Courvoisier of Ann Arbor said that the event was a lot of fun.

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"When you get divers together they tell a bunch of stories and plan trips," she said. "You can learn a lot of neat stuff about the Great Lakes."

Among the programs offered were presentations on the Lady Elgin, a ship that sunk in 1860, leading to the deaths of 300 people; a 206-foot three-mast schooner called the John Shaw that sunk in 1894 with 1,759 tons of coal in 128 feet of water; and the Marion Egan, which sunk in 1875 when it collided with the schooner E.R. Williams. Divers discovered standing masts and an intact cabin when they dove to investigate the wreck.

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Ric Mixter, a diver and owner of the documentary studio Airworthy Productions based in Saginaw, presented his documentary on the Edmund Fitzgerald, a Great Lakes freighter that sunk in a Lake Superior storm on Nov. 10, 1975. During his presentation he talked about the various groups who have visited the shipwreck, including the explorer Jacques Cousteau in 1980.

Mixter, whose documentaries have been seen on PBS, said he also dove to visit the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1994.

"The most interesting thing I found out was about the structural problems. The cook wintered in the ship, staying on the ship to make sure the pipes didn't freeze, and he found out the keel was loose," he said.

Tony Gramer, a diver and photographer whose prizewinning photos have appeared in photo contests around the world, presented his footage on the wreck of the John Shaw, which was bound for Chicago when it snapped its towline to the steamer John F. Eddy and sprang a leak.

Gramer showed photos and video of his visit to the wreck, during which he had 35 to 50 feet of visibility to see down into the five hatches on the ship.

Rudy Whitworth also presented 330 stunning photos of his dives in Layang Layang, Malaysia, and his visits to Lembeh in Indonesia.

"Lembeh is the muck diving capital of the world. There are unique creatures who live in that muck that don't live anywhere else in the world. Many are not even described scientifically yet," he said.

Other exhibits and displays at the festival included diving programs and charter tours, museums, and an exhibit by Dexter's Daryl Wright called "The Wright View," which displayed an underwater propulsion vehicle and underwater cameras completely designed and made by Wright, who said that he uses the equipment rather than sell it to help perform underwater research for historical societies, museums and divers.

"Everybody wants me to search," said Weight, whose equipment also provides a beacon sonar system and parallel lasers used to determine how far away a certain area is from the cameras.

He also has six cameras that hang from his boat to a depth of 300 feet that offer a panoramic view of the lake floor as the boat is traveling.

Wright once found a wedding ring with his underwater cameras that had been lost while a man was swimming.

"I've been diving since the '60s and in the '70s. I told myself that if I had a way to get around, I could see more, and I began building propulsion vehicles," he said.

He said Gramer used his equipment to initially find the John Shaw. Later, Gramer returned to dive and take the footage shown at the festival.

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