Editor's note: This story was produced for the ear and designed to be heard. If you're able, WCMU encourages you to listen to the audio version of this story by clicking the LISTEN button above. This transcript was edited for clarity and length.
Tina Sawyer: The bottom of the Great Lakes are home to thousands of shipwrecks and other historical artifacts. That's why the state has an Underwater Salvage and Preserve Committee. They work to make sure items are protected and preserved.
One Central Michigan University staff member was recently re-appointed to this committee.
I recently sat down with Ron Bloomfield to learn more about their work in the depths of the Great Lakes.
Ron Bloomfield: Recently, the last probably five years, they've been working on an airplane that was related to the Tuskegee Airmen that was lost during a training exercise in Lake Huron during World War 2. Unfortunately, it was a loss of life incident. You know, the remains were not on the site. They were found earlier, but they had located that plane, or the remains of it, and we're trying to figure out if they could bring it up safely. And it's in pieces. And of course it's it's degraded. So what do you do to stop it from degrading further when you bring it out into the air, which will speed it up?
TS: How fast does something like that speed up though, when you do that?
RB: In wood, it can almost be instantaneous at times. Anything metal, depending on the corrosion of what environment you store it in, it could be, sometimes it can be a while, sometimes it could be fairly quickly.
TS: Just the one plane? Or is there other planes?
RB: Well, there's, there's many. Yeah, I was surprised. I've seen lists, and I know those are not complete lists. That's why it's important to have archaeologists that are trained as part of the advisory team, and we do have... the state's underwater archaeologist advises. Anybody that puts together one of those applications to pull those pieces of whatever they are... shipwreck, airplane, other cultural resources... if they put that application together, they have to have a conservation plan included, and usually that means they've gone forward and they've done their homework.
TS: (Because) there are laws in regards to dives.
RB: Correct. There's 13 underwater preserves around the state, and in those areas it's heightened. I mean, it is illegal to take anything off the bottom ones in the state of Michigan. So if you take it from a preserve area, and there's thirteen of these, all of those 2500 square miles, if you take something from there without a permit or destroy something, you face harsher penalties.
TS: Yeah. Tou were mentioning best practices for divers. That's one of the things that the Commission deals with. In what ways do you explain to them or any diver, you know, what what they can do and what they can't do?
RB: Well, we try... part of who we work with are dive charters. So we try to do it at the dive charter level. Now, not every diver is going to go on a dive charter. They're going to... some use their own boats. So we try to kind of get a two level campaign or a two headed campaign. One is to look at divers and get them right when they're learning to dive. And we basically talked about safe diving practices in terms of "Take only pictures, leave only bubbles", which is kind of the mantra so.
You know, Go Pros can take amazing footage now it's, and they're a fairly small footprint. And the second thing is that anything that you do with that shipwreck, however you interact with that shipwreck, can cause degradation and you need to be cognizant of that. Don't try to pose funny, funny pictures, like we had in an individual that tried posing a funny picture on a shipwreck in the Straits of Mackinaw, where he was sitting on a toilet that was on the deck. They broke the toilet. Next thing you know, that object's not around anymore. You know, just trying to educate. I mean, there's still gonna be bad actors, but if we can minimize that at all, that's that's what we try.
TS: (Do) people try to do their own archaeological exploration on their own without explaining to anybody else what they're doing?
RB: They have. There have been some that have done these sort of secretive things. There's always been this idea out there that if I put the money into finding the shipwreck, I should be able to do whatever I want to with it. We try to basically let them know that, you know, if you were on land, you wouldn't be doing this because this is, you know, a state archaeological site on land, it has a little bit... definitely an elevated security to it. Just because it's under the water, it doesn't change. Chances are pretty good that if it's for for good practices, good sound research that yes, it it will probably be allowed.
There was a group in in northern Lake Michigan that wanted to take... there was a shipwreck and they wanted to take the actual planks from it, bring them up, burn them and infuse that into to whiskey. Well, of course, that's gonna get denied, because that's just... it's a non renewable resource. When the law was enacted in 1980, what they were fighting against was seeing those wrecks being completely stripped. People went to dive them and then started taking souvenirs.
So as long as that market is there, we're always gonna have to be kind of cognizant of that, and that's why we try to say, if you're going to do anything to a shipwreck, please apply for a permit. You know, so the state knows what's going on.
