Michigan’s underwater park
Explore boat wreckage and more at Thunder Bay marine sanctuary
A buoy floats in an otherwise empty Lake Huron bay, a little button in the water only a 10-minute paddle from the beach.
Below it, resting on the bottom in 18 feet of water, lie the remains of the L.M. Mason, a 125-foot wooden schooner caught by a vicious storm on
Oct. 22, 1861. Carrying a load of grain, the schooner huddled in this bay off northeast Michigan’s Presque Isle peninsula with 13 other ships to escape the winds, waves and snow. The other ships survived, but the L.M. Mason was too badly damaged and sank.
Because of its shallow resting place and exposure to the wild storms that buffet this section of Lake Huron — called Shipwreck Alley — only the hull and some supporting beams are left. But the fact that it is 160 years old and still relatively well-preserved is testament to the unique conditions of the waters in which it rests, part of the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
In the ocean, the wood in shipwrecks is often eaten by shipworms and the metal is subject to rust, but in Lake Huron’s cold freshwater, these wrecks are extraordinarily wellpreserved. Especially in deep water. About a dozen miles from the L.M. Mason lies another schooner, the Cornelia B. Windiate, in
180 feet of water. Sitting upright on the lake floor, the schooner is nearly untouched. Its three masts, rigging, lifeboat and even its cargo of wheat are still there, though it went down on Nov. 27, 1875.
The L.M. Mason and the Cornelia B. Windiate are two of the nearly 100 known shipwrecks that comprise the Thunder Bay sanctuary, a 4,300-squaremile underwater park in Lake Huron, off the northeast Michigan coast. It was created in 2000 as the first National Marine Sanctuary in the Great Lakes.
Think of the National Marine Sanctuary System as the underwater equivalent of the national parks. It was created in 1972 amid a growing recognition that marine areas of exceptional historical and ecological significance needed protection, too. A key event spurring the system’s creation was a 1969 oil spill off the Santa Barbara, California,
coast, which at the time was the worst in U.S. history.
Run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the system will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2022. It includes 15 saltwater and freshwater sanctuaries in places like the Channel Islands off Santa Barbara, Stellwagen Bank off the Massachusetts coast, and Flower Garden Banks off the Galveston, Texas, coast in the Gulf of Mexico.
Stephanie Gandulla, a NOAA maritime archaeologist and research coordinator at Thunder Bay, told me that in most years the sanctuary is visited by divers from places like Australia, New Zealand and Germany, all eager
to explore wrecks. These are dives that exceed the boundaries of recreational scuba diving, usually deeper than 130 feet. They require advanced training and the use of equipment such as astronaut-like dry suits and specialized air tanks.
On our visit, we did not don dry suits or suck air from tanks. Wetsuits, fins, snorkels and kayaks were difficult enough to manage, though worth the effort.
We began our exploration of the sanctuary the day before our visit to the L.M. Mason with a ride on the Lady Michigan, a glass-bottom boat that docks in Alpena near the sanctuary headquarters. The tour boat motors out to the waters off Thunder
Bay Island, an area of several known shipwrecks. Near the island, we peered down at the shallow wreck of the wooden steam barge Monohansett, which sank on Nov. 23, 1907. The crew was saved by the United States Life-Saving Service, a precursor to the Coast Guard.
The boat tour was an entertaining and comprehensive introduction to the Thunder Bay sanctuary, but it’s hard to top the experience of floating over the L.M. Mason and diving to swim along its wreckage. We were its only visitors at that moment, and the wilderness waters of Presque Isle’s North
Bay were devoid of human sound.
With the wetsuit keeping me as toasty as a seal, sunlight penetrating to the bottom of the clear bay, and thick, unbroken forest crowding the shoreline, it was easy to see this sanctuary’s appeal. It was the kind of experience that gives rise to dreams of a career change, especially when I learned that NOAA employs divers throughout its sanctuary system to do research, exploration and outreach.
Jeff Gray, Thunder
Bay’s superintendent, said the lure of visiting shipwrecks is a gateway to fostering the sanctuary’s primary missions: conservation, research, education, supporting coastal communities and contributing to local economies.
After a day and a half of boating, kayaking, floating, snorkeling and basking in the sanctuary’s waters, the rest of our short weekend was spent not in the sanctuary but along its shoreline. We visited Rockport Recreation Area, a Michigan state park on the Lake Huron coastline between Alpena and Presque Isle. This state park, Michigan’s 100th, had a charming, raffish quality. As the entrance appeared, the sanctuary waters were arrayed like a halo beyond the parking lot. There, we learned that the park contains a ghost town, a shipwreck, natural sinkholes and a bat hibernaculum.
As our last stop, Gray and Gandulla showed us around the Great Lakes Maritime Heritage Center, which is temporarily closed to the public because of COVID-19 restrictions. Gray said he was hoping the free admission museum would reopen soon, since it is the public’s gateway to the sanctuary and the nexus of NOAA’s educational, scientific and community outreach. The centerpiece is a full-size replica of a classic Great Lakes schooner.