08/23/2007

Immersed In History

GT Bay Underwater Preserve Council uncovers clues to past

By
Record-Eagle staff writer

Record-Eagle/Douglas Tesner
Ken Washburn, left, and Dr. Mark Holley display some of the equipment they are using to survey the Grand Traverse Bay. Holley, an underwater archaeologist, is using Total Station, survey equipment that was donated by Gourdie-Fraser.

TRAVERSE CITY — There's more under these waters than sand, seaweed and fish.

The Grand Traverse Bay Underwater Preserve Council has been looking for new and interesting dive sites since May. In addition to sunken boats and ships, the group is looking for experimental, remote-control airplanes from World War II era.

Members have already found what they believe are an ancient petroglyph that looks like a mastodon, a 150-year-old dock, a "perfectly intact” horse-drawn carriage and geological features believed to have been formed when the bay was much deeper than it is now.

"We're really searching for the whole gamut of cultural materials in the diving area,” said Mark Holley. The underwater archaeologist for the council, he was trained at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and teaches at Northwestern Michigan College.

Soon, the group will search for unmanned aircraft believed to have crashed in the bay more than 60 years ago after having been launched off the deck of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier. The hunt is based on research conducted by Jerry Taylor of Kingsley, who has collected an accordion file full of photos, news stories and military documents on the planes over the last two years.

"I remember when I was a kid growing up in the '60s and I heard my dad and his friends talking about remote controlled aircraft in the bay,” he said. "That stuff's pretty cool when you're a kid.”

He called the craft the "great grandfather of the cruise missiles.”

Taylor is not a member of the council, but has pursued information on the planes as a kind of hobby. He's shown some of his findings to Holley and he's plotted two areas of one square mile each north of Old Mission Peninsula where he believes the wrecked planes are likely to be.

Taylor is a mapping technician for Gourdie-Fraser in Traverse City. Holley said his estimates of where the items lie are worth exploring.

"Whether we can find them or not is a different story,” he said. "We have photos of when they were going in the drink, but nobody's ever found them that we know of.”

The group hopes to search for the aircraft with the help of more advanced sonar equipment than they currently have available.

"The planes are just part of the wider search,” Holley said. "We're looking for all the cultural features in the area.”

In addition to the dock from the 1800s, the group has been looking at the horse-drawn carriage believed to have gone through the ice and a "junk pile in Old Mission, created by teens in the 1950s.”

The pile consists of refrigerators, freezers, boats and cars in 20 feet of water.

"They were going to create their own island,” Holley said.

While not condoning dumping trash in the bay, he said potential contaminants are likely gone by now and "it actually does create a fantastic wildlife habitat, believe it or not.”

The organization also hopes to remap the depths of the bay, since Holley said existing maps were done long ago and can be up to 50 feet off in the current depths. Members are applying for grants to help them map the floor of the bay and do other research.

The group is not publicizing the location of the petroglyph. They want experts to have a chance to help authenticate and date it.

Also, under 90 feet of water on east side of Old Mission, divers have found columns of stone that were "caused by rough water action” and indicate deeper water sometime in the distant past, Holley said.

"Geologists in the group got real excited,” he added. "That seems to be the way we find everything. We're out looking for a shipwreck and we find something else.”

The group is applying to the state government for official preserve status. They also plan an "underwater summit” Sept. 7-9 at the Hagerty Center on NMC's Great Lakes Campus, part of which will involve members giving an update on the group's activities.