URA Team Recent Activities
Each year the URA team is active throughout the entire year. During the late fall & winter months the team is performing routine maintenance and upgrades to their vessel, the Obsession II, working and planning on the coming spring survey sites, performing research on shipwrecks found and those being searched for in the Great Lakes. Several of the members often present to the public from November through April of each year. Dave Trotter is the primary presenter. Also each winter Dave and his team work hard on "producing" DVD video and new presentations on "new finds" and from "new video" shot on the teams many pristine (virgin) dive sites. Winter is a busy time of the year for the team!
Sometime around April or May … always dependent on weather … wind and waves on the Great Lakes (The WEATHER GODS) … the team embarks on the "SURVEY" part of the year. Many weekends and days are spent "mowing the grass" towing a Klein side-san SONAR up and down the lakes looking for new previously undiscovered shipwrecks. Some years multiple are found. Some years no new shipwrecks are found. But, each year means that more and more of the lakes are surveyed. This data is invaluable for the team … wrecks or no wrecks. It is costly and it is time consuming. Many weekends begin late Friday night or early Saturday morning and continue non-stop out on the lakes until late Sunday afternoon. Searching for new shipwrecks in not easy!!!
Then, as the summer heat builds in and the lakes begin to form thermoclines, the side-scan SONAR imaging begins to suffer signal degradation … making the survey effort less and less efficient. So the Obsession is stripped of all the computers and monitors and survey equipment and reconfigured for diving. Each weekend the boat is loaded down with tanks, regulators, DPV's, and a host of other high tech diving equipment. This includes a host of underwater video and image cameras. Most of the shipwrecks are in deep water … 180+ feet deep. That means the dives are all classified as "Technical Diving" and the divers all use Tri-Mix gases. Most dive profiles have a 30-40 minute "bottom time" and about 60 to 90 minutes of deco.
The divers love it … as they get to dive on shipwrecks and see them for the first time in the 60-150 years these vessels have been lost. Most of the shipwreck sites are held confidential … so other divers do not have the location to disturb the wrecks. Newly found shipwrecks obviously have dive priority. But, re-visiting older shipwreck sites (still secret to the public) are also simply outstanding dives. The new video allows URA to see how the wrecks are faring as they lie on the bottom of the Great Lakes. The team also has interest in new marine archaeology technology. URA is looking to use ROV's and photogrammetry imaging to create detailed 3D computer models of some of these shipwrecks.
The sections below show some of this activity for recent years. Enjoy!!
Sometime around April or May … always dependent on weather … wind and waves on the Great Lakes (The WEATHER GODS) … the team embarks on the "SURVEY" part of the year. Many weekends and days are spent "mowing the grass" towing a Klein side-san SONAR up and down the lakes looking for new previously undiscovered shipwrecks. Some years multiple are found. Some years no new shipwrecks are found. But, each year means that more and more of the lakes are surveyed. This data is invaluable for the team … wrecks or no wrecks. It is costly and it is time consuming. Many weekends begin late Friday night or early Saturday morning and continue non-stop out on the lakes until late Sunday afternoon. Searching for new shipwrecks in not easy!!!
Then, as the summer heat builds in and the lakes begin to form thermoclines, the side-scan SONAR imaging begins to suffer signal degradation … making the survey effort less and less efficient. So the Obsession is stripped of all the computers and monitors and survey equipment and reconfigured for diving. Each weekend the boat is loaded down with tanks, regulators, DPV's, and a host of other high tech diving equipment. This includes a host of underwater video and image cameras. Most of the shipwrecks are in deep water … 180+ feet deep. That means the dives are all classified as "Technical Diving" and the divers all use Tri-Mix gases. Most dive profiles have a 30-40 minute "bottom time" and about 60 to 90 minutes of deco.
The divers love it … as they get to dive on shipwrecks and see them for the first time in the 60-150 years these vessels have been lost. Most of the shipwreck sites are held confidential … so other divers do not have the location to disturb the wrecks. Newly found shipwrecks obviously have dive priority. But, re-visiting older shipwreck sites (still secret to the public) are also simply outstanding dives. The new video allows URA to see how the wrecks are faring as they lie on the bottom of the Great Lakes. The team also has interest in new marine archaeology technology. URA is looking to use ROV's and photogrammetry imaging to create detailed 3D computer models of some of these shipwrecks.
The sections below show some of this activity for recent years. Enjoy!!