Underwater Archaeological Society of Chicago
January 31, 2018
Meeting Minutes
President Dean Nolan welcomed 23 members and guests who included three employees of the Museum of Science and Industry and a journalist student from De Paul.
The minutes were approved and treasurer’s report given. John Bell has reminded members to pay this year’s membership; he prefers checks, but can also take cash or a credit card. $40 for an individual $55 for families and $20 for students.
Illinois Council of Skin and Scuba Divers – There will be no Jim Haigh Memorial Dive. The Underwater Competition will be held on Sunday, March 18 at the Elk Grove Pavilion starting at noon and ending at 3 pm with check in at 11 am. Bring your C-card. There will be a raffle and rewards and fun competitions as pushing a ping pong ball with one’s nose and an underwater tricycle race. To have a team, UASC needs to pay $40 and each participating member should pitch in $5.
Website – Colin Bertling said that UASChicago.org has the minutes back to 2007 and links to Wreckchecker back to 2002. There are three reports—the Goshawk, Wells Burt and Seabird with a historical essay by Bob Gadbois on the latter. We also have Instagram, Facebook and Meet-Up accounts. Email Colin if you have information on wrecks and he will include them on our site.
Our World Underwater – Feb 17 & 18 at the O’Hare Marriott. Booth volunteers are needed.
Wreckchecker Newsletter – John Gerty almost has enough material and will have it available for OWU.
Upcoming Events – Dave Johnson will give a course on Direct Survey Measurement on March 4 at the Maritime Museum. It starts at noon, will last 3-4 hours and will cost $25.
There will be no Ghost Ship Festival this year in Milwaukee.
The Great Lakes Ship Festival will be March 3.
Dive Coordination – Keith Pearson said that the “Mystery Wreck” is almost done and most likely was a schooner barge, but the identity is not yet known. Its keel and keelson are unusually shimmed. This barge may have been delivering rails for the Galena-Chicago Railroad and Keith asked Sam Polonetzky to research which companies carried railroad materials. The ship manifests and custom reports at Mackinaw may also be useful. A “Tony Keifer” needs to be done since his research yielded the fact that a wreck that Keith thought was a yacht turned out to be a WWI sub-chaser. Keith also recommended that one or two weekends could be devoted to each shipwreck as the China Wreck and Bicycle Wreck. In that time, we could take photos and make a video and a quick map, using the Kevin Magee survey outline. John Bell added we could do one-day dive reports and put them on the Web.
Chicago Maritime Museum – Jim Jarecki said it was a busy month with three programs, including an attendance of 90 for Skip Novak and 152 for Ralph Frese’s film. The next third Friday lecture will be on Chicago’s “Coral Reef”.
Upcoming Meetings – In March, we will have Tammy Thompsen and in April, Dick Lanyon, the author of Dirty Water, will talk about the Stickney Reclamation Plant. Because of Halloween, the October meeting
was voted to be on the 24th instead of 31st. Member presentations are needed—anything with a maritime theme. Colin, Steve and Don volunteered.
Short Presentation – Steve Arnam gave a thirteen-minute program which was a first draft of his OWU seminar on the “Mystery Wreck”. He asked members for their input and also for additional content including maps of old Chicago, composites, aerial photos, maps, anything to do with dive site activity and more videos. The wreck has very heavy wooden construction which means it dates from the 1880’s up to 1910 and the fact that it has remnants of nets from perch fishing is evidence it has been there a long time. (Perch are once again breeding in Lake Michigan.) Steve will be showing how UASC members map and document a wreck and will encourage OWU attendees to join us.
Main Presentation - Russ Green, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and who is the deputy superintendent and research coordinator at the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary gave a talk on the proposed sanctuary in Wisconsin. It would be ninety miles of coastline and contain forty shipwrecks. There are fourteen sanctuary areas around the globe. He explained that sanctuary designation doesn’t mean that it is off-limits. One can visit but must just have compatible use. Making the wrecks more relevant to the public is important. The area is a 1100-mile box and the wrecks are of ships which moved grains and material and of steamers which brought in immigrants. The latter would arrive at Ellis Island, take a train to Buffalo and then a steamer to Wisconsin. Deep wrecks are well preserved, at 170' the Rouse Simmons, the Christmas Tree Ship, is an example.
The long process of making this sanctuary started in 2008, the final proposal in 2017 had comments from the public and the aim is to finish the documentation in early summer. The final management plan includes (1) research and monitoring with everything being written up every five years, grant writing, using technology and partnering with others (2) resource protection –mooring program and law enforcement (3) education and outreach, an example in Thunder Bay was taking Alpena High School students on glass-bottom boats. In 2014, there was an international competition to make your own RV. An eighty-foot diameter, 50,000 tank was used which came from an old paper mill (4) operations and community engagement-- Each sanctuary has an advisory council. Front and center is knitting the involved communities together. Funding the lakebed mapping of the area is being done with help from other organizations. Kongsberg is donating a lakebed sensor. Learn more at sanctuaries.noaa.gov/wisconsin
The part of the proposal that says one can neither anchor on the wrecks nor grapple them is not telling people that they can’t see them. A mooring buoy program is being worked upon. NOAA or the state will put them in. The Lake Carriers’ Association was concerned about ability to anchor and dredge and as a result there will be 41 discreet sites for anchoring. The landowners were concerned about the sanctuary taking away their beachfronts, but the ordinary high water mark is the limit. It will be permitted to use metal detectors and search for shipwrecks as long as you don’t intentionally damage a wreck while looking. Grappling or removing anything is breaking a state and federal law. It would be a good idea to get a permit if you are planning to do anything like attach baselines. At the Thunder Bay Sanctuary, it takes one day to get a permit.
The emphasis is more on outreach now. An example from Thunder Bay is that there are at present 9,000 people a year who go on glass bottom boat trips and there is a new dive shop. Because the Wisconsin Maritime Museum already exists, a new museum will probably not be built as there was in Alpena.
Russ concluded by saying that we are the stewards of the resource.
The meeting concluded at 9:10.
Minutes respectfully submitted by Carol Sommers