Diving in the Great Lakes?

B

blackcows

New member
Does anyone know anything about diving in the Great Lakes? Does anyone do it, is there anything to see? I ask becuase I recently took my first trip to Chicago and we spent some time at Navy Peir and I was impressed by the clarity of the water. I was expecting the water to be much less clear, more of a muddy brown around the docks rather then the clear blue that I saw.

Mike
 
Hehe... you just saw navy peir earleir in the year. I wouldnt swim in lake michigan on chicagos coast for the life of me, but its awefully blue in some times in the year. I live in wisconsin, and frequently make trips to chicago and Milwaukee to the lake. Lake Superior is the lake for diving. Its beautiful country, clear, a bit cold, but a wetsuit works wonders.

Lotsa hills and beer here,its home... GO PACKERS!!


-TG
 
The great lakes holds some of the best diving in the world!
Living off lake Erie we do most of our diving there. You could dive your whole life and still not see all the wrecks in detail. Just this weekend we dove the Brunswick, Carlingford, Boland, and the Betty Hedger. The best part is the fresh water keeps the wrecks in amazing shape. You can still see the wood grain in the Carlingford like it rolled out of the dry dock. The zebra muscles have really cleaned things up, there a plus and minus. The vis can be upto 50-100 feet somedays but some wrecks are covered so bad you can make out heads or tails.

However if you plan to dive the lakes a lot and dive the deeper wrecks a dry suit will be in order. Even now its only 51 degrees at 100 feet and it is 45 at 130. The nice part about this weekend was the thermocline was at 70 feet so you warm up quick. We just wore a light fleece under our dry suits.
 
I know there are a lot of shipwrecks people have been to around Michigan...I don't dive but I've been told about it.
 
LOL, we wear 3mm suits when its 72!

The Niagara River was up to 78 a few weeks ago, nows its down in the lows 70's again. It was nice doing those dives in a 3mm suit with only 10 lbs of lead.
 
I've done a few wreck dives in Lake Erie myself. My buddy is the divemaster and has seen around 45 I think. He has this huge book from the dive shop with the GPS coordinates of most of the known wrecks. One dive that was particularly fun was the Niagara River drift dive. We had a buoy floating with 4 divers per, and you just drift. It was very cool, lots of cool fish.
 
Ah yes Dive the Mighty Niagara, we do those on a weekly almost daily bases. Its very cool moving at 2 mph without a scooter and no effort. My wife calls it the lazzy man dive.

If you dive it in "West River" which is the section on the west side of Grand Island there is an underground pipe line and a 10 foot deep trench. If you can get into the trench and tie off your float to a big rock you can sit there with the current going over your head. Then out of no where all these huge bass will show up and you can pet them.
 
Scuba diving in the great lakes is some of the best wreck diving in the world!

I would contact some of the local dive shops in the area that you plan on diving.

There is a Great Lakes Wrecking Crew forum on ScubaBoard.com where you could look for some advise on where to dive in the great lakes.

I have heard that diving in Mackinac area is great, Whitefish point, Alpena, and there are others just can't think of them now.....
 
I did a dive this summer and it was much clearer than expected. The water a mile out is soo blue I thought I was on the ocean.
 
around duluth in northen minnesota is said to have some of the best wreck diving. just about all of the dive shops in minnesota take trips up there. ***To do these dives, you'll definatly want to have a dry suit, the water in lake superior never gets above 40 degrees F and is usually closer to 36F!!!*** I've never gotten a chance to do any of these dives but from what i've heard they are pretty amazing. all of the iron ore used to be shipped out of duluth/silverbay (where i believe a taconite plant exploded yesterday) and many ships have sunk in there. Lake of the Isle i believe also has good diving...Just COLD
 
Thunder Bay Nat'l Marine Sanctuary

Thunder Bay Nat'l Marine Sanctuary

I've never been diving in the Great Lakes (or any lake for that matter...I love BLUE water). But I have family up in northern Michigan where there is a large underwater preserve. It is called the Thunder Bay National Marine Sactuary and Underwater Preserve. It is located in Lake Huron off of the northeast coast of the state in the city of Alpena, Michigan. I pick up their brochure on a recent trip up there and it looks pretty cool. There are tons of shipwrecks.

Their website is:
www.thunderbay.noaa.gov
 
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