Do fundo do mar... Sea bottom
Monday, August 16, 2004
Divers begin mapping Lake Erie shipwrecks / Mergulhadores colaboram na Carta Arqueológica do Lago Erie
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Um óptimo exemplo da colaboração de mergulhadores amadores com arqueólogos, associações e instituições ligadas à arqueologia náutica e subaquática.
Talvez um dia em Portugal esta colaboração possa ser mais efectiva.
AP State News
When they scuttled the 268-foot steamer Canobie in Lake Erie 80 years ago, everyone assumed her useful life was over. They were wrong.
The Canobie and four other shipwrecks, all in a 20-square-mile area in Lake Erie, are the focus of a program announced Wednesday by Mercyhurst College's Archaeological Institute and Erie's Bayfront Center for Maritime Studies to map and record the wrecks.
By doing so, researchers want to draw attention to underwater preservation efforts, develop a history curricula for students, attract new divers and inventory items to prevent looting.
Twenty-five years ago, looting wasn't as much of a problem in Lake Erie, which Mercyhurst officials say is the final resting ground of more wrecks than any other freshwater location in the world.
There are thousands of them _ wooden package freighters, three-masted barkentines and schooners _ that became victims of the lake's fast-changing weather, shallow waters and once-crowded channels.
The problem was getting to them. Pollution had made the wrecks, most of which date from the 1800s and 1900s, hard to get to and difficult to see.
Lake Erie has been cleaned up considerably over the last two decades in part because of the powerful filtering mechanism of the invasive zebra mussel and the actions of state and federal regulators.
Now, on a good day, a person can see the Canobie in 15 feet of water from the deck of a boat, said James Stewart, executive director of the Bayfront Center.
"It's fabulous diving," he said.
Part of the problem with good diving, however, is the potential for looting.
That potential is one reason for the research being done this summer by Mercyhurst and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A&M University, said Kurt Carr, chief of the division of archaeology and protection for the state Historical and Museum Commission.
By drawing recreation divers to the sites and perhaps even creating a kind of underwater museum at some wrecks, scavengers could be thwarted.
Smaller, more fragile items may even be removed and placed under glass in Erie's Maritime Museum.
"To protect them, we need to know where they are," Carr said, explaining that other states, notably Michigan and Vermont, have had similar programs that are successful.
Researchers hope to secure additional funding that would expand the project beyond the initial 20-mile area.
While some of the Lake Erie wrecks have been mapped before, Carr said little has been done with that information since the 1980s.
Paid for in part with a grant from the state Coastal Zone Management program, the effort will see researchers use sonar devices to map the area. Divers, including three Erie-area teenagers currently getting lessons, will then explore the wrecks, using underwater cameras to get an image of what is below the surface.
"A shipwreck is an instant picture of culture, of industry," said Jim Zurn, a trustee at Mercyhurst who approached the INA about the project.
"At the instant that ship went down it entered a microcosm of society at that instant," Zurn said.
The Institute of Nautical Archaeology, which was founded in 1972 as a nonprofit institute, has already excavated some of the most significant underwater archaeological sites in the world, including numerous shipwrecks in the Mediterranean.
Institute researcher James Coombs will oversee a staff of seven Mercyhurst students who will map, research and record the shipwrecks.
The project's initial phase will last 12 months.
Links: http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=8286859&BRD=2212&PAG=461&dept_id=465812&rfi=6
http://mai.mercyhurst.edu
http://www.goerie.com/bcms/
Um óptimo exemplo da colaboração de mergulhadores amadores com arqueólogos, associações e instituições ligadas à arqueologia náutica e subaquática.
Talvez um dia em Portugal esta colaboração possa ser mais efectiva.
AP State News
When they scuttled the 268-foot steamer Canobie in Lake Erie 80 years ago, everyone assumed her useful life was over. They were wrong.
The Canobie and four other shipwrecks, all in a 20-square-mile area in Lake Erie, are the focus of a program announced Wednesday by Mercyhurst College's Archaeological Institute and Erie's Bayfront Center for Maritime Studies to map and record the wrecks.
By doing so, researchers want to draw attention to underwater preservation efforts, develop a history curricula for students, attract new divers and inventory items to prevent looting.
Twenty-five years ago, looting wasn't as much of a problem in Lake Erie, which Mercyhurst officials say is the final resting ground of more wrecks than any other freshwater location in the world.
There are thousands of them _ wooden package freighters, three-masted barkentines and schooners _ that became victims of the lake's fast-changing weather, shallow waters and once-crowded channels.
The problem was getting to them. Pollution had made the wrecks, most of which date from the 1800s and 1900s, hard to get to and difficult to see.
Lake Erie has been cleaned up considerably over the last two decades in part because of the powerful filtering mechanism of the invasive zebra mussel and the actions of state and federal regulators.
Now, on a good day, a person can see the Canobie in 15 feet of water from the deck of a boat, said James Stewart, executive director of the Bayfront Center.
"It's fabulous diving," he said.
Part of the problem with good diving, however, is the potential for looting.
That potential is one reason for the research being done this summer by Mercyhurst and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A&M University, said Kurt Carr, chief of the division of archaeology and protection for the state Historical and Museum Commission.
By drawing recreation divers to the sites and perhaps even creating a kind of underwater museum at some wrecks, scavengers could be thwarted.
Smaller, more fragile items may even be removed and placed under glass in Erie's Maritime Museum.
"To protect them, we need to know where they are," Carr said, explaining that other states, notably Michigan and Vermont, have had similar programs that are successful.
Researchers hope to secure additional funding that would expand the project beyond the initial 20-mile area.
While some of the Lake Erie wrecks have been mapped before, Carr said little has been done with that information since the 1980s.
Paid for in part with a grant from the state Coastal Zone Management program, the effort will see researchers use sonar devices to map the area. Divers, including three Erie-area teenagers currently getting lessons, will then explore the wrecks, using underwater cameras to get an image of what is below the surface.
"A shipwreck is an instant picture of culture, of industry," said Jim Zurn, a trustee at Mercyhurst who approached the INA about the project.
"At the instant that ship went down it entered a microcosm of society at that instant," Zurn said.
The Institute of Nautical Archaeology, which was founded in 1972 as a nonprofit institute, has already excavated some of the most significant underwater archaeological sites in the world, including numerous shipwrecks in the Mediterranean.
Institute researcher James Coombs will oversee a staff of seven Mercyhurst students who will map, research and record the shipwrecks.
The project's initial phase will last 12 months.
Links: http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=8286859&BRD=2212&PAG=461&dept_id=465812&rfi=6
http://mai.mercyhurst.edu
http://www.goerie.com/bcms/
