2005 Highlights
Great Lakes Maritime
Heritage Center Grand Opening and 5th Anniversary
 On September 17, 2005, the Thunder Bay National
Marine Sanctuary celebrated its fifth anniversary by dedicating the Great Lakes
Maritime Heritage Center, with over 1,000 citizens attending the open
house. The 20,000 square-foot Great
Lakes Maritime Heritage Center houses a 93-seat theater, 9,000 square-foot
exhibit area, distance learning equipment, artifact conservation lab, viewable
artifact storage, education and research facilities, dockage for research
vessels and visiting tall ships, and the sanctuary’s administrative
offices. The center is also on track to
become a Gold Certified “LEED” (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) building.
The sanctuary’s 5th Anniversary gala dinner took
place in the evening and included the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation
presenting U.S. Senator Carl Levin and sanctuary volunteer Betty Krueger with
the 2005 National Marine Sanctuary Foundation’s Stewardship Award for their
dedication and support of the sanctuary. Dr. Robert Ballard served as master of
ceremonies and demonstrated “telepresence” technology- talking live with divers
in Monterey Bay, California, to the 320 dinner guests.
The complex is now being developed as a mixed-use project
that includes a hotel, conference center, paper-making museum (with an original
two story high, 150-foot long paper-making machine as a centerpiece), and
retail shops. The Great Lakes Maritime Heritage Center is the cornerstone of
the development and the sanctuary is spearheading educational and tourism
amenities on the property such as a maritime theme playground, shore side
interpretive markers, interactive weatherproof kiosk, sailors memorial and dock
facilities for sailing and kayaking clubs. Click
here for informational flyer (pdf)
 New
“Green” Research Vessel Joins Thunder Bay Fleet
In 2005, the NOAA research vessel Huron Explorer made a 350 mile trip from
Muskegon, Michigan, to its new home at the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
The 41-foot utility boat served the U.S. Coast Guard for 30 years before being
retrofitted by NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab for sanctuary
research. Shortly after its arrival in Alpena, Huron Explorer began its transformation into an environmentally
friendly craft. The first vessel in the United States to use all natural
oil-based fuel and lubricants, Huron
Explorer operates without any petroleum products and is a working
demonstration of the merits of bio-products in the marine environment. The Huron
Explorer was recently awarded the U.S. Department of Energy’s You Have the Power Award.
Thunder Bay Exhibits
 In 2005, the sanctuary received over 15,000
visitors to its temporary exhibit at Alpena’s Federal Building. These exhibits have
been relocated to the new Great Lakes Maritime Heritage Center, and work is
underway to design permanent exhibits for the 9,000 square feet of exhibit
space at the center. Other completed exhibits include a traveling display for
dive shows and community events, shore-side historical markers on the Thunder
Bay River, displays at the Alpena County Airport and the Holiday Inn, “Welcome
to Alpena” signs at main thoroughfares into the city, and historical and
underwater photos decorating local businesses.
Deep Water Shipwreck
Survey
In August 2005, with funding from NOAA’s Office of Ocean
Exploration, the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary conducted an expedition
aimed at documenting deepwater shipwrecks within the sanctuary. The two week project
focused primarily on two sites: an unidentified two-masted schooner located by
Dr. Robert Ballard’s Institute for Exploration in 2001; and the wooden
passenger steamer Pewabic, which sank
in 1865. Both wrecks rest in 160 feet of water. Using mixed gas diving techniques the team created detailed, high
resolution photomosaics of both sites. The dramatic visual products from the
project are being used for exhibits in NOAA’s new Great Lakes Maritime Heritage
Center, where non-divers can visit these remarkable historic sites for
themselves.
Field Schools
With its wide range of
shipwreck types and genres located in water depths from 0 to 200 feet, the
sanctuary offers an excellent setting for students to hone their maritime
archaeology skills. In June 2005, seven graduate students from East Carolina
University’s Program in Maritime Studies spent two weeks documenting shipwreck
remains on Thunder Bay’s North Point Reef. The sanctuary hosted and collaborated on a 10-day field school
for graduate students from the University of Rhode Island’s Institute for
Archaeological Oceanography. In cooperation with the PAST Foundation, Thunder
Bay National Marine Sanctuary conducted an archaeological field investigation
of the Middle Island Life Saving Station in July 2005.
Weather Buoy and Meteorological Station
Thunder Bay National Marine
Sanctuary and NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL)
successfully placed an Integrated Coastal Ob serving System buoy in the Thunder
Bay National Marine Sanctuary at the shipwreck Montana, nine miles from shore. The buoy provides real-time meteorological data that will improve NOAA’s
National Weather Service marine forecasts for Thunder Bay. Ultimately, the
information will be available via a shore-side kiosk for sanctuary boaters. The
buoy’s proximity to the Montana will
allow archaeologists to monitor the shipwreck’s environmental conditions and
provide real-time shipwreck imagery for visitors at the Great Lakes Maritime
Heritage Center. The Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab also mounted a
meteorological station at the entrance to the Thunder Bay River. The station
provides real-time weather data and has a camera that continuously generates
three real-time views of Thunder Bay. The information is accessible at: www.glerl.noaa.gov/metdata/apn
Films
Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary has added to the
number of high quality documentaries produced in 2005. In addition to the 2003 film, Tragedies in the Mist, three other
independent productions were filmed in 2005, including the Science Channel’s Great Lakes Shipwrecks, a History
Channel’s Deep Sea Detectives episode
on the schooner Cornelia B. Windiate,
and Jean Michel Cousteau’s PBS America’s
Underwater Treasures documentary on the National Marine Sanctuary Program.
Tall Ship Programs
 Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary has
used shipboard education whenever the opportunity arose. Half-day programs on the schooner Denis Sullivan have been a key component
of TBNMS’s education offerings. Over
500 students sailed on Thunder Bay on these trips in 2005 alone. Public sails
on various other tall ships including Windy II, Appledore, and Friends Good
Will also exposed hundreds of northeastern Michigan residents to the
shipwrecks and maritime history of Thunder Bay over the past year. In 2005, the annual Thunder Bay Maritime
Festival also featured deck tours of many tall ships from around the region and
the world.
Live Dives
Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary has developed a number
of innovative ways to give non-divers the opportunity to visit Thunder Bay’s shipwrecks
without getting wet. While the new Great
Lakes Maritime Heritage Center is equipped with traditional distance learning,
Thunder Bay’s video conferencing technology and Live Dive broadcasts have taken
distance learning to new levels. Discovery World at Pier Wisconsin partnered
with TBNMS in the 2005 Live Dives, which were hosted on the deck of the
schooner Denis Sullivan in Thunder
Bay. In a single day, the event was broadcast directly into classrooms around
Michigan and Wisconsin, reaching over 600 students. The Great Lakes Maritime
Heritage Center is now equipped with Internet 2 capability, which will enable
sanctuary educators to reach more classrooms with a greater variety of content.
ROV Team
 Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary has
brought a national focus to the area through a partnership with the Marine
Advanced Technology Education Center (MATE) National ROV building competition
for high school students. Beginning
with sponsoring one local team in 2001, Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary’s
involvement with MATE brought a regional qualifying ROV building competition to
Alpena in 2005. This event drew teams
from around the Great Lakes to the sanctuary for a qualifying competition for
the international MATE event. This is
an incredible program that inspires high school students to pursue marine
technology careers, and has continued to expand in 2006. For an information flyer, click
here (pdf, 1.9MB).
Mooring Buoys
The installation of permanent mooring
buoys near popular recreational dive sites greatly reduces the likelihood of
anchoring damage to submerged maritime heritage resources and natural features.
Permanent mooring buoys also improve diver safety by providing continuous down
and ascent lines, as well as supplemental guidelines to the sites. In 2005, the
sanctuary maintained its ten current shipwreck moorings and applied for and
received 35 additional buoy permits from the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers. Click here for more information: Shipwreck Mooring Buoy Program
Shipwreck Artifacts
and Conservation
The Michigan Department of History,
Arts and Libraries Office of the State Archaeologist curates a significant
collection of materials recovered from shipwrecks in Michigan waters. Over 800
objects were recovered from sites in the Great Lakes, 340 of which were
recovered from 20 different shipwrecks in Lake Huron including the sanctuary
shipwrecks Pewabic, Grecian, and Nordmeer. The majority of these
artifacts were stored at the Michigan Historical Center in Lansing, Michigan.
In 2005, the process of moving this entire collection to the Great Lakes
Maritime Heritage Center began with the transportation of dozens of Pewabic artifacts. Many of these items are now on display in the
Center’s visible artifact storage exhibit, while others are being prepared for
conservation.
Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary Research Collection
Archived
Donated in 2003 by Patrick Labadie and June Perry, the
Thunder Bay Sanctuary Research Collection is a unique Great Lakes maritime
history resource. Among other items, the collection boasts an impressive 60,000
ship photographs, 20,000 vessel index cards, 1,000 published works and hundreds
of drawings and blueprints. The collection is housed at and co-managed by the
Alpena County Library. In 2005, the sanctuary and the Alpena County Library
received a $235,000 grant from the Michigan Department of History, Arts and
Libraries to digitize a major portion of the collection and make it accessible
online. To learn more - click here
For more information on these and other activities of the
Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary see: www.thunderbay.noaa.gov.
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