“One of the remarkable things about Lake Erie and Great Lakes shipwrecks is how well they are preserved due to the cold, fresh water,” said Magee. “Wrecks in salt water start corroding immediately. In the Great Lakes, you can find old wooden ships that are hundreds of years old that look like they just sank.”One recent addition to the lake is obvious in the photos. Invasive zebra and quagga mussels, which arrived in the Great Lakes in the 1980s, cover most surfaces of the wreck. While the mussels have disrupted many aspects of Great Lake ecosystems, their population explosion in recent decades has had pros and cons for shipwreck divers.“They’re filter feeders, so they’ve actually increased the clarity of the water. In many areas, the water is now so clear that we now can get bright, ambient light 200 feet below the surface,” explained Magee. “The downside is that instead of seeing bare wood, original paint, or anything else we’re trying to look at, we just see surfaces covered by lumps of mussels.”
Source: A Ship Graveyard in Lake Erie
