Anatomy of Great Lakes wreck dive - the Stalker

[kidsdream]

I thought I would do a different kind of post for those that may not have had a chance to dive on a fairly intact older wreck. The 135' M. Stalker sank in 1886 in 85 feet of water after collision with a barge. While not "great" images in themselves, I hope they convey the feeling of doing this type of diving.

Swimming across the Stalker we came upon a large open deck hatch.

My friend Paul caught a picture of me as I dropped in.

There was a lot of light from the hatch and missing hull planks at that point.

Soon though, it got quite dark going forward, I could just see "light at the end of the tunnel". Strobes and a cannister light make it seem a lot brighter than it actually was.

Toward the stern the overhead deck was missing with just the support structure still in place.

My favorite shot of the trip.

Finally out - the broken at the stern where this boat had hit a barge over 100 years ago.

After this my buddy John & I backtracked along the deck of the ship to the mooring line. While we had lots of bottom time left on our computers, our internal sphincter meters said it was time to ascend out of the cold.

 

[jonnythan]

Forgive me, but do I see you doing deep water wreck penetration with no overhead training and possibly a dive buddy with a single tank?

 

[kidsdream]

There is no image of my dive buddy in any of these images so I am not sure how you created a reference point, but indeed he only had single steel tank with a pony bottle back-up. He has well over 1000 dives in various conditions and I trust him explicitly.

As far a training, I don't have any formal wreck training but have learned "progressively" over the last hundred dives or so. I did try the GUE route last year, but to be honest it was not my style (as a photographer I have different dive objectives), but I have adopted many of the learnings. I have plans to take a Deco/Advance Nitrox course later this year but this dive did not require such training. And some time I might go the Cavern/Cave route but only to keep learning, not due to plans for cave diving itself.

Forgive me, but do I see you doing deep water wreck penetration with no overhead training and possibly a dive buddy with a single tank?

 

[jonnythan]

I don't want to hijack your thread, but I just want to recommend strongly against diving in overhead environments with no training.

 

[uncleavi]

Looks like some good diving.
I used to live in the Soo and love diving the Great Lakes

 

[deepstops]

Nice shots Jeff

At a LOA of 135', those are swim-thrus.

 

[NorthWoodsDiver]

Diving comes with inherent risk, doing diving beyond part of your training brings risk but I think somewhere way back when there was a chicken or an egg or something of that nature. Someone had to become a teacher before there were teachers right? if people are gonna do something let them do it, I say.

 

[cobaltblue]

I love the people that try to be the scuba police. We Great Lakes divers are a hearty bunch. We don't need no special training. Everything we dive would need some special class if we listened to the agencies. I'm not advocating unsafe diving but send some card collectors to the Straits and see how they do. I'll put my Open Water certified wife against most of the "advance/master/blah, blah, blah" divers on here just because of the conditions we dive. If we want to get wet, we don't have a choice. Our wrecks are deep, dark, and damn cold. This weekend in the Straits it was 44 degrees at 50+ feet and about 40 on the bottom everywhere we went. Do we need a frozen/numb/popsicle diver card for this weekend so we don't offend anyone?

 

[kidsdream]

I privately PM'd the the poster who twice in this thread questioned my formal training to complete the subject dive. I found it odd that with less than 200 dives (based on his bio), but thousands and thousands of posts he had the expertise to make such judgements.

For the record he did not respond - I am not surprised. My buddy while only diving a single tank (with a pony) has thousands of dives - but only a hunderd or so posts here on scuba board; but I would have trusted him to help me if needed. For really challanging dives he is never without a waterproof OMS cansister with a GPS and VHF radio - they don't teach that any where either!

As you noted they don't offer an it's so $%&**ing cold certification, or I flooded my mask in water colder than James Bond's Martini PADI card.

For the record they also don't have a solo open water drift 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador follow by a surface float in 6 -8' seas (waiting for the panga to see my flag or hear my horn) class. That said I have been there, done that. The fact is that I have practiced and trained progressively for all of my diving experiences.

I love the people that try to be the scuba police. We Great Lakes divers are a hearty bunch. We don't need no special training. Everything we dive would need some special class if we listened to the agencies. I'm not advocating unsafe diving but send some card collectors to the Straits and see how they do. I'll put my Open Water certified wife against most of the "advance/master/blah, blah, blah" divers on here just because of the conditions we dive. If we want to get wet, we don't have a choice. Our wrecks are deep, dark, and damn cold. This weekend in the Straits it was 44 degrees at 50+ feet and about 40 on the bottom everywhere we went. Do we need a frozen/numb/popsicle diver card for this weekend so we don't offend anyone?

 

[TSandM]

There are undoubtedly many people who have learned their diving skills by themselves, or from other, experienced divers, without taking any kind of formal class.

I suspect what Jonnythan was upset about is that what we post on public forums like this is read by a lot of people, many of whom are beginners or those contemplating diving. It should always be emphasized that diving in overhead environments is DIFFERENT -- Wrecks can have significant entanglement hazards, risks related to instability as the wrecks decay, and always and everpresent, the silt that can reduce visibility to zero in an instant, making one's exit difficult or impossible to find. Penetrating wrecks demands good buoyancy control and some mastery of non-silting propulsion, if the wreck is of any significant size.

That said, many wrecks have been heavily cut out so that the "penetrations" are really simple swim-throughs -- you can see the exit before you enter, and there's very little silt. Especially if the wreck is small, the additional risk in such a swim through is not a big deal. It looks as though a lot of this one was that way.

There are some extremely cautionary tales posted on the internet, about people who have swum into wrecks just a little way, either on purpose or by accident, and have barely made it out.

You guys clearly felt you had either the training, the experience, or both, to do this dive. But new divers should know that, in general, it's a good idea to have training or extensive mentoring for wreck penetration.

Thanks for sharing the pictures -- They illustrate and define the wreck well.