Reflecting the momentum of the proposed Grand Traverse Bay Underwater Preserve, the two-day Nautical Archeological Society class flew by for students.
Co-sponsored by the preserve and the Great Lakes Water Studies Institute and held at the Oleson Center at Northwestern Michigan College Saturday and Sunday, the class featured Chris Underwood of Great Britain as the instructor; the NAS is based in that country. A renowned teacher of underwater archeology, his presence in Traverse City was a coup for the fledgling preserve whose networking — read Greg MacMaster's tenacity — six months ago got him here.
Sixteen attendees listened, learned and left with tutor or instructor certification, depending on their level of experience, which allows them to support community level education in underwater archeology. The course drew attendees from Traverse City, Chicago, the Lansing area, Ovid and Alpena, including state employees who had been unable to take the training previously due to restrictions limiting NAS training to federal employees.
"We opened it up to everybody,” said MacMaster, who conceived of a local underwater preserve in September 2005.
"There's only one instructor in the state and she's real busy, it takes two years to get her to come and teach a course,” he added of the dearth of underwater archeological instructors, referring to Gail Vander Stoep, an assistant professor at Michigan State University who is NAS certified.
Chris Kohl and his wife, Joan Forsberg, attended from Chicago along with another member of the Underwater Archeological Society of Chicago. Greatly enjoying the class while learning the skills needed to promote and educate about this field, Kohl and his wife are prolific divers. They pack in 100-120 dives in the Midwest's short season of May through October, exploring some of the more than 6,000 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. He terms this high-tech era "the Golden Age of shipwreck discovery.”
"Our entire Great Lakes are a massive treasure trove of underwater archeology,” said Kohl, who has written multiple books on diving shipwrecks. "Nowadays, people see the Great Lakes as a obstacle for getting from point A to point B; 100 years ago, they were the highway.”
Not everybody on hand for the weekend was a scuba diver. Laura Quackenbush, curator of the Leelanau Historical Museum and a part-time National Parks Service employee, took the course out of fascination with local history.
"Certainly if you're a historian of Leelanau County, it's a water history,” said Quackenbush, who is also a mate on the schooner Madeline. "I immerse myself in Great Lakes history and I'm very interested in the story that's under the water, too, that's down there.”
Ken Vrana of St. John attended the class to learn how best to build bridges between the scientific world and the applied world, between professionals and interested lay people, such as divers, and the public. President of the Center for Maritime and Underwater Resource Management, he deems this connection crucial for promoting and sustaining underwater preserves or other underwater archeological ventures.
Typical of everyone in the room, he had a larger vision that encompasses more than just his slice of interest, geography or training.
"My hope is that this session, which will result in instructors, can be kind of a spark to develop a statewide program,” said Vrana. "And what an opportunity for Northwestern Michigan College to position itself in a program that is not well-represented in our other state institutions.”
"To me, this is another piece in the puzzle in program development because the focus is on our unique and significant feature in Michigan: our Great Lakes,” he concluded.