20-05-2025
NOAA hosting virtual dive to Lake Ontario shipwreck
May 20—As the Lake Ontario Marine Sanctuary plan advances, NOAA invites the public to dive into some of the marine heritage of the lake.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has scheduled a virtual diving expedition in which the agency and partners will deploy a remotely operated vehicle outfitted with a high-definition camera and other technologies to survey and document a sanctuary shipwreck as the public looks on.
The virtual dive is 10 a.m. to noon on Friday. Chief scientists Ben Ioset and expedition leader Jason Fahy will host. It can be viewed on the NOAA Sanctuaries YouTube channel. The date and time are subject to change, depending on weather conditions.
A U.S. National Marine Sanctuary, managed by NOAA, is a zone where the marine environment enjoys special protection.
The Lake Ontario National Marine Sanctuary, designated last year, acts as an educational and cultural gateway between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean and protects culturally significant places, resources and artifacts integral to American history and the heritage of indigenous peoples.
The sanctuary features a collection of 63 known shipwrecks and one known submerged aircraft, among the best preserved in the world, discovered over decades by local recreational scuba divers and shipwreck explorers. It ends just past Tibbetts Point Lighthouse in Cape Vincent, where Lake Ontario flows into the St. Lawrence River.
"The new wreck we plan to dive during the live stream was located in 2022 by the NOAA survey vessel Thomas Jefferson, which was then conducting hydrographic survey for nautical charting of Lake Ontario," said Ioset, Maritime archaeologist at the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation in support of NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries."The wreck is in more than 550 feet of water and no one has used a remotely operated vehicle to dive it yet, so we do not know what the shipwreck is."
Ioset said that the shipwreck is located mid-lake, near the Canadian border, approximately 15 miles off of Oswego.
At 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 28, expedition highlights will be shared, including collected dive footage and stories from the science party of Friday's dive. It will also be broadcast live on the NOAA Sanctuaries YouTube channel.
"This expedition is a remarkable opportunity for our scientists and for the sanctuary, combining state-of-the-art marine imaging and a remotely operated vehicle to document some of the best preserved shipwrecks in the world, right here on Eastern Lake Ontario," Ioset said. "This project will greatly advance the sanctuary's ability to not only protect these historic shipwrecks, but to interpret their significance to the public."
Friday's live-streamed virtual dive is one of a series of dives planned by NOAA.
"We will be exploring a number of different shipwrecks daily for the next two weeks," Ioset said. "We plan to dive on two wrecks per day, weather and equipment permitting. Only the dive on May 23rd will be live broadcast to the public. The footage of the other dives will eventually be publicly available online once we've processed the data."
