Cliff Redus pilots his submarine off the coast of Beaver Island on Saturday, July 15, 2023. Innerspace Science submarine owners volunteered their submarines to assist Central Michigan University professor Don Uzarski with water monitoring and ecological surveys. (Neil Blake | MLive.com)
BEAVER ISLAND, MI — Alec Smyth and Cliff Redus have custom-built submersibles. Don Uzarski has a scientific need for extended time on the bottom of Lake Michigan.
It was a match made on Beaver Island.
On Saturday, July 15, Uzarski, director of the Central Michigan University (CMU) Institute for Great Lakes Research, joined Smyth and Redus under Lake Michigan at Beaver Island, where the two submersible owners arrived this week to assist the station’s water quality and fisheries research.
Redus, of Devine, Texas, and Smyth, of Alexandria, Virginia, helped Uzarski gather data on water quality and native fish habitat along the path of the Emerald Isle ferry, which carries CMU equipment that gathers water quality data.
The submersible owners are engineers who designed and built the machines themselves and connected with Uzarski through
innerspacescience.org, which joins sub owners with scientists and educators in need of a ride to the bottom.
The organization is non-commercial. There’s no contract or fee. Smyth and Redus reached out to Uzarski offering their services after becoming interested in helping Lake Michigan scientific research following a 2022 dive in Lake Charlevoix. Uzarski is director of the university’s biological station on the island.
“What do you do with a sub? You can go diving and shoot yet another YouTube video, or you can try doing something useful, which is more fun,” said Smyth.
“It’s like a matchmaking service between people who could use subs and people who have them,” Smyth said.
“We don’t charge for it because we are on vacation.”
Smyth’s submersible, the Shackleton — named for the Antarctic explorer — dove a sunken island two miles off St. James Harbor. Uzarski was examining the shallow area for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR), which is searching for potential lake trout, cisco and whitefish spawning reefs.
Submersible dives in Lake Michigan off Beaver Island
The Shackleton, a private submersible built and owned by Alec Smyth of Virginia, launches into St. James Harbor on Beaver Island. Smyth joined CMU biologist Don Uzarski for research dives in Lake Michigan off Beaver Island on Saturday, July 15, 2023. (Garret Ellison | MLive).
Redus’ submersible, the R-300, dove the harbor bottom along the ferry path collecting water quality data in deeper water to supplement surface data gathered on the ferry.
Uzarski piloted the two-man Shakelton alongside Smyth. They dove for more than an hour.
“He put me down in the sub first, up by the bow by the big clear dome, and then he said, ‘Oh, by the way, you have the controls,’” Uzarski said.
“It gave me a perspective that I don’t get to see,” he said. “I scuba dive, but this is very, very different. We covered so much area and we were actually able to stay down there.”
Unfortunately, what Uzarski saw was disappointing.
“When you get down there, you really see the invasive species and the algae from excess nutrients coming into the ecosystem,” he said.
Uzarski said invasive zebra and quagga mussels are concentrating nutrients in a small bottom layer of the water column. More light reaching the bottom due to clear, mussel-filtered water creates the right conditions for algae growth.
“The bottom is absolutely covered with algae, quagga mussels and invasive round goby,” Uzarski said. “Basically, today all we saw were invasives or nuisance algae that it’s not invasive, but it really shouldn’t be there because it shouldn’t have enough nutrients to be that thick.”
Uzarski said the data gathered by the submersible dives can help researchers understand how the lake is responding to climate change and “be more proactive instead of reactionary when you know issues are coming.”
Ironically, while Lake Michigan’s water clarity is tough on the ecosystem, it ended up helping connecting Uzarski with the submersible owners. Redus said he became interested in diving Lake Michigan after seeing how clear the nearshore water is last year at the public beach in Charlevoix.
“I come from Texas, where you gotta go 20 miles offshore to get blue water,” said Redus. “I said ‘I’ve got to dive in Lake Michigan.’ It was a joy today.”
Redus said the St. James Harbor dive was the first time the R-300 performed a submerged transect over a two-mile distance. His aft thrusters malfunctioned toward the end of the dive after running the submersible at full throttle while trying to pace CMU’s research boat, the M/V Chippewa. Redus ran safety checks on his life support systems while being towed.
He took it all in stride.
“It’s such a clear and beautiful lake,” he said. “Last night, I was walking near our cabin along the beach and I could have sworn this was a sea. To be able to see how clear the water was; the sun was shining — it was just absolutely beautiful.”
