Posted on 10/02/2025 12:25:37 PM PDT by Red Badger
Researchers and filmmakers are exploring the Superior Shoal, an underwater mountain in Lake Superior. (Courtesy of Inspired Planet Productions)
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* There is an underwater mountain in the middle of Lake Superior
* Scientists and filmmakers think it could be a hotbed for aquatic life
* They’re using underwater drones to document the volcanic mound
* Known to some as the “Freshwater Everest,” if you want to explore this mountain, you don’t go up, you go down.
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In the middle of Lake Superior, near the boundary between Canadian and US waters, sits the Superior Shoal, a mountain that’s completely underwater.
The shoal is about 4 square miles of volcanic rock that rises up from the bottom of the lake to a height nearly three times that of the Statue of Liberty. Its peak wrests about 30 feet below the surface.
The shoal, a term used to describe areas of shallow water, was first charted in 1929.
Now, filmmakers and researchers are exploring it with underwater drones. They want to see if it’s a hotbed for aquatic life that could offer a refuge for species facing obstacles elsewhere in the Great Lakes.
“This is an area that has very, very rarely been explored on camera,” said Zach Melnick, a cofounder of Inspired Planet Productions, which he runs with his business partner and wife, Yvonne Drebert.
It’s not the only underwater incline in the Great Lakes. Others include Stannard Rock, a reef in Lake Superior north of Marquette; a knoll outside Tobermory, Ontario in Lake Huron; and Midlake Reef in Lake Michigan, between Muskegon and Milwaukee. And it’s not the only “Superior Shoal.” There’s another located in the St. Lawrence River off the shore of New York.
But Drebert and Melnick believe the Superior Shoal in Lake Michigan is the largest known underwater mountain in fresh water.
Documenting aquatic life with a swimming robot
The filmmakers had been curious about lake protrusions after exploring one that appeared to be an outlier of aquatic life while filming their series and related documentary, “All Too Clear: Beneath the Surface of the Great Lakes.” Those works dive deep into how invasive mussels in the Great Lakes are gobbling up essential nutrients and devastating organisms, from plankton to whitefish.
A drone is seen underwater
The Boxfish Luna, the underwater drone filmmakers are using to help document aquatic life on the Superior Shoal. (Courtesy of Inspired Planet Productions) When a researcher they’d worked with in the past, Michael Rennie, got a grant to explore the Superior Shoal, they “sort of begged him,” Melnick said, to let them come along.
Rennie is an associate professor at Lakehead University and a research fellow at the International Institute for Sustainable Development-Experimental Lakes Area. Now, with the help of the filmmakers’ cameras, he’s looking into whether the Superior Shoal might be a hotspot for life, which he said is often the case for similar seamounts found in the ocean.
What they’re essentially studying, Rennie said, is “how the physics of having this giant mountain in a bunch of water that’s swirling around all the time interacts with things like nutrients, and with the growth of algae, to promote the abundance of fish that we seem to be seeing out there.”
Melnick and Drebert are operating special cinema-grade cameras to monitor aquatic life like zooplankton, algae and fish. The drone they use is called a Boxfish Luna and it can go around 1,600 feet deep, about the length of five football fields.
“Think of aerial drones, take all that cool technology, and put it in a robot that you’re shoving underwater,” Drebert said. “But our drone is a little bit special because it can swim in any direction, just like a fish.”
Usually, it takes a little while for fish to get used to the swimming drone, Melnick said, but fish near the Superior Shoal seemed to be curious. “The trout out there were ultra amenable to being on camera,” he said.
At one point, while the team was livestreaming video, they tried to measure fish with two laser points. The fish chased the glowing red dots the same way cats do.
They also saw hydra, which are kind of like freshwater anemones, attached to rocks, giving the effect of a garden.
“They are little tiny aquatic animals that wave in the wind,” said Drebert. “They use their little hairy tentacles to pull food, like little zooplankton and critters, out of the water.”
Ripe for conservation?
Rennie said the data collected on the recent trip has not been fully analyzed yet. But, if research shows that the Superior Shoal is a magnet for aquatic life, then maybe it and places like it could serve as refuges for near-shore populations dealing with environmental or human-caused problems.
“And, if that’s the case, then I think we’ve got really good arguments to be made for maybe we should think about affording these regions a higher conservation status,” Rennie said.
Melnick and Drebert are planning to use footage taken from the Superior Shoal in a documentary they’re developing about lakemounts as well as a wildlife docuseries they’re working on.
Hydra, underwater plant-looking creatures, are seen on the side of a rock formation underwater Filmmakers and researchers found rocks covered in hydra while exploring the Superior Shoal, an underwater mountain in Lake Superior. (Courtesy of Inspired Planet Productions)
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If you want to hear more about the filmmakers’ work, they’ll be speaking with other panelists at a free screening of their last documentary, “All Too Clear,” happening 7 p.m. Oct. 8 at the Detroit Film Theatre at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Bridge Michigan environment reporter Kelly House will moderate the panel. The underwater drone will also be on display.
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The Great Lakes scare me, more than the ocean even.
Thank you, Gordon Lightfoot.
Only in November.............
unless i missed it, they never mention how tall this mountain is.
LOVE that song!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vST6hVRj2A
“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” - Gordon Lightfoot (HD w/ Lyrics)
“...to a height nearly three times that of the Statue of Liberty. Its peak wrests about 30 feet below the surface.”
Statue of Liberty is 305 feet from ground level, so about 900 feet................
Lake Superior has an average depth of about 483 feet (147 meters). Its maximum depth is approximately 1,332 feet (406 meters), which is near the eastern end of Grand Island in the northern part of the lake. This area is known as the “Southwest Point of the lake” and is located offshore from the town of Munising, The minimum depth of Lake Superior can vary widely across different areas of the lake, but it generally ranges from a few feet to around 30 feet (9 meters).
And then Wikipedia:
The Superior Shoal is a geologic shoal of approximately 20 square miles (52 km2) located 50 miles (80 km) north of Copper Harbor, Michigan in the middle of Lake Superior, the highest point of which lies only 21 feet (6.4 m) below the lake's surface.[
A former neighbor of mine, now deceased, was a retire tugboat captain on the Great Lakes.
He told me he was the last person to see that crew alive, and the captain was an idiot..........
The Great Lakes were formed about 14,000 years ago, well within the time that humans were around. It would be cool if these drones were to spot some evidence of human occupation around this and other submerged mountains before they became submerged. I’m thinking at least petroglyphs or the remains of stone structures.
so about the size of Stone Mountain in GA.
The witch comes stealing on the 10th.
“and the captain was an idiot......”
Too bad Gordon Lightfoot didn’t work that into the song.
I live less than 5 miles from lake Michigan. You just learn to respect the lake.
Are those drones autonomous? Radio isn’t useful under water and acoustic is subject to distortion and disturbed by ambient noise. There isn’t a cable.
I think I do indeed see a cable.
That’s an amazing story. And even sadder for the crew.
I was researching Great Lakes shipwrecks briefly and came across one named for 4th great grandfather. Never learned any more about it but have always been curious.
Just working at the end of Achsah Bond Drive at Adler Planetarium, the power of Lake Michegan in storms was awesome.
I have no idea about freshwater fishes.............
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