The cold, fresh water of the Great Lakes preserved shipwrecks so well that divers could see the dishes in the cabinets. The crashed planes, which had been submerged for decades, were so intact that they were almost able to fly again when archaeologists finally found them. Now, an invasive mussel is destroying shipwrecks deep within the lakes, forcing archaeologists and amateur historians to race against time to find as many sites as possible before they lose all physical traces of the region that touches eight U.S. states and the Canadian province of Ontario. centuries-old maritime history.

“You have to understand that every shipwreck in the lower Great Lakes is covered in quagga mussels,” said Wisconsin marine archaeologist Tamara Thomsen. ‘All. Drain the lakes and you’ll have a bowl of quagga.’

Quagga clams, finger-sized molluscs with voracious appetites, have become the dominant invasive species in the lower Great Lakes over the past 30 years, biologists say. According to archaeologists, these creatures covered almost all shipwrecks and crashed planes in all lakes except Upper. Mussels burrow into wooden containers and grow in layers so thick they eventually crush the walls and floors. They also produce acid that can corrode steel and cast iron ships. No one has found an effective way to stop them.

Michigan maritime archaeologist Wayne Lusardi discovered a World War II ship piloted by a Tuskegee Airman that crashed into Lake Huron in 1944. He is trying to piece together more parts of a World War II-era plane.

“Divers started exploring (planes) in the 1960s and 1970s,” he said. “Some were preserved enough to fly again. (Now) when they’re filmed, the planes look like Swiss cheese. (Quaggas) are literally burning holes in them.”

Quagga mussels, native to Russia and Ukraine, were discovered in the Great Lakes in 1989, around the same time as their famous cousin, the zebra mussel. Scientists believe the creatures arrived via ballast dumps from transoceanic cargo ships bound for Great Lakes ports.

Unlike zebra mussels, quagga mussels are hungrier, more hardy and more tolerant of cold. They eliminate the base level of food chains by absorbing plankton and other suspended nutrients. They consume so many nutrients at such high rates that they can make the dark parts of the Great Lakes as clear as tropical seas. While zebras prefer hard surfaces, zebras cling more deeply to soft surfaces, allowing them to colonize even the sandy bottoms of lakes.

After 30 years of colonization, quagga mussels replaced zebra mussels as the dominant mussel in the Great Lakes. According to the University of California Riverside Invasive Species Research Center, zebra mussels made up more than 98% of the mussels in Lake Michigan in 2000. Five years later, the proportion of swamps was 97.7%. The success of the swamps for wooden and metal ships led to great destruction.

Barnacles can burrow into sunken wooden ships and fold in on themselves until details such as nameplates and carvings are completely hidden. Divers who try to brush them away inevitably tear off the wood. Quaggas can also accelerate the decomposition of metal shipwrecks by producing carbon dioxide clouds as well as excretions that corrode iron and steel.

Quaggas have not yet settled in Lake Superior. Dr. D., a professor in the School of Freshwater Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Harvey Bootsma said biologists believe the water here contains less calcium, which is needed to form shells.

This means that the remains of the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank on this lake during a storm in 1975 and was immortalized in Gordon Lightfoot’s song The Ballad of Edmund Fitzgerald, are safe, at least for now. Lusardi, a marine archaeologist from Michigan, has ticked off a long list of shipwreck sites swallowed by swamps in the lower Great Lakes.

His list included the Daniel J. Morrel, a freighter that sank in a storm on Lake Huron in 1966, killing all but one of its 29 crew, and the Cedarville, a freighter that sank in the Strait of Mackinac in 1965, killing eight people. Persons crew members He also listed another cargo ship, the Carl D. Bradley, which sank in a storm in northern Lake Michigan in 1958, killing 33 sailors.

The plane Lusardi was trying to repair was a Bell P-39 that crashed into Lake Huron during training in 1944, killing Tuskegee Airman Frank H. Moody. The Tuskegee Airmen were a group of black military pilots who trained at the Tuskegee Army Training Field in Alabama during World War II.

Great Lakes historian Brandon Baillod of Madison has spent the past five years searching for the grain ship Trinidad, which sank in Lake Michigan in 1881. He and fellow historian Bob Jack finally found the wreck near Algoma, Wisconsin, in July.

The first photographs of the site taken by the robotic vehicle showed that the ship was in extremely good condition, its equipment was intact and the dishes in the cabins were still in place. But Baylod said the area was “completely covered in quagga mussels.”

“It was completely colonized,” he said. “Twenty years ago, even 15 years ago, this place would have been clean. You can’t even recognize the bell anymore. You cannot see the nameplate. If you steal these mussels, they will take the wood with them.”

Quagga management options include treating them with toxic chemicals; covering them with a tarp, which restricts water flow and deprives them of oxygen and food; introduction of predatory species; or you can suffocate them by adding carbon dioxide to the water. UW-Milwaukee’s Bootsma said nothing promising appears to be happening on a large scale so far.

“The only way they could disappear in a large lake like Lake Michigan is through some disease or perhaps an introduced predator,” he said.

This leaves archaeologists and historians like Baylod scrambling to find as much debris as possible to map and document before it disintegrates under the influence of the swamps. At issue are the physical remains of the maritime industry that helped populate the Great Lakes region and established port cities such as Milwaukee, Detroit, Chicago and Toledo, Ohio.

“When we lose these tangible, preserved time capsules of our history, we lose our tangible connection to the past,” Baiod said. “When they’re gone it will just be a memory. All this is just book nonsense.” Source