How was Thunder Bay nominated to be a sanctuary?
In the early 1970s, the Alpena community began exploring the potential for an underwater park featuring shipwrecks in the Thunder Bay region. An inventory of Thunder Bay’s underwater cultural resources, conducted by Michigan State University in 1975, suggested that the number of wrecks located in the area warranted the establishment of an underwater “reserve.” A local diving club supported this idea and, under state law, Thunder Bay was declared Michigan’s first Great Lakes Bottomland Preserve in 1981.
