Drop down a descent line in the Great Lakes and you may find a wooden schooner sitting on the bottom more than a century after it sank. Its hull planks are still in place and its deck fittings are right where the crew left them. Divers who know ocean wrecks often surface shaking their heads. How does wood survive that long underwater? The short answer is cold, fresh water and no shipworms. Here is the longer version for this edition of Third Coast Classroom. Cold Water Slows

Great Lakes divers learn quickly that the water sets the rules. Even on a hot July afternoon, the wreck below the thermocline can be startlingly cold, and our lakes stay cold for much of the year. Here, exposure protection is not a comfort upgrade. It is part of diving smart. This post is educational, not medical advice. For questions about cold stress, hypothermia, or how cold affects your own health and diving, talk with a physician or Divers Alert Network (DAN) at diversal

Every so often you'll see a diver hovering over a Great Lakes wreck with a cylinder tucked along each side, a bit like saddlebags, and nothing on their back. That's sidemount. If you've spotted it at the quarry or on a charter and wondered why anyone would rearrange their whole rig, this post is for you. One quick note before we start. This post explains what sidemount is and why people use it. It isn't a how-to. If you want to learn it, find an instructor who teaches sidemou

Every club has a motto. Ours came from a dive boat in Key Largo. Where It StartedBefore Third Coast Scubiens was a club, it was two divers, Luke and Lance, taking a class in Key Largo from Jeff Knapp, an instructor at Horizon Divers in Key Largo, Florida. Jeff had a saying he repeated until it stuck: "Don't die. Get back to the boat. Look good." It made us laugh. It also stayed with us long after the class was over, because underneath the humor it was exactly right. Strip div

Welcome to Third Coast Scubiens. If you're wondering what exactly a Scubien is, or why a group of divers from Michigan would call themselves part of the Third Coast, there's a story behind both. Why the Third Coast?When most people think about diving in the United States, their minds go first to Florida, California, the Caribbean, or somewhere else with palm trees and water considerably warmer than ours. We understand. But those of us who live and dive in Michigan know there'