State police trooper recounts Cessna crash in Lake Michigan in which two people were trapped in the back seat

Michigan State Police Sgt. Bill House admits he has seen a lot and “been in a lot of bad places” in his 13 years as a member of the force’s underwater rescue and recovery unit.

But one incident still gets to him and chokes him up nearly three years after it occurred: That is the case of a Cessna 206 that crashed in Lake Michigan about four miles off the coast of Ludington on the morning of July 23, 2010. The crash killed four of the five passengers. But it was the way that two of the victims were killed that House acknowledges bothers him to this day.

“I think of it now and the thought of them and what went on, yeah, it still bothers me. I can still see their faces as clear as the day it happened,” House said.

The tragic story began on July 23, 2010, when pilot Jerry Freed, co-pilot Earl Davidson, medical doctor James Hall, cancer patient Donald Pavlik, who was superintendent of the Alma Public Schools, and his wife Irene set out on a flight from Ludington to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., where Pavlik was to receive cancer treatment. The aircraft developed engine trouble, eventually determined to be a faulty fuel filter. The pilot turned around in the hopes of making it back to Ludington.

They never made it.

The aircraft crashed into the lake that morning. While attempting to land the plane in the lake, the pilot lowered the flaps to flare the plane out. The Cessna hit the water, the engine was ripped off, and the fuselage flipped upside down. The pilots and the doctor, who were all sitting in the front seat, got out. Pavlik and his wife remained inside.  Because the flaps were locked into their extended position, blocking the rear door, they were prevented from opening it. The flaps couldn’t be moved because the engine was ripped off the plane.

“They were basically trapped in the plane,” House said.

Six days later, Sgt. House and his dive team’s side-scan sonar s made contact with the plane, finding it in 173 feet of water, about three to four miles from the shore between Big Sable Point and Ludington harbor. The Pavliks were still in the back seat -- Don Pavlik still strapped in his seat belt, Irene Pavik resting on his lap.

“It looked like he was hugging her. And it looked like she was trying to get the door open,” House said, his voice choking at the memory.

House and his dive team were actually fairly close to the accident scene when the plane went down. Normally based in Coldwater, House and other rescue team divers were training in Rodgers City when they got the call and immediately headed toward Ludington. They gathered information from the ELT (emergency locator transmitter) that was activated when the plane hit water. Within six hours of the plane going down, the dive team was on the water, setting up a square-mile perimeter grid around the beacon and began side-scan sonar searching. The search came up empty.

The team headed back to shore, talked to a charter boat captain who had seen the plane go down, looked at the FAA flight path that had been recorded prior to the plane dropping below radar and received information from the pilot, who had been picked up by a nearby boat. The team went back out and set up a two-square-mile grid with two crews working 24-hour shifts in an attempt to locate the aircraft. In addition to the difficult environment, the search was hampered by the sonar equipment becoming tangled in commercial fishing nets.

Finally, in the early evening hours of July 29, the crew found the plane upright on the bottom of the lake and the engine nearby. The first recovery dive took place at 7:20 p.m. That’s when divers found the Pavlik’s bodies still seated inside the plane and the reason why they couldn’t open the rear door.  The following morning, the dive team cut the flap actuator rod that held the flaps in the open position and recovered Irene Pavlik. The resulting silt from removing Mrs. Pavlik left zero visibility. That, combined with floating luggage, entangled medical equipment, the width of the diver’s double tanks and the narrowness of the doorway made it impossible to remove Mr. Pavlik. He was recovered later that day.

On July 31, Dr. James Hall was recovered nearby the plane, and on Aug. 1, Earl Davidson’s body was recovered, also near the plane. Presumably, both men drowned sometime after exiting the plane. Only the pilot survived the accident.

It was the deepest recovery dive since the inception of the Michigan State Police underwater rescue unit in 1957, and House’s deepest personal dive. It was also fraught with difficulty, dealing with the environment, the lack of visibility, the wind and the waves and its location so far offshore.

But as is the nature of his job, each day has its rewards and its heartbreak.

“It’s one of those bittersweet things. I love diving. I love state police diving and the recovery work because somebody’s got to do it,” House said. “I’ve been told ‘this is a gravesite, shouldn’t you leave it alone?’ But people want their loved ones back, and so that’s part of it you feel good about. You are excited when you got them out of the plane, but it’s also very tragic.”

Alpena-Amberley land bridge reveals more evidence of prehistoric caribou hunting from 100 feet below the surface of Lake Huron

Dr. John O’Shea has a bottle of Scotch whiskey on the desk in his office, a gift from a colleague. The problem is, he’s not allowed to open it.

Not allowed, that is, until the colleague who gave it to him gives him the OK.

Since the summer of 2009, O’Shea, the curator of Great Lakes Archaeology in the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, has led a study of the Alpena-Amberley ridge, a 72-square mile post-Ice Age land bridge that once connected what is now Michigan’s northeastern Lower Peninsula near Alpena, with Point Clark in southwest Ontario about 9,000 years ago. Today, that ridge sits 100 feet below the water line at the bottom of Lake Huron.

In the 3-1/2 years his team has been studying the area, it has found compelling evidence that both caribou and mastodon used the ridge as a semi-annual migration path, and that humans, categorized as Paleoindian and Early Archaic hunters, devised ways to hunt and kill the animals on the ridge. But a skeptical colleague, that’s right, the one bearing the gift of Scotch, won’t be convinced until the group finds an arrowhead or a spearpoint, thereby in his mind confirming O’Shea’s theory.

“I want to be out there until I find that spearhead and I can open that bottle of Lagavulin,” O’Shea said with a laugh. “We’ve convinced a lot of skeptical critics that this probably is what was going on. The dates (carbon dating of wood poles found to be about 9,000 years old) are coming in, the simulation is working. Science is incremental, you’re always adding things together. But the pieces are falling together in a really nice way. So I’m very enthusiastic about this summer’s work that we will collect even more stuff.”

O’Shea has been a frequent visitor at the annual Great Lakes Shipwreck Festival, and once again spoke to a packed room, updating listeners on scientific findings in 2012.

On older nautical charts, the area including the ridge is labeled as the Six Fathom Shoal, and it once divided the Lake Huron basin into two distinct lakes, the largest of which is called Lake Stanley. Scientists believe the ridge exists because it is composed of limestones and dolomites, materials so hard that even the mighty glaciers that destroyed everything their path couldn’t cut into it.

While the ridge area includes the prehistoric Lake Stanley, Lake Chippewa, the forerunner to Lake Michigan sat to the west. Prior to the ice melt that eventually covered the Alpena-Amberly ridge, those two lakes did not connect at the Straits of Mackinac like they do today.

A computer rendering of the Alpena-Amberley land ridge, a 75-square mile ridge that once connected Michigan's Lower Peninsula to southwest Ontario. The green area represents the current water line of Lake Huron.

In years past, the team had found wooden poles, perhaps used to hang meat, that date to about 9,000 years ago. They found stone structures probably used as hunting blinds, caches or pits and “drive lanes” made by a linear path of rocks that would bring the animals close enough that hunters could attack them with spears and lances.

In 2012, the team discovered additional wood samples, potential fireplaces, charcoal, and in core samples flakeage or micro-debitage, stone microfragments made when chipping away at stone or rock to make tools, weapons or other implements. The microfragments are determined to be manmade since the way they are shaped couldn’t have happened naturally. The team is also transitioning from discovering artifacts to determining how the people of that time period lived.

Since it was during the post-Ice Age time period, the climate was milder than the Ice Age, but still bitterly cold with miserable conditions along the ridge. Those "warmer" conditions were comparably pleasant for the caribou and their thick hides. The subarctic tundra would have had developing grass areas, intermittent marshes and a scatter of coniferous trees, while the water’s edge would have provided various types of vegetation. The windy conditions would have given them relief from flies that bothered them during the warmer seasons. As for the hunters, the confined nature of the ridge would have provided a substantial element of predictability regarding herd movement which would have been of great value to them.

“These people probably lived in the Lower Peninsula, closer to the middle of the modern-day lake since the lakes were so much shallower then,” O’Shea said. “They probably only came out to the ridge to hunt. Maybe they would come out by sled in the winter to retrieve the meat that had been cached from the fall hunt.”

While many of the hunting blinds at the bottom of Lake Huron are set up to attack caribou moving in both migrational directions (southeast in the autumn to rut and northwest in the spring to calve) some are V-shaped, giving the impression that they would work for movement in only one direction. Based upon which direction they are facing, scientists can determine whether they were used for fall or spring migration. In addition, some blinds are minimal, suggesting their location didn’t work, while other blinds are more extensive and updated, indicating they are in better locations and fortified to allow for more hunters.

“A number of the structures are located on high ground at the break of the crest of a hill, so that the animals coming up the hill don’t really see (the hunters) until they are upon them,” O’Shea said. “They did things that make a lot of sense to a modern hunter’s eye.”

As for the final smoking guns, such as large pieces of bone or spear or arrowheads that would remove all doubt of hunting activity on the ridge, O’Shea said large or macro bone pieces almost certainly have dissolved over time. The microbone fragments that have been found were discovered in core drilling samples. Larger pieces of bone would only be found in holes or caches within the limestone.

The spear or arrowheads are still on the agenda and will hopefully be discovered, if only so O’Shea can uncork his whiskey. 

When asked if his team has made enough discoveries to certainly prove the existence of hunting on the ridge, his answer is one you may expect of a scientist.

“We’ve gone a long way towards ‘certainly,’ but I wouldn’t say absolutely … yet,” he said.

This summer, O’Shea’s team has plans to look for additional campsites, devise better means of collecting bulk sediment samples and search for cultural debris, expand the search to natural migration choke points and expand acoustic coverage.

A new way to look at gas consumption using rock bottom: Why simply planning to surface with 500psi isn’t the best way to manage air

This article was provided to me by James Mott of Unified Team Diving and Sea The World Scuba Center.  I met James at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Festival in which he spoke on the topic of gas management. James shared the concept of “rock bottom” in which divers determine when is the best time to begin an ascent from the deepest part of the dive to allow for a safe reserve of 500 psi when reaching the surface. Also check out the video interview I did with James at the festival.

By James Mott

Throughout the world, divers are told again and again to return to the boat with 300-500 psi in their tanks.  Understandably, most competent divers stretch their bottom time out as long as they can.  They smile as they show their pressure gauges to the dive master upon surfacing and then compare gauges with other divers in order to see who the closest one to 301psi is.  Getting the most bottom time underwater is a fun game to play with buddies and I’m not saying that divers shouldn’t use as much of their tanks as possible.  However the question becomes, “Is this the smartest way to plan gas?” What exactly is the goal of leaving some air in our tanks?  To help a buddy in need, to keep water out of our tanks, to inflate our BCD’s at the surface?  Many divers use the 1/3’s rule, but even this plan has numerous flaws.  So where do we start?  Is there a plan that works for deep-diving technical divers and shallow-water recreational divers alike?  What is wrong with the idea of surfacing with a safe amount of gas, like 500psi?
The answer to the 500psi problem is that being on the surface at the end of the dive with 500psi does not answer the more important question for scuba divers, which is, “When do I have to leave the bottom?  If we have an emergency and we need to share air, “How much air will I need to bring me and my buddy to the surface safely?  This is the question that should start all gas planning.
Doing It Right (DIR) education teaches the unified team to plan for the worst possible emergency before the dive starts.  We always ask the question, “What happens if at the worst possible moment, the deepest part of the dive, the furthest distance from home… my buddy runs out of air… How much gas do I need to bring both of us to the surface without any incident?”
Calculating rock bottom is easy enough to do in your head before the dive and it is taught in all entry level DIR courses.  How long will the ascent take, multiplied by two divers, then by the average depth and then by a consumption rate, equals rock bottom.

Rock bottom is calculated by adding up the time it would take to ascend from a given depth.  For example, from 60 feet, we would normally ascend at 30 feet/minute and have a three-minute safety stop.  This normal ascent would take us four minutes.  We then add one minute for the air-sharing emergency to take place and have a five-minute ascent, requiring 10 minutes of total air with two divers breathing during that 5 minute time frame.  We assume we have an elevated breathing rate of about 1 cubic foot/minute.  Our average depth during the ascent is about 30 feet or 2 ATA (atmospheric pressure one ATA is atmospheric pressure at sea level) where we consume gas at twice the surface rate.

SCUBA Math

5 minutes X 2 divers X 1 cfm X 2 ATA = 20 cubic feet of gas

20 cf of gas on an AL 80 is about 750 psi.

Rock Bottom for 60 FSW on an AL80 is 750 or for most gauges, 800 psi.

Rock Bottom for 100FSW on an AL 80 is 1600psi.  (Math is not provided but can be, just ask.)

Once rock bottom is determined, the remainder of the useable gas is then divided into a logical plan.  Maybe it is a drift dive on a Caribbean reef where we can use everything. Maybe we are diving on a shipwreck in the Great Lakes and need to get back to the mooring line, or we might be doing a penetration on this shipwreck where we will need enough gas to get out of the wreck plus enough to get to the surface.  Different dives will require different gas plans, but rock bottom must always be accounted for, before the gas plan is made.  DIR education teaches the unified team to plan their gas in accordance for the specific dive, so that each diver can get the most fun possible out of their diving and still be safe.
Being at depth below rock bottom is irresponsible and will not give us enough air to safely ascend.  The only emergency underwater is running out of gas, everything else is just an inconvenience.  Once the out of gas diver is breathing again, we move from emergency to management.  Just because someone ran out of air, does not mean that we rush to the surface, exceed safe ascent rates, skip safety/deco stops, or anything else we know about safe diving protocols.  The only option is to remain calm, think, communicate and finish the dive.
For more information about rock bottom or other gas management options, contact me at jm@unifiedteamdiving.com or www.unifiedteamdiving.com or Sea The World Scuba Center in Farmington Hills at 248-478-6400.

Diving with whale sharks in the Philippines

To me, one of the greatest reasons for scuba diving is the chance to see animals that inhabit the wet part of the Earth.

About three quarters of the Earth’s surface is water, but only a small percentage of people have the skills, i.e. scuba diving skills, get to spend large amounts of time under the water exploring creatures that live their lives in that environment.

I’ve seen everything from large animals – sharks, turtles, eagle rays, pilot whales, for example, to smaller ones, such as shrimp, sea horses and nudibranches. Every dive is different, and every dive opens a window to seeing something you’ve never seen before.

For me, nothing gets the heart racing like seeing a large pelagic – a shark or a whale, for example, that just happen to be passing through at the same time you are there. That’s why seeing a whale shark up close and personal sits very close to the top of my bucket list.

Whale sharks are so large, quite often more than 40 feet long, that they can look intimidating. But looks can be deceiving. These gentle giants are no more of a threat to humans than a common ant.

Whale sharks are not only the largest fish species on earth, they are also the largest living non-mammalian vertebrate, rivaling many of the largest dinosaurs in weight. The largest ever recorded are more than 21.5 metric tons, or about 47,000 pounds. They are a filter-feeding fish, consuming primary macro-algae, plankton, krill and Christmas Island red crab. They live to be about 70 years old.

Tony Gramer, a regular speaker at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Festival and the Dossin Great Lakes Museum, recently gave a speech on diving in the Philippines. The location was Dumaguete City, near Manila. During that trip he happened to have a chance to dive (actually snorkel) with whale sharks. After I turned green with envy, I caught up with Gramer to have him tell me about that incredible experience. That conversation is in the video above.

Great Lakes Storm of 1913 destroyed 19 ships, killed 251 sailors

While the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior in 1975 may be the most famous shipwreck on the Great Lakes, the storm that caused it pales in comparison to the granddaddy of weather fury: The Great Lakes Storm of 1913.
This November will mark the 100^th anniversary of the most destructive natural disaster ever to hit the lakes, which took place over five days in November 1913. The storm killed 251 sailors, destroyed 19 ships and damaged 19 others plying four of the five Great Lakes. Lake Ontario was the only lake that escaped damage.
Jim and Pat Stayer, owners of Out of the Blue Productions out of Lexington, discussed the topic at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Festival in Ann Arbor.
“The 1913 storm was the biggest ever on the Great Lakes,” Jim Stayer said. “They had storms in 1869, 1905, 1940 (The Armistice Day storm), but nothing was the equal to this storm. Two low-pressure systems met and produced 90 mile per hour winds for more than four hours.”
“If you think about the size of the waves that weekend, you would stand at the bottom of a telephone poll and you would look up, and the waves were 10-feet higher than that,” added Pat Stayer. “That’s why most of the wrecks from the 1913 storm are turtled and upside down (at the bottom of the lake).”
The storm is historically referred to as the “Big Blow,” the “Freshwater Fury,” or the “White Hurricane.”
Described as an extratropical cyclone, it originated as the convergence of two major storm fronts, one heading southeast across Lake Superior, and other heading northeast from Colorado. Although the storm went from Nov. 6-11, a lull in the storm, called a “sucker hole,” prompted ships to begin heading out again. Most of the ship destruction occurred on Nov. 9.
“They did forecast the storm, but weather forecasting had just started out,” Jim said. “And shipmasters were under pressure to make one more last run for the season. There was a little lull as the two pressures were meeting, and they got sucked out into it and that was the worst part of the storm, particularly on Lake Huron.”


Illustration by Robert McGreevy
This painting is based upon an eyewitness account of the Argus falling into a trough between giant waves. The eyewitness, the captain of a nearby ship, said when that happened, the Argus “crumpled like an eggshell.” The Argus sank near the tip of the Thumb in Lake Huron, losing 28 sailors.

Illustration by Robert McGreevy
This painting illustrates the Issac M. Scott cutting through waves during the storm. The Scott was lost near Thunder Bay, killing all 28 aboard.

In addition to the tremendous waves and winds, the ships caught in the storm also accumulated a large amount of ice buildup, 5-6 inches on the rails and the upper structures, which helped speed their demise.
Of the 12 ships that sank during the storm, eight were lost on Lake Huron alone. Those ships included two ships that still have not been found -- the Hydrus, which lost 25 crew, and the James Carruthers, which had 22 victims. Those two ships are presumed to be on the Canadian side of Lake Huron in deeper water, and searching for them would require special permits. The other ships found in Lake Huron include: the Charles S. Price (28 victims), the Regina (20 victims), the Argus (28 victims), and the Wexford (20 victims).
The total financial lost from all the lakes was nearly $5 million, or about $100 million at current value. The lost cargo, totaling about 68 tons, included coal, iron ore and grain.
The Price, Regina and Wexford all sit at recreational dive depth and are popular with scuba divers. The Price, in 64 feet of water and the Regina, in 80 feet of water are upside down, while the Wexford sits upright in 75 feet of water.
Check out the video above for more from Jim and Pat Stayer about the Great Lakes Storm of 1913.

Aircraft vanishes nearly 36 years ago over land, hasn't been seen since

For nearly 36 years, the fate of John and Jean Block has been one of the state’s greatest mysteries.

On July 4, 1977, the couple left Macomb Airport in Macomb County, planning to meet up with one of their sons in northern Michigan to celebrate the holiday together. Their destination was the Lost Creek Sky Ranch Airport in Luzerne, MI.

They never made it. And they haven’t been seen since.

Jean and John Block

They took off in perfect weather conditions at about 11 a.m. and were never seen again. While the fact that the couple simply vanished is mysterious, the fact that the plane, which almost certainly crashed on land in Michigan, has never been found is remarkable.

Ross Richardson, owner of the michiganmysteries.com website, believes the couple’s plane went down in the Huron-Manistee National Forest. While that area of the northern Lower Peninsula is rural and remote, it only seems logical that someone would stumble across a wrecked plane sometime in the ensuing 36 years.

“Yes, either hiker or hunters. It’s probably in the Huron-Manistee National Forest, which is a very remote location. And some of these areas probably haven’t been seen since they were logged 100 years ago,” Richardson said, who spoke on the subject at the 32^nd Great Lakes Shipwreck Festival in Ann Arbor on March 2 while discussing the topic “Michigan Mystery Disappearances.”

Block, the longtime fire chief at U.S. Army TACOM, was a resident of East Detroit, now Eastpointe. He had earned his pilot’s license in 1947 after serving in World War II. He didn’t have an extraordinary amount of flight time, maybe 470 hours, (about 200-300 after 1970) but was rated as a stunt pilot and would practice barrel rolls and other stunt maneuvers along with safety procedures.

“That was our entertainment as kids,” said his son, John Jr. “Other kids would go on vacation. We would head out to the airport and go for a ride and have our dad scare the heck out of us.”

John Jr., a retired sheriff’s deputy in Grand Traverse County, said his dad wasn’t instrument rated, so he would use road maps and would follow major highways to get to his destination. And while his fateful flight may have been one of his longest trips, he had been doing more “cross-country” type flights and had flown to Traverse City three or four times.

The flight left at that morning with perfect flying conditions. The Blocks had planned to meet up with their son Mike and his family in Luzerne in the early afternoon. When they didn’t show up, Mike called John Jr. in Traverse City to see if they had gone there instead. When a missing person’s report was filed, search parties began an exhaustive search that wouldn’t bear fruit. An FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) investigation was launched.

The Block's 1969 Cessna 150 (Photos courtesy of John Block Jr.)

John Jr., then 31 and active as a sheriff’s deputy, aided in the search, often getting down on his hands and knees, combing the ground looking for evidence. He and his wife spent the next 10-15 years scouring the suspected crash zone with fliers and posters pleading for any information or eyewitnesses that might help them find the downed plane. They followed tips that ended with dead ends.
They sought the help of psychics, who told them the aircraft went down in a swampy area in the Isabella Indian Reservation in Isabella County near Mount Pleasant. Eventually, all trails ran cold.

Macomb County Probate Court issued death certificates for John and Jean Block in April 1978. The family held a memorial service on July 24, 1978, a little more than a year after they disappeared.

John Jr., now 66, believes one of two things happened that caused his parents to crash their 1969 Cessna 150: First, they ran into bad weather that moved into the northern Lower Peninsula that afternoon and early evening. But the weather would have only been a factor if the couple got lost and their flight time extended by a couple of hours. Second, John Block, 57, had some kind of medical emergency. His mom, Jean, 55, did not like flying and didn’t know how to pilot the plane. He doubts it was a mechanical failure.

“It was a pretty reliable plane, with not many hours on it,” John said. “My dad suffered from diabetes and high-blood pressure. I was really surprised he passed his last couple of annual physicals.”

The flight path, north of West Branch, is indeed some of the most remote, uninhabited and swampy locations in all of the Lower Peninsula. The Mio and Huron Shores districts of the Huron-Manistee are in the area, and, despite the fact that they are public lands, they don’t get an overwhelming amount of foot traffic. And in such a thickly wooded area, the Cessna would have been ripped apart by tree branches and hit the ground in pieces with virtually no hole made in the tree canopy.

Block said there are also “immense” parcels of private land that are full of swampy ground and are uninhabited, except for an occasional cabin or cottage. It’s quite possible the plane was swallowed up in a swamp pit, never to be seen again.

“It’s not somewhere where you would be out two-tracking,” he said.

Today, John Block realizes the odds of finding the missing plane and his parents are long. But he holds out hope someone will come across the plane with white wings and orange tips, and a green and white fuselage with the tail number N50935. He points out that any pieces of aircraft found today would indicate an unidentified aircraft, since crash scenes are completely cleaned of debris after they have been investigated.

“I still hope every day to hear some news,” Block said. “It would be nice to have some closure. Finding my parents is definitely at the top of my bucket list.”

Diving the Blue Heron Bridge: Not sexy, but plenty to look at

David Heidemann has travelled around the world while putting more than 300 dives into his diving log.
Those Caribbean destinations certainly have their own benefits, but Heidemann is convinced one of the best places to photograph underwater life is a barren, bleak, colorless landscape under the Blue Heron Bridge in West Palm Beach, Florida.
The location includes, free parking and free diving, a since the max depth on the dive is not much more than 20 feet, the dives can last 90 minutes or more.
The diving must be done at high slack tide, so divers must review tide tables and stay clear of areas designated for boat traffic, but the payoff is the chance to see a tremendous amount of marine life. Heidemann believes the abundance of marine life the area is due to the never-ending amount of nutrients that are pushed under the bridge due to the changing tides.
The bridge is located between the mainland of Florida and Singer Island. Free parking is available at Foster Park.
Here is my interview my Heidemann at the 32nd Great Lakes Shipwreck Festival.

Also, here is a pretty detailed web page on found online that can tell you all about diving under the Blue Heron Bridge:click here