There’s a lot to see under the waters surrounding the Sault and area.
One object of particular interest to local scuba divers is a wooden shipwreck from the 19th century lying 40 feet beneath the surface of the water located off Pointe aux Pins.
“It's really cool,” said local scuba diver Justin Jones in an interview with SooToday, adding that no one seems to know the name of the ship.
“You don't expect to see something like that down there. I don't know how long the boat is because some of it's covered in sand but it's fairly big and the mast is laying down behind it. You come up on it and it looks like an old ghost ship. It's a really cool old wooden ship.”
Jones is also a certified scuba diving instructor and owner of Superior Diving Services on Gore Street.
He was introduced to scuba diving in 1996.
“I was in my teens. It was in Cozumel, off Mexico. We were on vacation and my mom loved diving so she encouraged me to become a diver too. I just loved it.”
After a long hiatus from diving, Jones was eventually reintroduced to the underwater pursuit.
“I went on vacation for a friend's wedding and we went diving at the resort. I remember speaking to a dive instructor afterwards. I was like, ‘man, how do I live your life? You live in the Caribbean. You're meeting new people every day. You're going diving and you get paid for it.’ I asked him ‘how can I get to do this?’”
“He told me that you take a dive master internship, you work for free for a few months and get some experience and then after that you take the instructor course,” Jones said.
Weary of COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, Jones travelled to Costa Rica in 2021 and was trained to be a certified scuba diving instructor.
He returned to the Sault to sell scuba diving equipment and opened Superior Diving Services last spring.
Jones said he is pleased that three men under his instruction - Brent Villeneuve, Ricky Frigault and Victor Dinter - became certified open water scuba divers in late August.
Jones is optimistic the local scuba diving community can be revived after the Sault’s S.C.U.B.A. Centre closed in 2021 after 45 years in business.
He estimated there are 200 diving enthusiasts in the area.
“There’s so much underwater that people never see,” Jones said.
“With your scuba diving equipment you get to breathe underwater and you get a different perspective. In Lake Superior, we have lots of bass, and bass are really social fish. They'll come right up to you, they'll nibble on your fingers. They'll let you touch them sometimes and other fish aren't like that.”
That’s changed his mind about fishing – for bass at least.
“I don't really want to fish for bass anymore. These guys are my little buddies. I go down there and they swim up to me and they want to hang out with me while I'm diving,” Jones said with a chuckle.