Freediving Lake Ontario

Never went freediving in lake Ontario but here is a link for real-time water temperature of the St-Lawrence seaway (at Superior Shoals, NY), I suppose the temperature shouldn't be so different.

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=supn6

Sorry I can't be of more help, have fun!

I haven't had a chance to dive Ontraio yet, but I have freedove, and scuba dived, in Lake michigan, Superior, and Huron. The vis these days is fantastic- thanks to tyhe zebra mussels.

A friend of mine dove in the Kignston area and mentioned that they had vis in the 100'+ range- since they've had the mussles in their water longer the vis is better over there.

Try and find ony of the books by Chris Kohl. He has written many different books on diving the Great Lakes and has books dedicated just to that lake. It will give you a list of dive sites, wrecks, and condtions- as well as dive shops and charter boats to use.

Jon

what I know of lake ontario:

I have dove the St. lawrence by prescott, a couple cool little wrecks to dive and the Lock21 is great but High current. some wrecks out of kingston also freediveable.

Pack a knife. always. recreational line fishing is very popular here.

be sound in your bouyancy skills. zebra muscles cover everything, and will trash your favorite suit rather quickly.

the Chris Kohl books are a great source of info, pick one (some) up!

Viz is usually excellent. ENJOY!

Hey Jon

It sounds like we could use some of those zebra muscle down here in Texas! My favorite deep lake in Texas (Possum Kingdom) used to be a great dive lake with 30+ vis and dramactic underwater cliffs. They had a golden algee bloom in the water and now you barely see your out stretched hand. Its dark as night at 10' feet.

Are those muscles editable as well? Sounds like once the get established they really flourish. Can they also get out of control? What do they live off in the great lakes?

Vis is the good news when it comes to mussels. When i started diving the local wrecks, 25 years ago, we never had vis over 10'. deep wrecks were always dark- and many divers choose to dive them at midnight because the water was calmer and the vis was the same. Now, you can have 100'+ vis at 200'- or more. I was out last week in 50' vis and the newer divers were complaining about how "bad" the vis was. :head

The bad news is that they grow so thick on the wrecks that you can no longer see the details of the wrecks- there's something about diving on a
100+ year old, wodoen, wreck and still see the paint on her walls. the also get so thick, and heavy, that the wrecks are starting to collapse under their weight. In addition to the zebra's, we now have quaga mussles that can go much deeper- to 500'. All of the deep wrecks are covered in them.

As far as eating goes, well that's the problem. they eat everything and the fish are starving. some say that half of Lake Michigan is dead due to lack of food for the animals down on the food chain. I've heard that the sport fishermen have been having some incredible luck as the salmon are so hungry they'll bite on anything. NHK, japan's version of PBS, rented out our boat a couple of winters ago to do some filiming for special on zebra mussels. Halfway through the week they flew over to detroit to film some ducks that were eating the mussles- and then dying due to the toxins that were concentrated in them.

One other spinoff that has been noted is the clear water has allowed for increased seaweed growth off of Milwaukee- which then dies and floats up on the beach to rot and smell up the whole lakeshore come mid-summer.

So, they are really a double edge sword- good for vis, bad for everything else.

Here's a couple of shots to show how they covered a wreck so much you can no longer see the wood on her anymore.

Jon

Great pics! Wow that water really is clear. Those things are really small, but there must be millions of them per acre. One final question please, were they introduced by man into the lake or did they get there naturally?

They came over from Europe as unexpected cargo in the ballast water of tankers. The tankers are supoossed to switch water while still in the ocean, so as not to trasnport invasivie species, but too many didn't want to spend the extra time to do so (Time=Money) and they ended up here.

Jon

Jayhem,

Didn't see this thread till now...

We're on the other side of Lake Ontario, and we dive there, although somewhat infrequently. In the Toronto area there's a lack of deep water close to shore, and none of our club members have a boat... There are however, as Amphibious pointed out, numerous great wrecks in the Kingston area. I have dived there often and always enjoyed it. In July expect water temps in Kingston area to be around 20-22C (68-72F) with little or no thermocline. The Kingston area is of course the outflow area of Lake Ontario, so the current (all the way from barely noticeable to rather swift depending on location) gets rid of the thermocline.

On the other hand, if you feel like taking a trip up to the Toronto area, email me directly and we'll hook you up with a dive trip of some sort if at all possible Tobermory, with it's absolutely world class diving, is only 3 hours away from here! Totally unbelieveable wrecks (with still very few zebra mussles) abound in the crystal clear water.

Feel free to email or PM me with any other thoughts/questions you may have.

Cheers,
Aaron

Hm. Not sure where Sodus Bay is. Is it anywhere near Kingston? I used to live in Kingston, and I travel back to the area fairly frequently.

flyboy im going to PM you! .... anyone else around lake ontario wanting to do some diving? I’m going to toronto for 2 weeks very soon to stay with a friend, I am 26 years old, AIDA 4 star, competent and reliable safety diver, doing depth of around 40m, but I’m quite happy just having fun on wrecks or shallow diving. Very interested in local flora and fauna, doing a marine biology degree, GET IN TOUCH!!