Diving is a big draw for Brockville, Ontario. The location, in the Thousand Island region, on the shore of the St. Lawrence River, is a great destination for divers. Now it is aiming to get even better, by adding a human touch, you could say, to save the shipwrecks that make it so interesting.
There are 25 shipwrecks in the river near Brockville, some of which sank there during the War of 1812.
To protect the deteriorating wooden vessels, the Thousand Islands region chapter of Save Ontario Shipwrecks, came up with the idea of placing life-sized concrete statues of humans, for divers to hang onto instead of the ships.
In keeping with the group’s motto, “Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but bubbles, and give our past a future”, fifteen concrete people are already settled on the river-bed and another six are to be lowered into the underwater diving park.
“It’s a lot easier and [causes] less damage when you’re holding onto a cement sculpture or an aluminum frame than it is on 200-year-old wood on a shipwreck that has historical significance and that we want to maintain,” says Tom Scott, chair of the Thousand Islands chapter of Save Ontario Shipwrecks.
In case you’re wondering why divers need to “hold-on”, an on-line respondent, known as ‘flyer1976’ commented on CBC’s story on the human statues, explaining it this way:
“The purpose of this dive park is that it gives new divers and instructors and area to practice and train to get good buoyancy. When you are a new diver your buoyancy is bad and you tend to need to grab things to control yourself you end up banging into things as you do not have good control. With this park you can bang into the statues or hold on to them while doing your training drills etc, without doing damage to a historic wreck or part of the natural environment.”
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