Imaging 100-Year-Old Shipwrecks Under 800 Feet of Water

By Jon Boucher and Andrea Van Landingham
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Jerry Eliason, a lifelong shipwreck hunter from Cloquet, Minnesota, has become one of the most respected figures in the quest to locate and document lost ships beneath the depths of the Great Lakes. Eliason’s decades-long dedication and innovative use of technology have led to some of the region’s most significant underwater discoveries, including the Henry B. Smith and the record-breaking Scotiadoc wrecks.

A critical enabler of Eliason’s work has been his use of specialized imaging tools tailored for extreme underwater environments. Chief among these is Theia Technologies’ MY125M ultra-wide no-distortion lens, which plays a central role in capturing clear, expansive visuals of deep-water wreck sites. Its ability to deliver wide-angle coverage without introducing geometric distortion is essential for documenting the often vast and structurally complex wrecks resting hundreds of feet below the surface. Combined with custom underwater housings and remote-operated camera rigs, the MY125M allows Eliason and his fellow shipwreck enthusiasts to deliver visually compelling and historically significant documentation of shipwrecks unseen for over a century.

Early Beginnings and Technical Evolution

Jerry’s passion for shipwreck exploration began as a child inspired by the 1960s TV show Sea Hunt. After relocating to Wisconsin in 1964, he purchased diving gear and started scuba diving, initially limited by visibility and equipment constraints. By the mid-1980s, Jerry shifted focus to hunting Great Lakes shipwrecks, evolving from drop-down standard-definition cameras to high-definition systems with improved lighting and control. With a tight budget and no remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), the group innovatively controlled camera positioning through skillful boat handling and incorporated a dynamic positioning system using an electronic trolling motor with built-in GPS. This system allows precise station-keeping over wrecks, enhancing imaging capabilities.

Locating Lost Wrecks: Historical Research and Sonar

Locating shipwrecks begins long before the boat ever hits the water. The group conducts extensive historical research, poring over old newspapers, life-saving service reports, and archival data. They supplement this with advanced sonar techniques, including side-scan sonar built by Jerry’s son Jarrod, and magnetic anomaly detection. By submitting Freedom of Information Act requests to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and applying signal averaging techniques to raw geospatial data, they extract subtle clues about probable wreck locations. This meticulous approach allowed them to pinpoint the Henry B. Smith after nearly a century lost.

The 2013 discovery of the Henry B. Smith was a landmark achievement. Found largely intact about 30 miles off Marquette, Michigan, at a depth of 535 feet, the freighter had been lost in the infamous 1913 storm with all hands. Jerry described the moment they saw the flying bridge live on camera as the culmination of years of effort, research, and teamwork. Their precision in narrowing the search area allowed them to locate the wreck within 20 minutes of deploying sonar—an extraordinary feat compared to previous years of searching.

Pushing Deeper: Finding the Scotiadoc

Later that same year, the group achieved an even more technically demanding success by confirming the location of the Scotiadoc, a 424-foot freighter that had vanished in 1953 after colliding with another ship in heavy fog near Thunder Bay, Ontario. The wreck rests upright and largely intact at a staggering depth of 850, making it the deepest known shipwreck ever found in the Great Lakes.

Unlike the Smith, which was located through government-sourced geospatial data, the Scotiadoc was found through sonar searching in a defined area based on historic court documents Jerry had obtained. The group had to factor in post-collision drift, run sonar in tight grid patterns, and wait for a rare convergence of good weather, permits, and equipment readiness to deploy the imaging system. Confirmation came when they captured footage of the ship’s name still visible along its side (Fig 1).

Figure 1. Scotiadoc shipwreck as imaged with Theia’s MY125M ultra wide no distortion lens

“If Henry B. Smith was the entrée; Scotiadoc was the dessert,” Eliason later said, highlighting the technical progression the group had made between the two discoveries. The much greater depth of the Scotiadoc required improved pressure-resistant housings, lighting systems, and precision cable control—foreshadowing the group's readiness for even deeper expeditions in the future.

Challenges of Deep-Water Exploration: Wide-Angle, No-Distortion Imaging

Whether at 535 or 870 feet, Jerry Eliason and his group operate in near-total darkness. Below 200 feet, natural light disappears entirely, and visibility is further compromised by suspended particulates like copepods, which cause “snowy” visual interference when artificial lights are too close to the camera. To combat this, the group carefully positions lighting 4 to 6 feet from the lens, mounted along the same cable (Fig. 2).

Figure 2. Left: Example of strong particulate backscatter due to close lighting. Right: Eliason’s drop-down system for the Henry B. Smith, with lights positioned away from the camera to reduce visual interference.

Due to limited visibility and zero ambient light in these conditions, a distortion free, ultra wide-angle lens with short working distance is essential. To overcome these challenges, the group used a Sony SNC-CH240 camera with Theia Technologies’ MY125M ultra wide-angle lens, which offers low distortion without software correction and a close working distance of just 0.5 meters. On that camera with its HD sensor and 1920 x 1080 pixel array, the 1.3mm focal length lens offers 133 degrees wide in air and from .5m will cover an image area over 2m wide and 1.2m high with very low barrel distortion. This enables detailed images of shipwrecks at close range—without the extreme distortion and lost edge resolution typically associated with fisheye lenses.

The combination of a wide field of view and minimal distortion is critical in low-visibility conditions. It allows the group to document the largest possible area of wreckage from limited vantage points. Many other wide-angle lenses require longer working distances and provide narrower fields of view, forcing the camera farther from the subject and resulting in reduced resolution and image detail. The MY125M avoids these constraints, delivering high-resolution imaging even in confined or cluttered underwater environments (Fig 3).

Figure 3. High-detail image using Theia’s MY125M lens on the Henry B. Smith, allowing closer inspection with minimal distortion.

Theia’s MY125M lens features patented Linear Optical Technology®, which eliminates barrel distortion optically—without the need for software correction and its associated latency, the method commonly used to correct images from fisheye lenses. And, unlike fisheye lenses, which lose resolution at the edges, Theia’s patented technology provides more pixels at the image periphery, enhancing resolution—an essential advantage when using flat port housings.

For wide-angle imaging, the group used Theia’s MY125M ultra-wide lens paired with a dome port housing, which preserves the lens’s full field of view and minimizes distortion underwater. While dome ports offer superior optical performance, they come with trade-offs—they are more expensive and prone to scratching, as they protrude forward and are more exposed. In contrast, flat ports are more rugged and cost-effective, but when used with ultra-wide lenses, they can introduce pincushion distortion and reduce the effective angle of view (Fig 4). As a result, flat ports are typically favored for narrower field-of-view lenses – another reason to use Theia’s ultra wide angle, MY125M lens with patented distortion correction technology. To prevent internal fogging caused by condensation during descent into colder water layers, the group also placed desiccant inside the housing—a simple yet essential measure to ensure optical clarity during extended deep-water deployments.

Figure 4. Imaging system with flat port (left); system with light bundle placed 4 feet away to minimize backscatter (right).

Looking Ahead

The group’s success with both the Henry B. Smith and Scotiadoc demonstrates their ability to operate at increasing depths with evolving technology. They continue to refine their equipment and methodologies, planning further expeditions to find the German U-boat U-656. Building on their proven success with the MY125M lens for 1/2.5" sensors, they aim to upgrade to Theia’s MY23F ruggedized, ultra wide-angle, no distortion lens designed for 1/1.8" sensors and a Bosch NBN-80052-BA camera. This new system is expected to deliver significantly higher image resolution and improved low-light sensitivity. Theia’s MY23F on Bosch’s NBN-80052-BA is projected to increase resolution to 1,842 pixels per meter (px/m), more than doubling the 842 px/m achieved with the MY125M on the Sony SNC-CH240.

Complemented by advanced LED lighting systems, improved dynamic positioning, and meticulous sonar mapping, these technological enhancements will push the boundaries of underwater exploration.

Jerry Eliason and his fellow shipwreck enthusiasts embody the spirit of persistence, blending passion, historical reverence, and cutting-edge technology to achieve remarkable discoveries of long-lost stories and forgotten vessels awaiting rediscovery.

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