Discovery of dakota dugout canoe in Lake Minnetonka - Kelly Nehowig - 11/14/21

---

Most of the wrecks we discover are preceded by tons of effort using side scan sonar, ROVs, and careful study of the data acquired in order to find anomalies that might be wrecks. But occasionally you get lucky and find things by random (and lots of time in the water).

On 11/28/2020, I was making a late season dive in Lake Minnetonka at a spot I have dove dozens of times before. On this particular dive, I happened to cover a wider area, and while swimming along, I discovered the object shown above.

During my work with Maritime Heritage Minnesota, I was familiar with the various Native American dugout canoes that had been previously discovered in the state and had recently seen an exhibition of some of these dugouts at the Legacy of the Lakes museum in Alexandria. This looked similar to some of the exhibits I had seen, so I shot some images and video during my dive to send to MHM for their study.

The wreck was half exposed -- about 4 feet was visible before it disappeared into the lake bottom. On the exposed end, there was a large rock sitting in the excavated portion of the wreck.

On 11/29/20, I sent my video to Ann Merriman @ MHM -- she immediately confirmed that this was a dugout. She also requested that I dive again to establish the actual GPS coordinates of the wreck. When I dove this site the first time, I did not have any way to capture GPS numbers during my dive, but I knew generally where is was and felt confident that I could relocate it. So I planned to dive the following weekend with NavDive to relocate the wreck and establish its true position. NavDive is a device I invented that allows a diver to capture GPS coordinates of any site while operating underwater.

As luck would have it, the lake froze over before I had an opportunity to dive again. So it looked like I would have to wait until the spring to relocate the dugout and establish coordinates on it.

However, it occurred to me that I could use my remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to relocate the wreck by cutting a hole in the ice to put it through to conduct a search. So on 1/7/2021, I went back out to the site and drilled a hole at my best guess position, dropped the ROV in, and started a search.

After more than 45 minutes of searching, I finally was able to relocate the wreck and confirm it via the real time video I obtained from the ROV. Here is a still shot from the video:

Once I had relocated the wreck, I was able to estimate its location by taking my current GPS location (where I drilled the hole through the ice) and then measure how much tether I had out on the ROV (about 20 feet). This established a radius around the hole in which the wreck could be found. While this was not an accurate set of GPS coordinates, it was good enough to confirm that I would be able to locate the wreck during the next diving season and use NavDive to get true GPS positioning.

The next spring (after the ice melted) I was able to resume my search. On 4/2/21, I dove the site with NavDive. However, the visibility was horrible (about 2 feet) and I was unable to locate the wreck. The next weekend (4/11/21), the visibility improved and I was able to locate the wreck. I used NavDive and captured true GPS lat/long numbers to establish the wreck's location once and for all.