Chris and Bea Roxburgh have a view of Leelanau not many get the chance to see: the secret world of shipwrecks scattered in the lake from Empire to the Fox Islands, from Northport to Greilickville.

Chris, an electrician by day, and Bea, a barber at Bulldogs Barbershop in downtown Traverse City, are also certified divers and underwater photographers. The couple is currently documenting Leelanau’s underwater world on camera, with a goal to capture every known shipwreck off the coast of the Leelanau Peninsula.  

Chris says he has one Leelanau dive left (that he knows of): the wreck of the B West, a lumber barge that sank off Northport in 1957, and was first discovered by students from Northwestern Michigan College’s Waters Studies Institute and Freshwaters Studies program in July 2011.

Chris is compiling shipwreck imagery into a book called Leelanau Underwater, which he hopes is out by November 2020. Follow his public page on Facebook for the exact release date.

Chris, who had done free dives his whole life — since the age of 4, he says — just discovered his prowess as a scuba diver, and passion for underwater photography four years ago. His Facebook page documenting his progress and adventures now has over 11,000 followers. That recognition grew even more recently, after one of the first underwater photos he took went viral on Reddit.

Says Bea, who shares her own underwater images on Instagram, “There is an excitement with documenting and sharing the dives, I think, that has created an energy for us. We are showing people — some who have lived in this area their whole life — something they have never seen, and they say ‘wow, that was really always there?’”

She adds that a willingness from the beginning to share their shipwreck content for free has led, more recently, to paying opportunities, including Chris being commissioned to shoot an environmental expose piece for the Detroit Free Press, and a Scarab Boats commercial released in April. This time they were in front of the camera: cinematographers followed the Roxburgh family — including daughter Athena — on a full day of free diving shipwrecks in Grand Traverse Bay.

Chris is also a frequent guest speaker, sharing Great Lakes history with audiences from Torch Lake to Grand Rapids. “The shipping industry helped build our state,” he says. “And whether mariners passed away on these wrecks — or survived — there are so many people with family ties to them. They are really happy that we are bringing the stories of these vessels back to life.”

The mutual passion for shipwreck hunting started for the Roxburghs on an SUP paddle at an undisclosed location off the coast of Peterson Park near Northport. Says Bea, “We were actually paddle boarding in the winter, and first we discovered a boiler, then mile and a half up the coast, the rest of the George Rogers. We said, ‘Holy cow, look what’s here.’”

Says Chris, “We didn’t have a camera with us, so I came back the next weekend to free dive and shoot it, and that’s what sparked it all,” he says.

Both Chris and Bea now have their scuba diving certification through Scuba North in Traverse City. Chris has also completed an advanced deep diving course. That opened up the possibility of doing dives deep in the Manitou Passage.

“I recently dove the Grace Williams, in the Manitou Passage, which only a few people have dived. It is in a private location, and we were given permission to dive it — ‘permission’ meaning that you won’t even know some of these wrecks exist unless someone tells you the coordinates. And then you need to sonar it and deploy your own buoys away from the wreck, so you don’t damage it. It’s a huge process, and we’ve gotten it down to a science.”

For the Grace Williams dive, Chris was accompanied by his friend and fellow Great Lakes diver, Dusty Klifman. “That was 204 feet deep, a very serious dive. Bea was the boat tender.”

Explains Bea, “Right before they go down, they tell me how long they will be down there. And, typically, the entire time they are underwater, you can see the bubbles rise.”

Chris adds, “We keep exact time, and time goes by so quick. It takes 2.5 to 3 minutes to get down 200 feet. And you are just freefalling for 2.5 minutes straight. That’s when you realize just how deep it is.”

Bea says rather than Leelanau’s deep wrecks, she is drawn to the shipwrecks that are hiding in plain sight, like the Rising Sun at Pyramid Point, the Francisco Morazan off the coast of South Manitou, or, on the West Bay side of the peninsula, the Charles Frank, right outside Elmwood Marina.

“It’s the accessibility that makes it such a lucky opportunity,” she says. “And the shipwrecks all have their own story, whether it’s how they sunk, the cargo on them, or maybe just how the boat was made.”

The Roxburghs just celebrated an anniversary with a trip to explore shipwrecks surrounding the Fox Islands. They camped on their boat, cooked on shore and lived off the grid for 36 hours.

Chris stresses that as much fun as it appears they are having on their adventures, “You also have to have those safety checks and balances.”

Adds Bea, “We are constantly in communication, underwater, on the water, and on the way to our dive locations.” She says with Lake Michigan’s current high water, there can be downed trees and docks that washed off the shoreline as obstacles in the middle of the lake. “We are always scanning, looking for floating docks and trees, because if you hit one in Lake Michigan with no cell reception, and start to sink, you are in trouble. We always have a wetsuit, paddleboards and lifeboats with us. With diving, there is both guts and skill involved, and there’s that saying, ‘To get to the island, you have to have the courage to lose site of the shore.’”

Photos: Chris Roxburgh