Greg Such

VCI - Visual Cylinder Inspection® Course & VCIR - Visual Cylinder Inspection® Refresh Course

February 28st 8am to 3pm

This is the core certification course provided by PSI-PCI and in it we teach the regulations and fundamentals of conducting visual inspections of solid wall and composite SCUBA and SCBA cylinders. The full day course is suited for those new to visual inspection as well as those who have been inspecting without formal training through its wide range of inspection subjects including damage limits, neck cracking and other cylinder issues, plus laws affecting inspectors. Additionally, this course meets the OSHA and DOT requirements for employee HAZMAT training and attendants completing the course are qualified to conduct HAZMAT training for cylinder handlers. The course also provides an overview of a variety of associated topics including requalification, oxygen cleaning, valve repair, tools, and more. For more formal training on these topics refer to Specialties below.

It is the only training formally endorsed, referred to and utilized by the cylinder manufacturers; and recognized by USDOT, Compressed Gas Association, NFPA and others. It continues to be the most up to date training available today on this subject.

Previously certified inspectors may attend this full course under the VCIR for re-qualification (see below). The course is open to anyone 16 years or older and no previous cylinder inspection experience is required. Participants receive a certificate for Visual Cylinder Inspection upon course completion valid for 3 years per Federal training requirements.

Course cost is $325.00 with pre registrations mandatory by Feb 26th 2025.

Contact Greg Such @ 815.378.8152 to enroll

A portion of tuition will be donated back to the Ghost Ships group

John O Jensen - Professor, Author, Underwater Archeologist

Lost Ships and Forgotten Memories: Remembering Great Lakes Seafaring Women

John Odin Jensen, author of Stories from the Wreckage: A Great Lakes Maritime History Inspired by Shipwrecks, has studied North American maritime frontier shipwrecks from the Grand Banks of Newfoundland to the edges of the Bering Sea. Born into a Norwegian-American seafaring family in Alaska, he began his maritime career working alongside his father and brother in the commercial fisheries. As a former crab boat captain and a shipwreck survivor, Jensen brings deep professional experience and personal sympathy to the study of the North American mariners, ships, and shipwrecks. His more than thirty years of Great Lakes experience began with a position as an engineer/deckhand aboard the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee research vessel Neeskay and continued surveying shipwrecks as a professional underwater archaeologist with the Wisconsin Historical Society. Jensen earned a BA in history from Lawrence University, an MA in maritime history and underwater archaeology from East Carolina University, and MS and PhD degrees in history from Carnegie Mellon University. He is on the faculty of the department of history at the University of West Florida.

Tamara Thomsen

A Record Year for Wisconsin Shipwreck Discoveries

In 2024 an unprecedented seventeen new shipwrecks were reported to the Wisconsin State Historic Preservation Office. Through Wisconsin Historical Society’s partnership with WUAA the schooner Margaret A. Muir was surveyed and will be added to the National Register of Historic Places. Learn about the other new discoveries including the Thomas H. Smith, Milwaukee Fireboat No. 17 and others through photos, video and brief histories, and find out what’s next for these resources.

Tamara Thomsen
Wisconsin Historical Society

Tamara Thomsen is a Maritime Archaeologist with Wisconsin Historical Society’s Maritime Preservation and Archaeology program. Her research has resulted in the nomination of more than seventy submerged sites to the National Register of Historic Places. She has received awards from the Association for Great Lakes Maritime History, the Great Lakes Shipwreck Preservation Society, and in 2014, she was inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame.

Russ Green

From Moorings to Mapping: A Year in Review at Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary

2024 marked the 3 rd full field season for WSCNMS. This presentation will share a recap of fieldwork and other projects at WSCNMS, highlighting the installation of 24 new shipwreck moorings and marker buoys. Also highlighted will be an upcoming project to utilize autonomous underwater vehicle technology to document sanctuary shipwrecks. The technology is similar to that used in then recent documentation of Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance in Antarctica.

Russ Green is the superintendent of NOAA’s Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary. Russ has worked in Great Lakes conservation for 25 years, first as a maritime archaeologist for the state of Wisconsin and later as deputy superintendent at NOAA’s Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in Lake Huron. He’s contributed to dozens of maritime archeology projects along the east and west coasts, Bermuda, Micronesia, and Japan, and regularly leads fieldwork in the Great Lakes. He’ll share a recap of the sanctuary’s work this year, focusing on the placement of 24 new shipwreck moorings and marker buoys.

Brendon Baillod & Bob Jaeck

Discovery & Documentation of the Tug John Evenson

Join us for a deep dive in the use of acoustical remote sensing (sidescan, sector scan and multi-beam sonar) in locating and documenting historic shipwreck, submerged cultural landscape and industrial archeology sites.

Brendon Baillod

Bob Jaeck

Ric Mixter

The Edmund Fitzgerald Investigations

The mighty Fitz is the Great Lakes largest shipwreck, resting in two major pieces on the bottom of Lake Superior just over the Canadian border. It was lost in a killer storm in 1975, and its entire crew of 29 simply vanished into the waves around seven that evening. Shipwreck historian Ric Mixter is one of only a handful of people who have visited the wreck personally, diving 550 feet down in a tiny submarine to explore the site for over an hour. This was actually the beginning of over 20 years of research for Mixter, who has collected one of the largest film archives of Fitzgerald related material. Ric’s lecture includes exclusive footage of the building of the ship near Detroit, along with interviews from the men who worked at the shipyard. When Fitzgerald splashed into the Detroit River it was the largest object ever dropped into freshwater, over 729 feet in length. The lecture continues with former crew of the Fitz, including a mate that sailed with the captain that was lost. Richard Orgel believes the captain pushed the ship into storms that other skippers hid from, and his commentary proves that Capt. McSorely was sometimes scared by how much the Fitz bent in the storms. The wrecksite was investigated by the Coast Guard with a remote robot in 1976, and then by Jacques Cousteau in 1980. Ric shares interviews with both investigations, including Jacques son Jean-Michel who was in charge of Calypso when it searched the Great Lakes. Investigations in 1989, 1994 and the bell raising in 1995 are also covered in the lecture, along with Ric’s insight on what might have happened to the ship and crew. Ric’s documentary on the Fitzgerald is considered to be the most comprehensive available, and it outsells all other shipwreck documentaries on the Great Lakes. He has entertained audiences all around the lakes with this topic, with a special invitation to share his scientific findings on the topic at NASA’s Goddard Space Laboratory in 2019.

Ric Mixter
No one puts on more miles lecturing on Great Lakes subjects than Ric Mixter, who cruised all five lakes last fall, hosted Canada’s largest dive show, visited two dozen libraries and shared stories on a half dozen TV, radio, and podcast shows nation-wide. He’s been featured on National Geographic, PBS and Shipwreck Festival kicks off his dive show schedule which includes visits to Minnesota, Wisconsin and Ohio this year. Mascots were fairly common on Great Lakes ships, and the animal of choice was a dog. Ric Mixter chronicles some of the most famous storms and the canines that made it through, including the LC Waldo’s bulldog in the 1913 Storm, and the pets of the captain and cook that rode 20 miles in a lifeboat with gold medal lifesavers from Charlotte, New York. Soogie, the Coast Guard dog, rode through the same storm that sank the Edmund Fitzgerald! The recent discovery of the Huronton also brings to the surface the legend of the ship’s dog by a man who survived over a dozen shipwrecks.