Legacy, Vol. 5, No. 1, June 2000, p.
28.
Help Needed on
Underwater Heritage Trail
By Lynn Harris
By Lynn Harris
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Summer is here, and with it the diving
season. On any given weekend, one can see more dive flags on the Cooper River
than fishing poles. And this year the Sport Diver Archaeology Management
Program (SDAMP) expects a record number of divers visiting the Cooper River
Underwater Heritage Trail.
Unfortunately, now in its second year of
existence, the trail is already showing signs of wear. Although our staff does
periodic trail inspections it would be a great help if the diving community
could report maintenance problems to us as well. The sooner we get out there
and fix the problems, the better.
Also, river divers who have time available
on weekdays and are interested in helping our staff with maintenance operations
on the Cooper River Underwater Heritage Trail, please contact our Charleston
office at (843) 762-6105. Tasks involve replacing rusty hardware, clearing
weeds off the down lines, securing monuments, and replacing plaques. Apologies
for any inconvenience missing trail components may have caused divers visiting
the trail recently. The last year has been a learning experience about the
range of maintenance problems we can anticipate in the future.
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For example, during the first few months of the trail opening, we were aghast to see that our huge, mooring buoys had shrunk dramatically and were semi-submerged. Fortunately, it was a manufacturing defect and the supplier, Curd Enterprises, Inc., of Mt. Pleasant, speedily gave us replacements. During the replacement time, we used a motley selection of temporary buoys to mark sites.
Other problems include the theft of the
marker plaque from the Pimlico barge, downline chains wrapping around the
monuments at low tide, a cracked mooring buoy on the Pimlico sailing ship, mud
and silt catchment between the plaque and the plastic cover, and rusty hardware
on the riverbed guidelines.
Another suggestion was to increase the
lifespan by closing the trail and removing the mooring buoys during the winter
months. Every summer or spring the trail would be reopened when the bulk of the
river diving starts up again. Let us hear from you if you have any other good
ideas about trail management. We hope this venture can be a joint effort
between our office and the diving community!
