The Coast Guard is investigating a report of an unknown substance located near the site of a almost 80-year-old sunken barge in Lake Erie Sunday.
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The Coast Guard says divers face a challenge in trying to find and seal the leak, which appears to involve a colorless, petroleum-based solvent that evaporates quickly at the surface.
A side scan sonar took this image of a sunken barge in western Lake Erie that researchers believe is the Argo, a tanker barge that went down in a storm in 1937.
What officials don’t know is whether this is an ongoing leak or exactly what type of cargo was on the barge.
During a Saturday fly-over of the site, crews reported seeing a 400 yard area of discoloration on the water near the site. Anthony Migliorini, commanding officer of Marine Safety Unit Toledo, said in a release. “It will not remain in the water long”, he said.
The Coast Guard Atlantic Strike Team is expected to begin air monitoring on Monday.
The steel barge is about 45 feet below the lake’s surface and largely intact. The NOAA assessment of the Argo, prepared in 2013, said its most likely position was in Canadian waters southeast of Pelee Island, but close enough to American waters that any discharge posed a hazard on both sides of that maritime border.
One other thing that suggests the wreckage is the Argo is that there are no reports of another tanker barge being lost in the same area, he said.
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The museum has been providing grant funding to the Cleveland Underwater Explorers to reimburse a few of that group’s operating expenses as it looks for Lake Erie shipwrecks, and plans to publish an account of the Argo’s discovery in its journal, Inland Seas.
