This year was a truly momentous one for nature, as it marked the one-hundredth anniversary of the National Parks Service.
This celebrates the stunning beauty of nature, and how humans have managed to preserve some of the most stunning national parks has come to the forefront of recent news.
Widespread focus on the topic is hugely important, especially in these times of climate change impacting on the environment of our planet.
Last month we were all treated when the Sleeping Bear Dunes celebrated the National Park Service’s one-hundredth anniversary, and a crew in a helicopter took a set of new aerial photographs of the two shipwrecks lying in the waters on the national lakeshore.
The photos are amazing, and within them you can also see the national park as well as the two shipwrecks – all from above. The shipwrecks can be seen very clearly within the fair waters of Lake Michigan.
There are fifty known shipwrecks within the waters by the Sleeping Bear Dunes, and they are said to have occurred from 1835 to 1960.
There is a particularly fascinating shipwreck that is only partially submerged, lying on its side and now home to a colony of double-crested cormorants. The story of how this ship was wrecked is intriguing. While on a trip from Chicago to Rotterdam in November of 1960, extremely strong winds took a toll on the ship.
The storm caused waves to wash over the decks, and the crew was blinded by heavy snow, which brought their position off by more than seventy miles from their original plan. Despite the ship and everything aboard it being destroyed, the crew, the captain and his pregnant wife were all saved and made it out of the incident alive.
These photographs will serve as a great way for people to see the shipwrecks in ways that were previously unavailable.
While many prefer looking out from the shore, these helicopter photographs have given people the opportunity to see something fascinating from a perspective they may have been completely unaware of.