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Swimming Drone Explores Underwater Mountain in Lake Superior

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Thursday, October 2, 2025

Known to some as the “Freshwater Everest,” if you want to explore this mountain, you don’t go up, you go down.In the middle of Lake Superior, near the boundary between Canadian and US waters, sits the Superior Shoal, a mountain that’s completely underwater. The shoal is about 4 square miles of volcanic rock that rises up from the bottom of the lake to a height nearly three times that of the Statue of Liberty. Its peak wrests about 30 feet below the surface. Now, filmmakers and researchers are exploring it with underwater drones. They want to see if it’s a hotbed for aquatic life that could offer a refuge for species facing obstacles elsewhere in the Great Lakes.“This is an area that has very, very rarely been explored on camera,” said Zach Melnick, a cofounder of Inspired Planet Productions, which he runs with his business partner and wife, Yvonne Drebert. It’s not the only underwater incline in the Great Lakes. Others include Stannard Rock, a reef in Lake Superior north of Marquette; a knoll outside Tobermory, Ontario in Lake Huron; and Midlake Reef in Lake Michigan, between Muskegon and Milwaukee. And it’s not the only “Superior Shoal.” There’s another located in the St. Lawrence River off the shore of New York. But Drebert and Melnick believe the Superior Shoal in Lake Michigan is the largest known underwater mountain in fresh water. Documenting aquatic life with a swimming robot The filmmakers had been curious about lake protrusions after exploring one that appeared to be an outlier of aquatic life while filming their series and related documentary, “ All Too Clear: Beneath the Surface of the Great Lakes.” Those works dive deep into how invasive mussels in the Great Lakes are gobbling up essential nutrients and devastating organisms, from plankton to whitefish.When a researcher they’d worked with in the past, Michael Rennie, got a grant to explore the Superior Shoal, they “sort of begged him,” Melnick said, to let them come along.Rennie is an associate professor at Lakehead University and a research fellow at the International Institute for Sustainable Development-Experimental Lakes Area. Now, with the help of the filmmakers’ cameras, he’s looking into whether the Superior Shoal might be a hotspot for life, which he said is often the case for similar seamounts found in the ocean. What they’re essentially studying, Rennie said, is “how the physics of having this giant mountain in a bunch of water that’s swirling around all the time interacts with things like nutrients, and with the growth of algae, to promote the abundance of fish that we seem to be seeing out there.”Melnick and Drebert are operating special cinema-grade cameras to monitor aquatic life like zooplankton, algae and fish. The drone they use is called a Boxfish Luna and it can go around 1,600 feet deep, about the length of five football fields.“Think of aerial drones, take all that cool technology, and put it in a robot that you’re shoving underwater,” Drebert said. “But our drone is a little bit special because it can swim in any direction, just like a fish.”Usually, it takes a little while for fish to get used to the swimming drone, Melnick said, but fish near the Superior Shoal seemed to be curious.“The trout out there were ultra amenable to being on camera,” he said. At one point, while the team was livestreaming video, they tried to measure fish with two laser points. The fish chased the glowing red dots the same way cats do. They also saw hydra, which are kind of like freshwater anemones, attached to rocks, giving the effect of a garden.“They are little tiny aquatic animals that wave in the wind,” said Drebert. “They use their little hairy tentacles to pull food, like little zooplankton and critters, out of the water.”Rennie said the data collected on the recent trip has not been fully analyzed yet. But, if research shows that the Superior Shoal is a magnet for aquatic life, then maybe it and places like it could serve as refuges for near-shore populations dealing with environmental or human-caused problems.“And, if that’s the case, then I think we’ve got really good arguments to be made for maybe we should think about affording these regions a higher conservation status,” Rennie said. Melnick and Drebert are planning to use footage taken from the Superior Shoal in a documentary they’re developing about lakemounts as well as a wildlife docuseries they’re working on. This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Sept. 2025

Filmmakers and researchers are using drones to explore an underwater mountain in Lake Superior

Known to some as the “Freshwater Everest,” if you want to explore this mountain, you don’t go up, you go down.

In the middle of Lake Superior, near the boundary between Canadian and US waters, sits the Superior Shoal, a mountain that’s completely underwater.

The shoal is about 4 square miles of volcanic rock that rises up from the bottom of the lake to a height nearly three times that of the Statue of Liberty. Its peak wrests about 30 feet below the surface.

Now, filmmakers and researchers are exploring it with underwater drones. They want to see if it’s a hotbed for aquatic life that could offer a refuge for species facing obstacles elsewhere in the Great Lakes.

“This is an area that has very, very rarely been explored on camera,” said Zach Melnick, a cofounder of Inspired Planet Productions, which he runs with his business partner and wife, Yvonne Drebert.

It’s not the only underwater incline in the Great Lakes. Others include Stannard Rock, a reef in Lake Superior north of Marquette; a knoll outside Tobermory, Ontario in Lake Huron; and Midlake Reef in Lake Michigan, between Muskegon and Milwaukee. And it’s not the only “Superior Shoal.” There’s another located in the St. Lawrence River off the shore of New York.

But Drebert and Melnick believe the Superior Shoal in Lake Michigan is the largest known underwater mountain in fresh water.

Documenting aquatic life with a swimming robot

The filmmakers had been curious about lake protrusions after exploring one that appeared to be an outlier of aquatic life while filming their series and related documentary, “ All Too Clear: Beneath the Surface of the Great Lakes.” Those works dive deep into how invasive mussels in the Great Lakes are gobbling up essential nutrients and devastating organisms, from plankton to whitefish.

When a researcher they’d worked with in the past, Michael Rennie, got a grant to explore the Superior Shoal, they “sort of begged him,” Melnick said, to let them come along.

Rennie is an associate professor at Lakehead University and a research fellow at the International Institute for Sustainable Development-Experimental Lakes Area. Now, with the help of the filmmakers’ cameras, he’s looking into whether the Superior Shoal might be a hotspot for life, which he said is often the case for similar seamounts found in the ocean.

What they’re essentially studying, Rennie said, is “how the physics of having this giant mountain in a bunch of water that’s swirling around all the time interacts with things like nutrients, and with the growth of algae, to promote the abundance of fish that we seem to be seeing out there.”

Melnick and Drebert are operating special cinema-grade cameras to monitor aquatic life like zooplankton, algae and fish. The drone they use is called a Boxfish Luna and it can go around 1,600 feet deep, about the length of five football fields.

“Think of aerial drones, take all that cool technology, and put it in a robot that you’re shoving underwater,” Drebert said. “But our drone is a little bit special because it can swim in any direction, just like a fish.”

Usually, it takes a little while for fish to get used to the swimming drone, Melnick said, but fish near the Superior Shoal seemed to be curious.

“The trout out there were ultra amenable to being on camera,” he said.

At one point, while the team was livestreaming video, they tried to measure fish with two laser points. The fish chased the glowing red dots the same way cats do.

They also saw hydra, which are kind of like freshwater anemones, attached to rocks, giving the effect of a garden.

“They are little tiny aquatic animals that wave in the wind,” said Drebert. “They use their little hairy tentacles to pull food, like little zooplankton and critters, out of the water.”

Rennie said the data collected on the recent trip has not been fully analyzed yet. But, if research shows that the Superior Shoal is a magnet for aquatic life, then maybe it and places like it could serve as refuges for near-shore populations dealing with environmental or human-caused problems.

“And, if that’s the case, then I think we’ve got really good arguments to be made for maybe we should think about affording these regions a higher conservation status,” Rennie said.

Melnick and Drebert are planning to use footage taken from the Superior Shoal in a documentary they’re developing about lakemounts as well as a wildlife docuseries they’re working on.

This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.

Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Photos You Should See – Sept. 2025

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

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