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Exploring another world
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Friday, July 17, 2020 - Country Acres • Page 11 A cres At e lake
another world
Scuba diving adventures captivate Bosek
BY KAYLA ALBERS | STAFF WRITER
ALEXANDRIA — In Jeff Bosek’s 34 years of scuba diving, he has found a world of treasures: wedding rings, old cans and bottles, silver nickels from WWII, horses attached to wagons and an elk rack that was 400 years old. Bosek has been to many different places for scuba diving, and each place provides a new adventure, something Bosek loves about diving. His diving skills came about indirectly through his time in the military. He was stationed with the Marines in the Philippines, working as a sniper for special operations for four of his six years on two separate tours of duty. It was during that time when he had the option to take scuba diving lessons from a local, and having always wanted to learn, he seized the opportunity. He took a twoweek initial certifi cation
course in 1986. For Bosek, it was the beginning of discovering a whole new world. After returning from overseas in 1989, Bosek worked at a Marine base scuba store. It was then that he got went to a commercial diving school and received his certifi cation in that category. Bosek went on to operate a deer farm for 12 years, but then opened his own scuba shop in Alexandria, called Divers Clubhouse, in 2000, where individuals can go for lessons and to rent scuba gear. His fascination for diving began early in his life, though, long before he took his lessons. He wanted to learn how to scuba dive as a kid after being inspired by one of his all-time favorite movies, “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” a 1954 Disney Film that he has
PHOTO SUBMITTED Jeff Bosek holds a 400-year-old elk rack he found while scuba diving in Lake Carlos during the summer of 2008 near Alexandria. seen more than any other movie. “The coolness of underwater farming and the peace and quiet of it all was fascinating,” Bosek said. Bosek also had a dream of becoming an astronaut one day. Becoming a scuba diver was the next best thing, since the gear is similar and he still gets to explore new worlds. “What I always tell my students is it’s one planet, but it’s two worlds,” Bosek said. “Do you want to spend your whole life on just 25 percent of the planet?” Bosek has been diving in many different places, from lakes to oceans. He has been to the Cayman Islands, Bonaire, Cozumel and Belize, where he dove the Great Blue Hole, the French Anchor and the Aquarium on the Belize Barrier Reef. Bosek said the French Anchor and the Aquarium are two of the best dives he has
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PHOTO SUBMITTED While traveling in Cozumel, Jeff Bosek is pictured at the Felipe Xicotencatl shipwreck.
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ever made. The French Anchor dive features a 17th Century ship anchor lodged into the reef, and the dive went down to about 90- 100 feet, though the reef itself drops off to a depth of 5,000 feet. The Aquarium was more of a shallow dive at 50 feet, where many species of exotic fi sh could be seen. “It was like being in an aquarium,” Bosek said. The Blue Hole is an underwater sinkhole that can be seen from outer space. It is circular, just under 1,000 feet across by about 400 feet deep. Requiring advanced diving skills, Bosek dove to a depth of 135 feet and
PHOTO BY KAYLA ALBERS Jeff Bosek sets up an oxygen tank and checks the levels in his scuba shop, Divers Clubhouse, on June 19 in Alexandria.
as he went down, it continued getting darker and colder, and there were many sharks. Bosek does not worry about sharks when he dives, saying they are not worried about humans. “The key to diving is to not be afraid of sharks,” Bosek said. “I roll them over and rub their tummies. Sharks, in general, are really friendly.” Despite the many dives Bosek has completed in the ocean, he prefers diving in the lakes of Minnesota. For Bosek, diving in the ocean is diving a place where hundreds of people go every day, whereas the lakes are new territory. For him, that is far more fun, and has a lot more adventure involved. “In the lakes, it is like no one has been there and you are the fi rst person to ever be down there,” Bosek said. “If you close your eyes you can almost hear your heartbeat because it is so quiet.” Bosek has been diving in many lakes in Minnesota, but memorable dives have been the underwater forest in the iron pits in Crosby, and the Madera and Hesper shipwrecks in Lake Superior near Duluth. His eyes lit up when he talked about the 40 feet of visibility in the iron pits and how amazing the diving is there. He was also
PHOTO SUBMITTED Jeff Bosek salvages an 18,000-pound PistenBully out of a holding lake near Hibbing. Bosek does some of his commercial work with his eyes closed to stay relaxed underwater. ecstatic over how impressive the shipwrecks in Lake Superior were. Just the mere size of them was impressive for Bosek. “The beams are huge,” Bosek said about the Hesper. “You can’t even see the whole thing in one dive.” For commercial work, Bosek described working on a pipeline in Missouri and southern Minnesota, and an underwater hydraulic system for a steel company in northern Minnes ota during the middle of winter. When Bosek was working on the hydraulic system, the water was murky and it was very cold. He was shaking the whole time. Bosek had to memorize the system and put it back together with his eyes closed underwater. It took several days to put the system together. “You close your eyes the whole time because if you open your eyes your body can’t feel as well,” Bosek said. “Then you start to panic because you can’t see and your eyes don’t understand why.” With his experience in commercial work, Bosek has a recovery service through his scuba shop where he will dive into lakes and fi nd people’s lost belongings. One of the more unusual diving excursions he had was to fi nd a woman’s prosthetic leg that she lost while water skiing. However, a lot of his recovery service is to fi nd wedding rings and to retrieve cars and snowmobiles that have fallen through the ice. Bosek not only fi nds treasures in the lakes, but he learns from them as well. From his fi nd of a massive elk rack in Lake Carlos, he learned that elk used to live in this part o f Minnesota. Bosek had the elk rack tested and found that it was over 400 years old. Over time, the herds migrated north, likely due to hunting, and they no longer live in the area. As of now, Bosek has his vision set on another treasure. Before they passed away, two archaeologists left Bosek all of their research on the whereabouts of a runestone that is supposedly larger than the Kensington runestone found in Douglas county in 1898 by a Swedish immigrant, Olof Ohman. A runestone dates back to the Viking age and is noted for its ancient Scandinavian inscription. “That [the Kensington] was the secondary marker, I believe, and the real marker is the one that I am looking at,” Bosek said. The discovery of this runestone would provide verifi cation that the Kensington runestone is authentic, and it would prove that Vikings came to North America 130 years prior to Christopher Columbus. Since the Kensington runestone’s discovery, there have
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PHOTO SUBMITTED As a certifi ed commercial scuba diver, Jeff Bosek works on an inlet inspection job in Southern Minnesota. been debates about the stone’s authenticity and it is thought by many to be a hoax. The stone has created an ongoing mystery in Minnesota that Bosek wishes to solve. Bosek has spent two winters diving under the ice to map out an island in a lake, in a location he wishes not to disclose, that he has named “Templar’s Island.” It is there that the runestone is supposedly located. He will make one last attempt to fi nd it and if he is successful, it will be a huge historical discovery. Once he has fi nished his search for the runestone, Bosek’s dream for the future is to build a lake that has an underwater lost sea with a sunken ship to provide a destination for scuba divers in the Alexandria area. Bosek would like to start easing up on his commercial scuba diving work, and teach fewer classes, so that the time he spends scuba diving is purely for enjoyment of the sport, while continuing his discovery of the “other world” that surrounds him.
PHOTO SUBMITTED BY VANESSA POPP, Opole Diggs is seen enjoying a summer day on Green Prairie Fish Lake.
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