Lake Ontario was once an important gateway between the Atlantic Ocean and the rest of the Great Lakes. As a result, it has a few dozen shipwrecks below its surface, many dating to the 1700s and 1800s.
And now, the New York Department of State plans to hire the nonprofit Coastal States Stewardship Foundation to develop an immersive extended reality experience and modular exhibit highlighting at least two of the "iconic" shipwrecks in what's now the federally designated Lake Ontario National Marine Sanctuary.
The St. Peter, a schooner that sank in 1898 near Pultneyville in Wayne County, is one of the possible subjects.
"This exhibit is going to allow visitors of all ages and abilities the ability to enter the sanctuary, so to speak, and to experience shipwrecks in a really transformative new way," said Kisha Santiago, deputy secretary of state.
Extended reality is an umbrella term for immersive technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality (think Pokémon GO), and mixed reality, according to computing technology giant NVIDIA. They essentially create a virtual world for users.
Santiago said there is a large collection of high-resolution and 3D video of the wrecks from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, as well as from recreational divers and other sources. There are also recorded stories from divers and oral histories passed down among family members.
The sanctuary is a 1,700-square-mile stretch of eastern Lake Ontario beginning at the border between Monroe and Wayne counties and continuing to Cape Vincent in the Thousand Islands. It received the federal marine sanctuary designation in 2024, something a coalition of governments and community partners pursued for a decade.
Marine sanctuaries are akin to national parks, but underwater.
"We want to draw people in to be more interested in the history of New York," Santiago said. "And you know, what ... cooler way to do that than to tell some folkloric history of these shipwrecks themselves."
The project has a $420,000 budget; $50,000 of the funding is coming from the state Environmental Protection Fund while the rest is federal money.
A notice posted by the Department of State to a state contract registry said that the immersive videos and exhibit would be designed for public education and outreach. They would be used in museums, schools, libraries, visitor centers, and public events across the region and state.
"One thing that's really important to us is inclusivity," Santiago said. "And so we want to make sure people with different abilities and sensory sensitivities are able to experience different exhibits, as well as the ability for some of it to be loaned out."
