JURRASIC BARK

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Dr. Joseph Nagyvary of the Department of Biochemistry at Texas A&M University, who has researched Superior Water-Logged's wood, believes Antonio Stradivari may have soaked his violins in water, possibly for over 20 years. "When we look at the infrared spectrum, we find this wood from Lake Superior is very similar to that used in a cello by Antonio Stradivari," says Nagyvary. The company is now gathering the wood to make its first violin, traditionally made from maple and spruce. In the meantime, to prove its faith in the product, the company gave country singer Johnny Cash a flat-topped acoustic guitar, handcrafted from a 500-year-old red birch by Chris Hinton, a guitar builder who works for Superior Water-Logged. It will, however, take a lot of diving and a few lucky harvests to compete with the Stradivarius, since, as Hinton notes, only about one in 1,000 of the logs meet the size, weight, and grain pattern required for such world-class violins.

While the prospects for Superior Water-Logged seem promising, the company has recently come upon hard times. Last season, the lumber company salvaged only about 800 logs, and less than 100 of the more valuable hardwoods. They had hoped to salvage 30,000 logs. David Neitzke, president of the company, was hired in late 1997, after the prediction was made. He says that estimate was unrealistic and didn't take into account the bureaucratic obstacles the company would (and continues to) face. Still, he asserts, Superior Water-Logged is in it for the long haul.

Mitchen blames the poor harvest on government red tape and the lack of permits grunted by state regulators. "We are literally at the mercy of government regulation, both state and federal," Mitchen says. It may be necessary red tape, however. The company has to apply to the state for each 40-acre area from which it plans to harvest sunken logs. The requested area is then researched by a number of state and federal agencies, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Commissioner of Public Lands, the Department of Natural Resources, and the State Historical Society, all of whom make sure the site isn't home to any endangered species or possible historic landmarks, such as sunken vessels.

To make things worse, after the company started showing financially promising results, a swarm of other prospective old-log harvesters came out of the woodwork. "We had a gold rush--type situation on the permits," says Mitchen. "It put a scare in everybody that the whole bottom [of the lake] would be ripped up." The less serious prospectors have largely retreated, however, leaving Superior Water-Logged one of the few remaining underwater logging operations in the area.

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