Top 20 list of my Lake Superior Aquaman videos, with commentary, from a billion years of posting at Perfect Duluth Day:

#1.) Official video for the Low song “Gentle.” 2015. My one paying video gig and crowning achievement. Low saw Lake Superior Aquaman footage I posted here and requested I fit it to this song. The imagery is of the collapsed column of Uncle Harvey’s Mausoleum/The Icehouse in Duluth’s outer harbor off the Lakewalk.

 

#2.) “Insane Footage of Lake Superior in December.” My most-watched and most-commented video. Many commenters note that I was taking a great risk by going to the edge of the ice shelf, and they are correct. A few years later I had a similar ice shelf collapse beneath me. Don’t do it. This footage is from December 2013.

 

#3. “Close Call Cliff Jump, Lost GoPro Lands in Crayfish Front Yard”. My misadventure at the Deeps. I jumped pretty carelessly off the highest cliff, not realizing there is a ledge protruding below quite a bit — missed it by a hair; you can hear me yell “Shit!” in midair as I realized how close I was cutting this. I since saw that someone hit it a few years before and broke their pelvis. Then I hit the water so hard, my camera snapped off its pole and sank to the bottom of the pool which must be 12-15 feet deep, somewhere in there. I ran back to my car to get my dive mask and flippers so I could find it. Reviewing the footage later, I found that as the camera sat at the bottom, a crayfish crawled up to it. It’s not in the frame but you can see its legs and a claw as it investigates.

 

#4.) “Flash Flood Duluth Footage”. This is my house overrun with the flash flooding of June 20, 2012. Unlike many others, my house received no damage besides a few inches of water in the basement. I had just caulked around the basement joists to improve airtightness, this probably kept a lot of water out. I posted this footage same day and it got picked up some web news page, getting 30,000 views almost immediately.

 

#5.) “Creek Whirlpool Dissipates and Re-forms”. Tischer Creek 2015. That may have been the only year for this; I have returned to the spot every year since and it is packed in with silt. As near as I can figure, this was a space beneath a boulder that water flowed into a little too fast for the space to handle. The result was this whirlpool. Water depth not more than 18 inches. I followed up with this video on a later day with better sun, the whirlpool eating stuff, and I gave it music.

 

#6.) “Lake Superior Aquaman: Saving the City”. Picking up broken glass in 4-6 feet of water where kids jump in. I maybe made this a little long, but I wanted to document every piece of glass, to show the effort it takes to clean up after idiots who smash a couple bottles. A local news station saw this video here when I first posted it in 2014, interviewing me for a TV spot at the scene.

 

#7.) “Uncle Harvey’s Mausoleum Slo-Mo Flips”. I made this on a cold summer morning in 2013 but I was determined to get this footage. You can see I need to work on my flip game, some of these are only 3/4 flips.

 

#8.) “Lake Superior Aquaman Clears Harbor of Ice Singlehandedly”. 2014. Video doesn’t lie. Watch as I leap off the Mexico Lindo balcony to clear the lake of late May ice with my bare hands.

 

#9.) “Duluth’s Best Dive Sites with Canoe Support Crew”. I explore the “Duluth Triangle” of easily-accessible dive sites off the Lakewalk: a.) The red obstruction buoy (in 30 ft. of water), b.) ruins of the two breakwater walls off the Vietnam Memorial (10-20 feet), c.) Uncle Harvey’s Mausoleum, with its secret backdoor entrance and collapsed pillar (10-20 feet). Support crew: Sean MacManus, Jeff Greensmith

 

#10.) “Diving the Condos and What I Found There”. 2016. This is down at the other end of the Lakewalk where those condos hog the shoreline. I swam that expanse and documented what I saw, including a dead rabbit and a live great northern pike. ~10 feet deep most places.

 

#11.) “Madeline Island Diving Board”. A tricky self-portrait, exploring the shores of Madeline Island one 2017 summer morning. Knowing these logs make great springboards, first I made sure there were no submerged boulders or trees in my landing area. It was about 4 feet deep there so I couldn’t dive straight down, I’d have to pull up as soon as I hit the water. Don’t worry I’m a professional. Then I set my camera on a rock to catch the shot. You can see I almost fell climbing that thing which was bouncier than it looks.

 

#12.) “Fish Cam Meditation Mix”. 2017. Almost an hour of underwater sights and sounds to chill to. Stationary underwater cameras in a few locations capture lightplay underwater, natural sound, many small fish swimming by, and the finale of some diving mergansers charging through.

 

#13.) “Ice Folly”. This is a combo of four short videos I made with friend Max Moen over several days in winter 2014. We explored the frozen lake, the polar plunge, and made the prototype rink of what would become (a few years later and farther out on the ice) the People’s Free Skate.

 

#14.) “Insane Winter Ultimate Road Surfing”. 2014. Down the hill and back, on foot, with a layer of ice on every surface.

 

#15.) “Under the Ice at Stony Point”. 2014.

 

#16.) “Lake Superior Aquaman”. 2013. One of several I’ve made trying to capture the serenity of swimming/freediving Lake Superior. Not deeper than 10-12 feet, on an early fall day of epic water clarity. Water temp was brisk.

 

#17.) “Found Drug Paraphernalia”. 2015. Someone trying to quit smoking pot chucked their stuff in the lake in a moment of frustration; a few days later they watched me finding it all again on PDD (I have confirmed this story). Found items included: a rolling tray, a grinder, a glass pipe, pieces of two other broken glass pipes, a poker, and a broken stash jar. I still possess the usable items. While I was collecting all this stuff, a great northern pike swam by.

 

#18.) “Benevolent God to Crayfish and Minnows of Lester River”. 2014. I baited this “feeding station” with anchovies, filmed the local fauna’s reaction, and set it to music.

 

#19.) I included this because, of its few thousand views, it has garnered several mean comments and an overshare of dislikes, all from people looking for actual shark attacks who get bitterly disappointed after watching this. The title is clickbait I suppose, but to be disappointed, you have to believe there have been shark attacks in the Great Lakes in the first place. # of documented shark attacks in the Great Lakes: 0

 

#20.) “A Perfect Duluth Day on Lake Superior”. Wait for it