OUR WORLD-UNDERWATER ANNOUNCES 2008 AWARD RECIPIENT!

2008   Cris Kohl

Cris Kohl has spent his life around water, whether crossing the Atlantic Ocean by ship several times, or exploring his beloved Great Lakes in his sailboat or powerboat. After his initial exposure to the underwater world in Bermuda and the Florida Keys in 1974, he became fascinated by the mysteries of the sea, especially with shipwrecks and the stories behind them.

An intrepid explorer, Cris Kohl has studied hundreds of shipwrecks underwater in three oceans and all five Great Lakes during the past 33 years. He has a Master of Arts degree in History, specializing in Great Lakes Maritime History, plus an English degree, important elements which have helped him research, locate, identify, and write about numerous Great Lakes shipwrecks. He is also a certified Divemaster and Full Cave Diver, and he has taught Power Squadron courses for safer and more knowledgeable boating.

A prolific writer and prize-winning underwater photographer, Cris Kohl’s work has appeared in numerous newspapers such as the Washington Post and the Toronto Globe and Mail, and he has written hundreds of articles for newsletters and magazines including Skin Diver, Immersed, Sport Diver, (Rodale’s) Scuba Diving, Discover Diving, Great Lakes Cruiser, Chicago, Cottage Life, Inland Seas, and many others. Canada’s Diver magazine has published several dozen of his shipwreck articles, along with many of his photos, and a Cris Kohl article with photos has appeared in every issue of Wreck Diving Magazine since it commenced publication several years ago.

Cris Kohl is a popular speaker who has given over 1,200 shipwreck presentations, most in a multimedia format, to a variety of audiences, from grade school classes and boy scout groups to dive clubs, history conferences, and scuba shows. Annual shows have included Our World—Underwater (Chicago), Beneath The Sea (New York City), the Sea Rovers Clinic (Boston), Seaspace (Houston), and Underwater Canada (Toronto). He has often been interviewed on radio and television (most recently in “Shipwrecked: Rage of the Great Lakes” on the Discovery Channel, and several episodes of the History Channel’s “Deep Sea Detectives”) where he is able to promote both the maritime history of the inland seas, and the scuba diving on the best-preserved shipwrecks in the world, which, understandably, are the mainstay of sport scuba diving in the Great Lakes.

He is a Past President of the Underwater Archaeological Society of Chicago, having served on their Executive Board for several years. He has also served in the capacity of scuba club President (3 years), Executive Board member of the Ontario Underwater Council (9 years), and Executive Board member (6 years) of Save Ontario Shipwrecks, the Windsor branch, which he co-founded.

His eleven published books include the popular two-volume The 100 Best Great Lakes Shipwrecks, the Dive Ontario! books, Shipwreck Tales of the Great Lakes, TITANIC The Great Lakes Connections, and The Great Lakes Diving Guide, the most comprehensive reference work ever published on Great Lakes scuba diving.

In 2004, Cris Kohl was inducted into the prestigious Boston Sea Rovers organization, whose list of 127 inductees reads like a Who’s Who of the diving world.

Raised in Windsor, Ontario, he now resides with his wife, writer and historian Joan Forsberg, at High Lake, Illinois, just outside Chicago. Besides doing shipwreck presentations together, they recently co-authored the book, Shipwrecks at Death’s Door, and they produce a quarterly newsletter called “Shipwrecks! …The Great Lakes and Beyond.”

The Great Lakes and their shipwrecks have no greater advocate than Cris Kohl. His mission in life is to tell the world about these most wonderfully preserved underwater museums and to educate scuba divers everywhere about the history, preservation, and value of these unique treasures.


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